Mr Vertigo

Synopsis: The story of Walt, an irrepressible orphan from the Mid-West. Under the tutelage of the mesmerising Master Yehudi, Walt is taken back to the mysterious house on the plains to prepare not only for the ability to fly, but also for the stardom that will accompany it.

Review: I got a bit annoyed with this book, it was well on it's way to a 10/10 but halfway through it went off the boil a bit and lost a lot of it's early impetus. It did pick up again but I just felt frustrated that a book with so much spark and imagination could wander off like that.

It has a great cast of characters, especially early on. Walt is a bit of a rascal, a Huck Finn character, he's been sold by his uncle to Master Yehudi, he doesn't know why, all he knows is that Master Yehudi says he has 'the gift'. Master Yehudi takes Walt to Kansas .. 'and a flatter more desolate place you've never seen in your life ... there's nothing to tell you where you are. No mountains, no trees, no bumps in the road. It's flat as death out here, and once you've been around for a while, you'll understand there's nowhere to go but up.' Walt finds it all very strange 'if someone had told me I'd just entered the Land of Oz, I don't think I would have known the difference.' The other inmates of the house are Mother Sue (the Queen of the Gypsies with no more than three teeth jutting from her gums) and Aesop (a frail, scrawny black boy who is learning to be a scholar.) Though the conditions aren't bad and he isn't being treated cruelly, Walt is a city boy at heart and his first thought is to run away, he tries it several times but however far he goes and however secretly, Master Yehudi is always waiting for him at the other end to bring him home again.

Master Yehudi's plan is to teach Walt to fly like a bird and what's more he promises Walt that if he can't fly by his next birthday, then he can chop off Mr Yehudi's head with an axe. But first he must learn the technique and the technique doesn't involve any of the things you might imagine, no jumping from great heights, no flapping of arms, no trampolining, but sheer physical endurance of a terrifying nature (or an 'unremitting avalanche of wrongs' as Walt puts it) almost as if Walt's spirit needs to be broken before change can happen (a theory inspired by Master Yehudi's love of Spinoza,) the fact that we're taught to think a thing impossible means that we will never achieve it, hence why Walt is chosen because intellectually he's a bit of a blank page. He is flogged with a bullwhip, thrown from a galloping horse, lashed to the roof of a barn for two days without food or water, he has his skin smeared with honey in the midst of a swarm of flies and wasps, he sits in a circle of fire, is dunked for six hours in a vat of vinegar, drinks cow p*ss, eats horse sh*t, is buried alive, cuts the tip off of his own finger (you're getting the picture right? ... life isn't a bowl of cherries) and eventually, after some time has passed, Walt finds himself levitating - only a few inches at first but gradually more and more.

To say what happens next would be giving too much of the plot away, suffice it to say that though fame and fortune are awaiting them, tragedy and disappointment are too and Walt has a very bumpy ride ahead of him. On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed it, of course the whole thing requires an awful lot of suspended disbelief but that wasn't a problem at all, my only gripe with it was that it didn't sustain it's absolutely electric beginning but I still thought it was a fantastic piece of storytelling.