The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred by Carl-Johan Vallgren (2005)

Whew, what a title! This is one more of my Swedish books picked up at the Stockholm airport. First published in 2002, translated by Paul and Veronica Britten-Austin. The title actually does describe the wild ride through the life of Hercules Barefoot. On the back of the book, the quotes from various news sources are apt. The Guardian called this book "a picaresque, grotesque and magical novel." (OK, I had to look up picaresque, as I thought it was "picturesque" at first. From the Wikipedia: "a subgenre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society.")

One one level it was my favorite historical fiction, depicting Europe in the early 19th century - starting with the births of Hercules,a highly deformed deaf-mute who can read and speak to people's minds, and the love of his life Henriette, in a brothel. We see details of life in a brothel, traveling freak show, monastery, asylum. These worlds are depicted in all their darkness of ignorance and intolerance and abuse of fellow humans. There were times when the story got so grotesque, I didn't want to read further - or, since I was actually reading the book and not listening to it, I could sort of skim more quickly through the unpleasant parts. When Hercules gets really mad about all the tortures of himself and deaths of those close to him, he goes on a mental rampage that was hard to read, but luckily, he pulls out of it in the end - because of love.

I was fascinated by a few of the descriptions - for instance, the church had a library of forbidden books where you would have to wait months for permission to enter, fill out lots of bureaucratic forms and have your background checked. (p.100) Sounds like the Soviet era Special Funds of forbidden books in the Communist times.

Now Hercules was deaf and dumb, but could communicated by reading minds and projecting into other's minds. He had stubs for arms, but his feet were very dexterous and he could play an organ. (This explanation was a bit fuzzy on how his deafness worked with music.) He eventually learned sign language and moved to Martha's Vineyard, where there really was a historic deaf community.

I flagged another part of the book, where one of the priests goes into a riff about what is evil. That has been one of my own spiritual questions, and though I didn't get any satisfying answers from this character, I was still glad it was addressed. This was just one of the philosophical discussions embedded in the book. I checked the author out in our library's Contemporary Authors database and got this insight: "In an interview with Sean Merrigan for Spoiled Ink, when asked about the nature of Barfuss's gift in terms of narration versus philosophy, the author remarked: "When I started out the novel it was a narrative ploy: what could I do with it, how far could I take it? But after a while all these other questions arose, questions about language, mind and perception..." I tried to get to the Spoiled Ink site itself, but the link didn't work.