[In the following review of Self, Hamelin asserts that Martel's narrative combines good storytelling with a genuinely experimental approach, but that the book has a tendency to keep the reader at a distance.]

Self is a Künstlerroman—an artist's novel—whose challenging of conventions generates much vitality. Although it is a fictional autobiography, its unnamed protagonist is, like the author, a writer in his early 30s with diplomat parents. Yet Yann Martel would likely disapprove of any quibbling about genre: Self embraces diversity, shattering all categories.

As a child, the protagonist absorbs the world with openness: “I treated the vacuum cleaner—a distant cousin of the elephant—and the washing machine—a relative of the racoon—with the greatest respect.” Sensitive and intelligent like St-Exupery's Petit Prince, he expounds complex theories about the universe.

Shocked to learn that there are only two genders, and “grief-stricken” that he cannot marry his playmate, he becomes aware of social categories. He must grasp that in French, all things are gendered: trees and wind are masculine, flowers and machines feminine. Throughout the novel, various languages are juxtaposed, reflecting Martel's pluralism.

The evocative descriptions of childhood showcase Martel's original, elegant style. A new tone emerges when, at age seven, the boy sees a large sea turtle that was overturned and left to die. Henceforth his world-view is tainted by an awareness of nihilism.

The adolescent years of the speaker, who struggles at an Ontario boarding school, are also poignantly described, though his preoccupation with acne and masturbation is occasionally overwhelming. The boy's tragic loss of his parents engenders a life-long quest: he seeks connection with the world, a connection that had seemed natural in childhood, before he recognized the inevitable separation between Self and Other.

At 18, he wakes up one morning and discovers he is a woman. At the novel's close, the speaker re-becomes a man. These spontaneous gender changes represent psychological fluidity and show that gender, like language, is an external form that need not determine identity. In keeping with current theories, Martel suggests that identity is a self-made construct. Remarkably, because the speaker's voice remains constant, the inexplicable gender changes seem plausible.

The speaker travels through Europe exploring her sexuality and then enrols at a small Ontario university, where she begins a novel. Regardless of whether she is capturing a moment through writing or experiencing sexual intimacy, she always seeks profound connection with otherness.

In his innocence, the boy, who always checked the strainer for “bereft” noodles and ate them tenderly, developed an elaborate theory: watching television, he saw an enlarged eye, and then a shot of silvery darting fish. He concluded that fish live in our eyes, determining their colour, and feed on our love. In moments of love, fish rise to the surface and are visible. He/she carries this theory forever, a Wordsworthian spot of time posited against the fragmented adult world.

Martel enjoys writing about sex and does so convincingly. Yet the speaker usually has sex hoping to find “fishy” eyes. The various partners—as a man and a woman, the speaker has encounters with both genders—are unable to provide true union. One speaks a foreign language, one wants only friendship, one already has a family and one insists on a clandestine relationship.

Attempts to connect through writing are also largely fruitless. She constructs her novel by covering her walls with index cards containing ideas, reminders, words, themes. The project aborts because there is no unifying whole. However, after spending years in the self, in loneliness, she meets Tito and, with him, creates a home in Montreal. She finally achieves the connection she had sought since her parents' death, or perhaps since seeing the violated turtle. The two travel together; she begins a new novel and becomes pregnant.

A violent rape shatters her world, suggesting the necessary impermanence of happiness. Yet the scene is not sufficiently affecting. Although the speaker's experiences since birth, from his first “caca” to his first lover, from her first menstruation to her first novel, have been shared, the reader is held at bay, appreciating Martel's magnificent creation rather than empathizing fully with the speaker. Perhaps to write about such personal matters, such a private world, Martel had to impose some distance, and that distance is felt by the reader.

A thorough investigation of subjectivity inevitably leads to a certain self-centredness. Martel's sometimes flippant tone and the rather superior air of his protagonist occasionally threaten to override the energy of his writing.

Self is a moving, entertaining novel about a Petit Prince, an open-minded quester in a fragmented, overly organized world. An intelligent, culturally rich work, it combines good story-telling with a genuinely experimental approach. Martel, already lauded for his short stories, has written an energetic novel that in no way reads like a first attempt.