The Nine Chambered Heart: Janice Pariat's novel examines one person through multiple viewpoints

The heart is many things in language and metaphor. It is an expression in itself. It can act as both viewfinder and shutter. It is both joy and pain. The derivations are endless, yet it still remains jacketed by the rib cage, journeying only through the many stories that it will help write, or not. Of the latter, Janice Pariat’s latest novel The Nine-Chambered Heart (Harper Collins) may well be as accurate as any fictional document. The Nine-Chambered Heart is almost exactly that, a woman (and not her story or life either) told from the perspective of nine different men she has had one or the other kind of relationship with. It is a fairly unique way of storytelling, with personality providing both drift and plot. And it succeeds in posing fairly interesting question — can people be the story? [caption id=“attachment_4269949” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] Janice Pariat’s new book is called The Nine Chambered Heart (Harper Collins). Janice’s photo courtesy Sambit Dattachaudhuri[/caption] Pariat has written before on themes of love and despair, on art and literature, and though this is not entirely a deviation from that space it does read as inspired rather from lived experience. “The “real-life” inspiration for the book would be how we all exist to others as stories, as narratives they tell themselves (and us as well). Hence the structure — multiple viewpoints of one person, moving through a particular section of her life (from childhood, until her early 30s). In this way it’s a fictional biography told through love — romantic and otherwise. The central character sometimes remains as elusive to me as she does to the narrators (and perhaps the readers too),” Pariat says. The central character in Pariat’s novel — though the focus — is not given a voice. In doing so, Pariat makes her both elusive, yet clear in fragments that are collected through her interaction with others. Sort of like hearsay, yet more intimate and personal. “I wanted to replicate how it is in life, with the people we’re with, and love. We never have access to them entirely. Neither them to us. We know each other in fragments and slivers. I guess the book then is about both. The absent central character and the nine who conjure her,” Pariat says.  None of the characters are given names, except allusive identifiers that Pariat refers to them with. One is the Butcher, another the Crusader or the Sailor and so on. In effect, reflecting a certain understanding shared by the two or the pathos embodied by the relationship. That said, not all allusions translate immediately. Some take time, some remain distant. In playing and writing to structure, and keeping with its splintered canvas, the muteness of the woman at the heart of the book can at times turn to wishful thinking. It reflects the larger landscape of dating and relationships wherein women are usually actuated through word of mouth. It is the woman’s morality, what she chooses to do with life or not, that is studied a lot more as compared to her male counterpart. Here in The Nine-Chambered Heart, Pariat adapts the same socio-cultural economy and turns perspective into story. For example, the Professor writes ‘As though I am oriented only by your presence, or your absence. You are my north.’ Of the same woman, The Caretaker feels a kind of want that is ‘raw and easy, and instantly recongisable, like hunger, and as uncomplicated – mouth to gut.’ The suppression of the central character’s voice, Pariat believes, was essential. “I wanted to keep her distant. She remained distant. There was nothing I could do, or wanted to do, to bring her closer to me, to the narrators, to the readers. It was also necessary because this book is about the subjectivity of perspective and its splintering. Having her voice in the narrative would make her the ‘authority’ so to speak, while this way we’re left to imagine what it is she experienced, much as we must do with the people in our lives,” she says. The nine different perspectives can be seen as letters (though they aren’t) or images (though they tell a lot more). Some recount an incident, while others can meditate over the entire relationship. Love and passion are mixed in equal quantities, and they levitate often with the lightness of Pariat’s writing, which neither oversexualises nor bats the eyelid. That said, the book — given the structure — has its fair share of restrictions. There is only so much nuance a writer can write somebody with. “This was a major concern while I was working on the first few drafts of the novel. How could I make it not fall apart? Even if the story is meant to be fragmentary there still needed to be a sense of holistic completeness, the centre had to hold. I added echoes, of images, conversations, to pull the sections together, while weaving the story of this one person through them all,” Pariat says. Then there are other issues — like each relationship comes bundled in the same set of strings of love, infatuation etc etc. After a point the idea begins to wilt and the text feels like a selection rather than assimilation. It could have perhaps served to not only add nuance in the window but in those who look through it as well. Nevertheless, Pariat’s writing, her words suture some ungainly impediments that the structure tries to validate. Her understanding of liberal yet irreverent souls, the enigma of want and need read wonderfully well and should do no harm to Pariat’s repertoire of people over extrinsic politics – of which there is too much writing as it is. “‘Politics’ is so much about understanding the ‘other’. It resides in, and stems from, our intimate relationships. This book is very much about putting yourself in another’s place, to try and understand why others may have the views they do of you. If that’s not ‘politics’, I don’t know what is,” she says.