For Isabel: A Mandala

Thank you Net Galley. Another wonderful story from Antonio Tabucchi. The title captures the nature of the story well. The search is not just for Isabel but for self. Beautiful and lyrical, this is a book to read again. Superb.

This book takes place in Lisbon. It is not just a search for Isabel, but a search for oneself as well. I loved the concept
of a Mandala and found it interesting. I would read this book again.

Who is Isabel, where is she, what happened to her so many years ago in a Lisbon that was still under the iron fist of the dictatorship? And furthermore, who is this mysterious man that keeps circling this mandala made of concentric figures in order to get closer to her and unravel the past?

When the book came up for grabs on Netgalley I jumped for the opportunity because, as a Portuguese born in Lisbon, I always like to know how other people perceive my country, my city and my history. Of course, Antonio Tabucchi is no stranger to either of these things, and often uses them as the background of his books, but being this my first read by this author I was curious all the same.

Funny enough, this was his last book, and in it the author duels on things like mortality, the closeness to the ones that have left, the search for the things left unsettled in our past.

I really liked it, and even tough it is prose, it feels like a poem, and it mixes a real story with some mysticism. Not for those who live their lives surrounded only by hard facts, recommended to all the dreamers.

A mandala, a colourful circular design, represents unity, the idea that life is never-ending. Definitions include the idea that a mandala reinforces one’s relationship to infinity, and can also symbolise a journey through life. Taking these definitions, Antonio Tabucchi’s novel: For Isabel: A Mandala is the narrator’s search for a woman he knew long ago.

For Isabel

Tadeus, a writer over age 50, says he’s travelled to Lisbon to search for Isabel, a woman from his past. While he’s driven by “private obsessions, personal regrets eroded but not transformed by time, like pebbles smoothed down by the current of the river,” we never quite know what his relationship was with Isabel–although there’s a clue early on. As he seeks the truth, he instead finds conflicting stories about Isabel. The book presents nine interview-style chapters, called “circles,” as various people give their stories of Isabel, or their version of events. Those who offer Tadeus information include Mónica, a school friend of Isabel, Isabel’s old nurse, Beatriz Teixeira, a photographer, a female saxophonist, a prison guard named Uncle Tom, and a dying poet called “The Ghost Who Walks.”

Over the course of Tadeus’s journey, he discovers that Isabel, who “came from an old Portuguese family that had nothing to do with Salazarism, a family in decline,” was radicalized in university. Mónica claims that Isabel had a great love affair that “was the ruin of her,” and that she was mixed up in triangular affair with a Spaniard and a Polish writer (possibly the narrator?). While Mónica says that Isabel, who lived an “underground existence,” hiding from the secret police, was pregnant and subsequently died, Isabel’s old nanny thinks she is still alive. ..

In this esoteric mystery, while the big question seems to be: will Tadeus find Isabel, other questions emerge. Narrative strands offer multiple versions of Isabel and her life. What is the truth? The narrator sets out on a journey to find Isabel, but in the end, while the journey, which becomes increasingly surreal, involves travel, it’s essentially a spiritual journey towards a central truth.

Tadeus’s search for Isabel is complicated by the fact that she became a communist and was hunted by the secret police. Was she “disappeared” while incarcerated? Now the political times have changed, but Tadeus still has to find and question former subversives who are suspicious of his motives. In the “fifth circle,” for example, Tadeus questions a photographer named Tiago who asks Tadeus what he hopes to achieve in trying to discover what happened to Isabel:

I’m working with colored dust, I answered, a yellow ring, a blue ring, like the Tibetan practice, and meanwhile, the circle is tightening toward the center, and I’m trying to reach that center,

To what end? he asked. I lit a cigarette as well. It’s simple I answered, to reach consciousness, you photograph reality: you must know what consciousness is.

The photographer doesn’t answer directly, but instead shuffles around some photos. Then he has an enigmatic reply:

Do the photographs of a lifetime represent time divided among several people or one person divided into different times?

It takes a while to ‘break into’ this thoughtful, dreamlike novel, but I found myself being submerged by its elusive mystery. The conclusion is stunning, brilliant and well worth the read.

Translated by Elizabeth Harris

Tadeus Slowacki, a writer, goes to Lisbon searching for a girl he once knew. But his search for her whereabouts and the truth of what really happened to her is far from straightforward as he sets about following the trail of breadcrumbs populated by people who also once knew her.
A mandala is a ritual symbol used as a focus of meditation. In this case the mandala consists of nine circles set one inside the other as Tadeus meets the different people who have one way or another been involved with Isabel’s life.
With its quiet ways and careful observations of the minutiae of people and life, the novel is indeed a meditation as Tadeus contemplates his past and interviews of the people in each circle. This is a subtle book which appears, like Isabel’s life, to be a series of episodes simply narrated by Tadeus. Yet Antonio Tabucchi, holds the reader between a state of tension and anticipation of the outcome of each interview and thoughtful contemplation of Tadeus’s experiences.
For Isabel: A Mandala is an ethereal book because not only does Isabel prove elusive, but Tadeus himself is far from substantial. At one point a photographer takes a picture of Tadeus holding a photograph of Isabel, but only the photograph of Isabel can be seen in the photographer’s polaroid.
This is a book to be read more than once to squeeze everything out of it, and a valuable reference for a writer with regards to how to tell an effective and affecting story without embellishment.
Mention also should go to Elizabeth Harris’s smooth translation which manages to bring out the quality of Tabucchi’s writing.