Author Muriel Barbery combines a light touch with deep, enigmatic insights to propel a profound and moving story in One Hour of Fervor. It’s superb, another bravura performance from the novelist who enriched all our lives with The Elegance of the Hedgehog. She sets Fervor in Kyoto, a calm and beautiful city (in which Barbery has a residence), and the culture of this setting affects everything. It strips conversation and action to their essences, with the result that much philosophy and mysticism shine through.
Deep in his core, protagonist Haru is a merchant. But his poet friend passes judgment: he says that for a dumbass from the mountains, Haru has superior taste and a sensitive soul, and because of these virtues, he will be a success. And succeed he does. He nurtures young artists and helps them to material success, and his talent for grace, or its material form, beauty, thrusts him to the top of Kyoto’s art world, and his fame spreads to Tokyo, and national recognition.
But at the center of Haru’s life and success lies a paradox. He will always fail at romantic love, but be a master of friendship. Indeed his friends are steadfast throughout the novel, just as his love life is a series of uncommitted relationships. One of these dalliances, with a French woman, is a pivotal moment, with repercussions that will last all his life.
The spare plot revolves around life-and-death moments, but is rendered cheerfully, and is leavened by frequent citations of Shinto and Buddhist principles, complete with their practical application to the lives of the characters. The entire book comes to us through Alison Anderson’s excellent translation, as low-key, oblique, and tinged with kindness and politesse.
Kindness and politesse graces the emotions and statements — or silences — of the players, and it never stints. It works for the reader, and it works for the characters. One Hour of Fervor stands, and will stand, as a genteel exemplar of right feeling, right thought, and right action. And Barbery’s benign diction shares with the diegesis this refined, almost rarified level of discourse.
This is a gem, a diverting piece of sophisticated storytelling, with memorable characters facing the best and worst that life can dish out. Its even keel feels like a miracle, and it keeps the characters, all of them, safely on board and at least pushing their lives in the right direction.
Again, I need to honor translator Alison Anderson, whose partnership with this author goes back some years. She also translated my only prior experience with Barbery: 2008’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and I will confess that my enthrallment with that novel led to my concern that Fervor would suffer by comparison. But no. This novel confirms for me Berbery’s mastery of plot, character, theme, image, mood, and structure. Not to mention tone, pacing, and wisdom. I’m urging you to take it up!
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