Reinhardt's Garden

REINHARDT’S GARDEN

by Mark Haber

 

Nomination: PEN/Hemingway Longlist 2020

 

Date Read: February 10, 2022

 

Reinhardt’s Garden began dubiously, with me thinking this was a pseudo-intellectual novel exploring the intricacies and nuances of melancholy. I was immediately turned off. But as I kept reading, I realized how hilarious this novel was with a tongue-in-cheek attitude about a pursuit to locate his hero Emiliano Gomez Carrasquilla, who is rumored to be hiding out in the jungles of Uruguay. Of course, this quest is more about the journey than the actual destination.

 

Jacov Reinhardt, fortified with an endless fortune from Reinhardt Tobacco money and copious quantities of cocaine, has claimed a treatise on melancholy as his life’s work. In tow on this quest is Jacov’s adoring protégé, whose name we never learn. This protégé transcribes all of Jacov’s cocaine-addled admissions, opinions and acts in a serious and non-judgmental way, regardless of how bizarre. 

 

Jacov is a fantastic literary character, wealthy, eccentric, drug-addicted and ultimately bored. He opines that “…most elusive of emotions: melancholy, not a feeling but a mood, not a color but a shade… an enigmatic realm.” The line between serious intellectual pursuit and a drug-induced lark is completely blurred, making for great fun page after page. Both serious and absurd, honest yet delusional – Jacov and his hapless narrator never fail to entertain.

 

What I eventually realized some pages in is this is a comedy. Whether that was Haber’s intention or not is unclear to me but the passages on dust and their relevance to melancholy, the one-legged hooker who takes care of Jacov’s castle in Stuttgart and is in charge of the dust to his departure from Montevideo which is “not a retreat” but a search for medicine and more cocaine! Jacov is clearly a crackpot, but a loveable and harmless one at that. 

 

For Haber’s first novel, this is an impressive accomplishment.

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