Game of Thrones 1x04 - Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things

Daenerys: I am a Khaleesi of the Dothraki. I am the wife of the great Kahl and I carry his son inside me. The next time you raise a hand to me will be the last time you have hands.

Four weeks in, and I've missed two episodes. 50/50 isn't nearly as bad as it could be, right?

Spoilers for the latest "Game of Thrones" after the cut...

Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman

"The peculiar striations that define someone's personality are too numerous to know, no matter how close the observer. A person we think we know can suddenly become someone else when previously hidden strands of his character are called to the fore by circumstance." 

The problem with a book that has ‘ambiguity’ in its name (or worse, that claims ambiguity as a theme) is that it can get away with anything. “But you’re not supposed to get it. It’s ambiguous. Like in the title. Pay attention, dumb ass.” This makes Elliot Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity problematic, because as interesting and creative as it can be, it can also lose itself in its own gimmick. 

 The plot of the book is simple. One day, a man (Simon) picks up an ex girlfriend (Anna)’s son (Sam) from school without her permission, gives him a glass of chocolate milk, and gets arrested. From that starting point Perlman creates a six-hundred page unconventional mystery. Not that we’re ever wondering ‘who done it’ as the story progresses. Instead, we have to speculate on  how characters react, how situations unfold, and what motivates the people moving the story forward. This is complicated by the division of the book into seven sections, each with a unique narrator who illuminates the developing story of the novel in unexpected ways. We often backtrack through the story, frequently take unexpected turns, and sometimes enter an entirely new structure of text, all the while making our way through the series of consequences that come about for a multitude of people when a man makes a stupid decision out of desperation.