Your reaction to the following lines in The Book of Elsewhereâwhich is about an unkillable warrior working with the American military-industrial-scientific complex in an attempt to discover whether he can die or at least achieve mortalityâwill be a decent gauge for how much of the book you can accept.
And what you see in the pigâs eyes you have never seen there before. Disdain.
It turns and walks away.
Pig, you say. Hey pig.
The pig is being addressed âHey pig,â by Unute, a.k.a. B (as he is known by his American military handlers), the aforementioned immortal warrior. Turns out the pig is immortal as well, and over the millenniaânearly 80,000 years of human existence, in various forms and stagesâthe pig has tried to kill Unute over and over. The pig and the man exist in tandem, drawn to each other, two of a kind but not quite unique. The Book of Elsewhere traces their relationship, such as it is, at least in the sense that their two endless lives are the only constants over the dozens of millennia through which they exist.
The Book of Elsewhere is adapted from, or possibly a companion to, the comic book Brzrkr. It was written by Keanu Reeves and Matt Kindt and drawn by Ron Garney, and it is what youâd imagine a comic book version of a story about a deathless, ageless warrior now working for the U.S. military might look like: lots of big, splashy images of bloody violence, some set now, some set in the village of Unuteâs youth, drawn in a blocky, chaotic style suggesting kinetic action. I donât think it quite works as anything other than a storyboard for a potential cinematic adaptation by Reeves since the character of Unuteâwith his world-weariness and shoulder-length black hairâis clearly modeled on the actor. I didnât make it past the first four issues.
The novel, however, has a surprising depth of feeling to it. Reevesâs coauthor on the book, China MiĂ©ville, hops through the centuries with ease and brings us inside the head of Unute while largely eschewing the action and the violence that takes up so much space in your average issue of a superhero comic. The book opens with a shocking act of self-destruction, as one of Unuteâs fellow warriors detonates a suicide bomb in his presence filled with charmsâcrucifixes, garlic, that sort of thingâin the hopes of ending his permalife. It doesnât work, obviously, but you come to understand why this former colleague would do what he does: When Unute goes into battle, he enters a sort of lightning-eyed fugue state, killing anyone and anything in his path, friend or foe alike. This has led, with some jarring regularity, to his fellow soldiers falling victim to Unuteâs âfriendly fire.â
A preoccupation with death hangs over the book: the death Unute delivers, of course, but also Unuteâs own inability to die, his own inability to understand what his life means if it cannot end. When badly enough injured, his body shuts down and regenerates from a fleshy egg, but these petites mortes are little more than a pitstop for him. He doesnât want to die, precisely, just to know that he can. For something new, after all these centuries of sameness: âDeath not as destination but as horizon. Not death up close. His desire not for the end but to continue not-ending in a quite new way. In the shadow of lifeâs culminating end.â
Reading The Book of Elsewhere, I could see why British sci-fi/fantasy novelist MiĂ©ville has won a pair of Arthur C. Clarke awards; his short story collection, Looking for Jake, demonstrates why he was the perfect fit for this eons-spanning novel. In that collection, MiĂ©ville hops through eras and through genres, generally landing on a protagonist who isnât entirely sure how he found himself in a situation or where his friends have got off to. Thereâs a sense of mystery running throughout stories like âLooking for Jakeâ (in which London has been infested by some sort of vampiric foe and whole sections of the city are disappearing) or âDifferent Skiesâ (in which a pensioner installs a vintage pane of glass that provides a glimpse into some other, terrifying place and time). Running throughout is the theme of a civilization thatâs gone off course and, somehow, has become unmoored.
Thereâs a similar sense of mystery here, as Reeves and MiĂ©ville arenât really aiming to answer questions so much as ponder obscurities. The Book of Elsewhere alternates between the presentâin which Unute attempts to understand what is hunting him and his pig friend and whyâand flashes to his past. He travels through worlds of Conan-like barbarity, takes passage on ships that call to mind Bram Stokerâs Demeter, sits down for a chat with a man we are led to believe is Sigmund Freud, and dies continuous centuries of torturous little deaths at the hands of a fellow god-like being. Through it all, it feels as though Unute is searching for death less than something new, something different, something surprising.
Itâs almost impossible to read the book without imagining Reeves in the title role, which in turn helps render a bit more believable the number of tired-sounding âfucksâ this immortal creature utters. A sort of existential weariness has long been a key tool in Reevesâs box, from Neo in The Matrix to John Wick back to his work as Buddha for Bernardo Bertolucci. One can imagine him sliding perfectly into the role of Unute, who kills not quite out of boredom but not far off either. Itâs something to do, at least.
The Book of Elsewhere is a little odd and occasionally frustrating, particularly if youâre the sort of person who needs clear answers to the mysteries presented by worlds of literary fantasy. But I found it captivating and can imagine it serving as a fine vehicle for Reevesâs talents.
The Book of Elsewhere: A Novel
by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville
Del Ray, 352 pp., $30
Sonny Bunch is culture editor of the Bulwark, where he hosts the podcasts Across the Movie Aisle and The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood.
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