She didn’t laugh. Something about the box precluded laughing. The way it coiled around itself, perhaps. The paradox of the self-contained container self-sufficient as a brick and fragile as a poem. The “air of pandemonium” about it as like a poisonous plant its mere existence “filtered an intrusive, disruptive element into the atmosphere.”
The Box, the latest novel by Bermudian writer Mandy-Suzanne Wong, is an enigma that defies simple classification or clear resolution. Experimental in form, dystopian in setting, it follows, indirectly, the movement of an unusual box constructed of white woven paper through a city trapped in an endless snowfall that has blurred all normal social interactions. A novel of ideas it is entirely composed of interdependent but distinct narratives that vary widely in style and form. Yet, the voices that take turns carrying each chapter are strange and estranged, each projecting a strong character or tone, but in most cases revealing only fragments of their own pasts and hinting at a larger story that stubbornly remains at the edges of the unfolding journey of the unusual little box.
In the first chapter, “Secondhand,” a recently retired, self-described anthrophobe, sees a small item fall from the pocket of a man’s jacket onto the snow covered laneway and, for some reason, is inclined to pick the object up and hurry after him. The narrator, perplexed by their own behaviour, cannot resist temptation and we have our first and clearest description of the box:
that thing, a paper thing, white paper in the snow, exerted forces which I cannot define but which proved stronger than history and all my instincts: the little white box fit in the palm of my hand with perhaps a whisper of a rattle when it moved, was of a size that could’ve accommodated cigarettes or playing cards, a wallet or a slim wad of cash, yet was absolutely self-contained lacking the door or flap of the cigarette or playing-card carton, but then again it was the opposite of self-contained being all-over seams, by which I mean it was constructed of paper strips entangled as if haphazardly, shooting out as if dynamically between one another and diving under one another in all directions, but so tight a weave it was that no strip seemed to have an end, delicate as they were the strips held fast to one another with a tension that resulted in an impenetrable rectangle
In long, winding sentences, the misanthrope recounts the story that the apparent box-owner shares about how he came into possession of this strange thing through the unlikely adventure of his cousin’s first wife’s stepbrother’s eldest daughter and her friend in a bizarre short-term rental apartment decorated with and filled with boxes. The roundabout account introduces images that will reappear, such as the idea that the mysterious object could easily be lost in the persistent blanket of snow that is covering the city, and offers the first appearance of a woman with artificially blackened hair and a chipped tooth who, in her obsessive pursuit of the box, will resurface in the events described in each of the following chapters.
As we move from narrator to narrator, we see the small white box make its way through an art exhibit, a warren of decrepit second hand shops, the peculiar story shared by a hotel guest before becoming an object of near-religious veneration and ultimately passing into the hands of a security guard. Most of its journey is reported through layers of doubt, supposition and even cynical dismissal. Meanwhile, the snow continues to fall at a steady pace just exceeding the rate of evaporation, effectively cutting the city off from the rest of the world. Isolated it becomes an increasingly hostile and unforgiving place, and the narrators become increasingly bitter, intolerant or emotionally injured. The box, by contrast, indestructible and preternaturally white, exudes a kind of innocence that is either attractive or diabolical, depending on the perspective of those who fall under its spell.
Although the mood, energy and prose style shifts with each chapter, the overall tone of The Box is both absurdist and intentionally self-referential. As such, it is not an easy read. Given what looks like a puzzle, a reader naturally looks to find clues and links uniting the stories that are told, but here the mystery is a kind of moebius strip that turns in on itself. Wong includes a list of writers and thinkers whose ideas and images she misquotes and misinterprets along the way, but I I’m not certain how essential a familiarity with these authors is to appreciate this work. The one fundamental, perhaps, is Jane Bennett’s notion of the vitality of matter that ascribes life and agency to all beings—human, nonhuman and seemingly inanimate alike. Various things—works of art, antiquarian books, buildings and other objects—have a particular importance for most of the characters that populate this decaying society, but the little white box that invites both obsession and scorn appears to be of another order altogether.
One is left, then, to ask: What existence and power does the box contain in itself and how is that related to the people who come into contact with it? Is it possible to conceive of an object with independent agency without imagining it in an environment within which the human actors have found themselves with restricted agency due to some impersonal yet impenetrable force of nature? Or is the matter that matters all in the experience of the beholder? Ambitious and original, it will take time for me to put this strange text behind me.
The Box: A Novel by Mandy-Suzanne Wong is published by Graywolf Press in the US and House of Anansi in Canada.
roughghosts 
Don’t laugh, Joe, but this reminds me of a writing exercise I saw once given to 8-year-olds in a national test that we have here. The children were asked to write about the journey of a coin. We were not allowed to correct their work, that all had to be done by external assessors, but we could read it, and it was amazing how these little kids showed their life circumstances and their experiences in this simple exercise. It was a window onto different social worlds. Even whether the coin was given, earned, found or stolen told something about how they thought about things.
This box, of course, is different, being so cunningly constructed. But it is likewise impenetrable, it is desired, it is amoral and there is always the fear of losing it. It is what humans do with it and how they behave when they have it that can be revealed.
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This sounds very intriguing but I can’t see why it might be a difficult read. I like the idea of a non-traditional narrative though, like Lisa, my first thought was that this was a writing experiment spun out into a book. It sounds like it works. Sometimes it’s better if a book isn’t too neat.
Lovely review.
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I see the book as a novel of ideas framed within this disjointed series of dystopic narratives. As such it resists the reader’s easy engagement. One has to make this work a “novel” that works for you which will delight some readers and alienate others.
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This sounds intriguing. in the right mood, I think I would love it. Especially if, as you’ve said, one needn’t necessarily recognise the allusions made. (It also brings to mind my favourite episode of The Twilight Zone, except I think, now, that might have been more about the button ON the box than the box itself.)
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