In spite of its somewhat tawdry title, which seems to present more the impression of a frivolous Sex-and-the-City generic, Alex Smith’s Four Drunk Beauties is actually an incredibly rich and masterfully textured tapestry of a book.
Tale Within a Tale
Constructed as a tale within a tale, which will be instantly familiar to those who have read One Thousand and One Nights, the novel follows a story told by one inmate of an
With her style, Smith captures most impressively the ambiance one would imagine surrounds a Middle Eastern passing of folklore from wise orator to eager and curious student or listener. The effect is much more enhanced by the periodic transgression from the story of the four drunk beauties to the reality in which the story is told, and back again.
Persian Rug Beauty
The main narrator of the novel uses the metaphor of a Persian carpet for a story, and one cannot help feeling that this description is wonderfully accurate where Alex Smith’s writing is concerned.
The narrative is literally ‘woven’ with details, textures and sounds, symbols and reliquaries, with the eye of the storyteller giving us a vision not merely of the current scene of any particular chapter, but a view of the peripheral as well, where other events and characters are seemingly introduced at random, but ultimately adhere to a grand design.
Sprites and Recipes
Some might view certain details of the writing to be a little superfluous and overdone (which really can only give further strength to the metaphor of a Persian tapestry), such as the sprites which make appearances throughout the novel, influencing events through mischief. While these certainly add to an old and magical Middle Eastern flavour, which continues the theme of folklore, their existence does seem somewhat redundant at times, and add no large degree of momentum to the story.
In contrast, an indisputably commendable element of the novel, one which seems to saturate the prose with colour, is Smith’s periodic insertions of recipes for various dishes, given by incidental characters to one of the four drunk beauties as she travels with her companions to different locations around the world. Though at first consideration a rather innocuous device, this originality actually lends a magnificent angle to the story, and greatly enriches it, as much as, if not more than, the objects of the magical and the spiritual.
Flat Characters
Perhaps the only complaint which can be laid against this novel is the apparent redundancy of the four drunk beauties themselves. Though they are eponymous with the novel, and are the primary focus of the story, they generally come across as having no more significance than the peripheral characters they meet. One would think of them as more of a plot device with which to unfold the mystery, in keeping with a more fable-like tone.
They are each sketched differently, but, like a drawing, are really only two dimensional. However large such an error of novelisation may seem, yet it comes across really as no more than a literary oddity, and does not affect the richness of the novel itself. One finds one almost glad to ignore the primary characters simply for the pleasure of focusing more fully on the beauty of the atmosphere of the prose in general.
Four Drunk Beauties is by no means a small triumph. Exquisitely crafted, admirably woven, and infused with a most aromatic tone, it is a beautiful and simple classic in its own right, and gives that much more shine to the portfolio of South African authors.
