The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel

A man thrown backwards by heartbreak goes in search of an artefact that could unsettle history. A woman carries her husband to a doctor in a suitcase. A Canadian senator begins a new life in a new country, in the company of a chimp called Odo. From these stories of journeying, of loss and faith, Yann Martel weaves a novel unlike any other: moving, profound and magical.

This book is made up of three stories which are seemingly entirely separate to each other but transpire to be loosely linked by Tomás, who features in the first story.

Tomás lives in Lisbon in the early 1900s and works in the National Museum of Ancient Art. During the course of his work, Tomás finds an old diary kept by a minister working in São Tomé and Principe, a Portuguese colony and a hub of the slave trade. The minister writes of a distinctive crucifix that was given to a church in a small village in Portugal. Meanwhile, Tomás experiences tragedy in his family and decides that he needs to escape. He borrows a car and drives away into rural Portugal in search of the crucifix.

The other two stories in the book are set in the 1930s and 1980s respectively. The connections between the three stories become clear in unexpected ways.

The High Mountains of Portugal is measured, unhurried and contemplative. The momentum of the story is paused at times whilst the characters consider various philosophical conundrums and the interaction between religion and science, which are key themes running through the book.

The book’s structure is interesting. It is not really a novel as the three stories are so separate. The beginning of each of the new stories feels like beginning a new book. However, the connections between the stories are clever and they show how small gestures or observations can shape the future in much more significant ways than seem likely or possible at the time.

Some aspects of the plot remain unresolved – it is not a neat and tidy book but I took this to be a more realistic representation of life, which is not neat and tidy either.