Nalda Said

by Stuart David

(Turtle Point Press) $14.95

Stuart David's first novel is a glaring exception to the rule of rock stars as one-dimensional, overrated, no-talent hacks (or is that just my rule?). The former bass player and lyricist for the Glaswegian group Belle and Sebastian, and founder of the experimental group Looper, breaks the mold and delivers a debut novel that is, much like his music, both sadly reclusive and beautifully poppy at the same time.

The story centers on the anonymous son of a jewel thief, raised by his Aunt Nalda, who convinces the boy that in his belly rests a hidden jewel. Raised in a caravan (read: trailer park) and forced to do yard work at an early age, the kid grows up to be... well, strange.

Aunt Nalda soon bites the big one, and the little bastard is so crippled by his fear of society (loosely based on similar fears held by John Lennon) that he ignores it altogether. He makes his living by gardening, but because of his paranoia, is frequently forced to move. The transient's only hope is that someday he will take a steaming rich dump--literally. Having taken his dead aunt's words about the diamond in his guts for the truth, he spends a great deal of time searching his own shit for the priceless treasure.

An uneducated drifter who generally finds lodging in shady, Unabomber-style shacks, fumbles through basic human interactions, and drifts freely between his demented fairyland and his equally demented reality, our hero somehow miraculously befriends a nurse, who gains his trust and learns his secret: his rather unbecoming habit of shifting through his own excrement in search of the truth. Unfortunately for him (but fortunately for the reader), she isn't demented. She of course realizes his aunt was speaking in metaphors, and insists on an x-ray. But what you expect to happen doesn't, and that's when you realize just how true-to-life the story actually is.

A magical tale about a narcissistic loner who appears to find love, the book looks like any other American fairy tale. But Stuart David is Scottish, and the Scots don't write fairy tales. Instead, what we are given is a disturbingly realistic depiction of solitude, and with it, the sad reality of how easily our inhibitions can lay waste to our lives.