Onomatopoeia: The Port - Charles Avery

Onomatopoeia: The Port is the next phase in Charles Avery's Islanders project (launched with The Islanders, discussed here). The Prologue to this second book opens exactly as did the first: " I first came to the Island at the end of the great kelp rush..." Initially, Onomatopoeia's Prologue appears identical, but subtle variations start to arise, until eventually, the narrative becomes wholly original.

As readers, you could start with this book. However, the new additional narrative relies on readers' memory of details from The Islanders in order to unlock some of its narrative intricacies. For instance, towards the end of the Prologue, our narrator Only McFew informs us that as he began to explore the port of Onomatopy on the Island, he "exercised my new status as a tourist by standing in line to purchase a poke of moules and two eggs from Marcel's Casserole". Ordinarily, this is not particularly surprising information. Yet readers of The Islanders are aware of the infamy of the Island's eggs: In The Islanders, we learn that they are branded Henderson's eggs, and are "bitterly disgusting, yet ruinously addictive". The most any one can eat is three apparently, before they are "completely hooked". Indeed, Avery writes, "Many of the prospectors who came to the Island during the kelp rush did not prosper, but instead found ruin in the form of the eggs". Thus, at the end of Onomatopoeia's Prologue, when the narrative ends with the words, "I bit into my second egg", those readers who know of the eggs' power interpret the sense of foreboding these words contain, and the slippery downfall for Only McFew at which they hint...

After the Prologue, Onomatopoeia really consists of Avery's stunning illustrations. It opens with a reproduction of Avery's large scale drawing of the port of Onomatopoeia (which featured in British Art Show 7, discussed on this blog here).

Since the original image is so large, the subsequent illustrations are essentially close-ups of areas of this initial picture, allowing the reader/viewer to really admire the detail of Avery's drawings.

Finally, echoing the structure of The Islanders, Onomatopoeia concludes with an Epilogue. As the final words of the Prologue implied, all is not rosey for Only McFew who states that he is "profoundly lost". He tries to write an inventory to keep his mind sharp, detailing the contents of his bag as well as "Self: I am called Only McFew (really!)" - Incidentally, this is troubling since this is the name Miss Miss understood, and seems unlikely to be the narrator's real name. In itself, this raises all sorts of questions for the reader concerning Only McFew's state of mind and well-being.

Enigmatically, the Epilogue to Onomatopoeia ends, "And finally I have started to wonder if, beyond the shops and bars and lights of Onomatopy, beyond the Plane of the Gods, where the defunct machines and litter are strewn, underneath the mountains and the flowers and the dust and the bones of the hunters, there is an island at all?"