Sajf
by Ryan Falzon
published by Kotba Calleja
Ryan Falzon’s Sajf, published in 2022 by Kotba Calleja, weaves a tale of an aimless Maltese summer through which an unnamed and uncertain narrator drifts in search of love, filling empty time.
The language of Falzon’s novel is fresh, real and at times beautiful, and it develops a punchy, familiar dialect. It is filled with snippets and fragments of working-class life that invoke intimations of a different Malta, soaked in nostalgia and the innocence of times-gone-by.
It is also relatable and relevant as it crystallises the malaises of the millennial generation, who are now on the cusp of adulthood, and are also the primary readership (I suspect) of Falzon’s book.
The feeling of stagnant summer doldrums, filled with aimless online scrolling, will be familiar to every man and woman who grew up in the late 1990s/early 2000s.
In fact, what the book does excellently is place the reader in the mind of a tired and jaded young man in his late 20s/early 30s surviving contemporary Malta.
There are, however, a few critical flaws which left me feeling that this book is problematic, to the extent that I remain uncertain about its aim.
One of the first issues is that the novel fails to develop any second order insight into the main character, except for a single resounding message of tiredness, cynicism, irony and anomie, and as a result, women in the narrative are portrayed as two-dimensional beings, constructed only to be captured and had as objects for entertainment: “[i]kraħ is-sajf bla mara. Is-sajf staġun tal-laħam. Meta t-Tinder jieqaf idawwar u l-Instagram ixennaq biss, tispiċċa tikkumiedja.”
In addition, the attempt to develop a trope via the relationship between the narrator’s turbulent love life and the cars/plants he is tinkering with falls flat and comes off as stilted and old fashioned at best, sexist and patriarchal at worst: “[i]n-nisa bħall-bżar, kif tarahom jeċitaw ruħom fuqek trid taqta’ l-ewwel fjura, ħa ġġenninhom, jirvillaw u jibdew joħorġu l-fjuri minn kullumkien. Attitudni tal-macho u l-magazine tal-Playboy li nobgħod – għalkemm kultant tkun tar-rispett ma jwassal għal imkien.”
The reason for this failure is that aside from the repeated juxtapositions, which reappear throughout the book, there is nothing which provides the clarity or context needed to elevate the comparisons into moments of insight: “Sarah tgħidli li għandi nirreferi għall-karozza bħala mara, dejjem. Ngħidilha li l-BMW raġel meta jkun qed ileqq fix-xemx f’parking ta’ karozzi ġeneriċi jippoppa sidru, u mara meta jkun taħti bil-pedala tal-gass s’isfel bil-magna tingħi għal iżjed, għax tiflaħ is-swat.”
In other words, comparisons such as the above remain at the level of simple substitution – reducing one thing to the other, object to object – and the fact that the book is illustrating a prevalent reality is not enough to redeem a writing that does not evidence self-awareness, humour or any other form of acknowledgement.
There were, however, fragments which gave me pause, such as:
Għalijja l-poeżija qiegħda f’ħamallu ma tafux jibgħatlek il-bews fil-messaġġi għax begħtlu żewġ fanali oriġinali fi stat tajjeb.
Poeżija qiegħda f’dilettant li kważi jaqbiżlu d-dmugħ għax l-isprayer ma lestilux meta ftiehmu.
Il-poeżija magna tixgħela wara xhur tarmaha u tixgħel wara dawra waħda ċavetta, tħossok qisek qed tmiss mara għall-ewwel darba l-park ta’ Paceville.
This book falls prey to the malaise that infects its main character – lack of vision
Another such moment is the following:
Naqtgħalha xewqitha waqt li hi tmiss lilha nnfisha, u tispiċċa kważi fl-istess ħin miegħi.
Is-sajjetti u l-beraq jidwu fuq il-baħar.
Speed camera tfaqqa’ waħda f’waħda.
Dawl tal-bright jgħammex [...]
In the first fragment, there is an intimation of an alternative world view, and in the second there is a moment of silence and beauty, a flash, at the moment of orgasm, which sets up a tension, depth and hauntedness which could be a window into psychological insight, as well as a beginning point for a deepening of the car-relationship trope.
There are also a few scattered moments of vulnerability, that introduce a measure of tenderness and uncertainty, which impart an occasional three-dimensionality to the main character: “[i]bgħatli x’ħin tasal. Nieħu gost inkun miegħek, lilek kollox ngħidlek.”
However, this type of writing is not sustained over the course of the novel and, in fact, I would venture to say that the rest of the book contradicts these moments, which are few and far between, and the jaded perspective obliterates any glimmer of a world view that sees beauty within small moments of the daily mundane.
The cynical tone overwhelms intimations of vulnerability, and I was left with nothing aside from the feeling that I was looking out through the eyes of a damaged man who is typical of everything that is wrong with the island.
The writing fails to develop any penetrative criticality via structural methods (language, book structure, metaphorology, etc.), and so the book moves forward swiftly, but everything else remains as it is.
Perhaps this is the point, but if so, the message is overlaboured, and Sajf could have been one third its nearly 300-page length.
Sajf ends with the narrator giving up on his efforts to restore his cars and deciding to sell them off instead.
The book has a narrative, but it is primarily an exercise in portraiture. Intrinsically, this is not an issue. The subject depicted is also jaded and without hope.
Again, this is not an issue, perhaps even cruelly relatable and interesting. The failure to either redeem, condemn or introduce a measure of self-awareness to this portrait of pathos, however, is where the book twists and tangles into itself and becomes problematic.
The deepest issue is that this character type is lionised and romanticised. It seems that the author hopes for the reader’s sympathy, empathy and perhaps even admiration (in an interview with LovinMalta, Falzon describes his narrator as “a likeable narrator who is confident in himself but uncertain at various points in the story” [my emphasis]).
In a country awash with mediocrity and an island where corruption has been internalised, if you are an artist dealing with the source of this mediocracy – and let us not fool ourselves, this is a book about contemporary Maltese identity and the troubling lack of sociocultural mores – anything less than self-awareness is doomed to feed into the same system.
Positionality must be acknowledged. Who is doing the saying changes what is said.
Falzon has a strong voice within the Maltese cultural scene, and Sajf is written in good faith, I have no doubt, but the redeeming ingredients are not embedded into the novel, and this book falls prey to the malaise that infects his main character – lack of vision.