cover image Breaking Through

Breaking Through

Andre VandenBroeck, Andrc) VandenBroeck, Andr VandenBroeck. City Lights Books, $15.95 (374pp) ISBN 978-0-87286-319-4

This unusual novel is a rigorous intellectual exercise in probing the nature of consciousness. Piero Tallini, a cinematographer exploring a filming site in southern Spain, finds himself communicating inexplicably with the first humans to live there. Through Tallini's mystical contact with these ancient people, he is taken on a cerebral trip through their understanding of reality and their development of language. At the same time, Tallini comes to realize his own cosmic connection to his physical environment and to all life forms. VandenBroeck introduces ancillary characters--Tallini's best friend in Paris, a mysterious woman, a gypsy--but the primary plot is Tallini's solitary conversion experience. This is not for the general reader, and VandenBroeck (Al-Kemi) doesn't pretend it is. The heady issues--and the intricate writing style (""Beyond the sustaining of the gaze, there is no representation in this case, though the effect of symmetry peculiar to a horizontal mirror image is obeyed: in sustained eye contact, a right eye gazes into a left, and vice versa"")--is for fans of the philosophical novel and maybe a few ambitious New Age readers. The unconverted may feel upon the novel's completion, however, that the piousness here, while dressed up in the author's obvious intelligence, has begun to wear thin. (Aug.)