Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident in the Night-Time) returns with The Porpoise, a novel that welds together contemporary drama and classical tales. After the wealthy Philippe loses his beloved wife in a plane crash, he shuts himself and his new daughter, Angelica, off from the rest of the world. As Angelica grows up, her relationship with her father becomes sexually abusive. When ambitious young Darius comes into the house on business, he intuits what is really happening between Philippe and Angelica, attempts to rescue her and barely escapes with his own life. In the aftermath, Darius's trajectory becomes melded with that of the classical hero Pericles while Angelica discovers new ways to resist her father and further retreat from the world.
Adventurous in form and structure, The Porpoise rejects any expectations a reader might have for it. A far cry from Haddon's previous works, this novel invests in cool, fable-esque narration and cinematic set pieces. At first the reader is drawn into the too-real horrors of Angelica's world by the novel's captivating but brutal description of the accident that killed her mother. But soon the story delves into the realm of mystical, classical creations. Rather than mapping the tale of Pericles, his wife and their crew directly onto Darius's life, the legends at the heart of this story become an investigation into how humankind has always attempted to confront and encapsulate questions of loss in the face of personal yearnings and weaknesses. By luxuriating in the narrative propulsion of classical legends, Haddon helps readers explore the darkest corners of human desire without weighing them down. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor