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这篇书评很难写，一是因为时间太久了，当初有太多的想法，现在忘记了大半，不知从何写起。
作为一个极少关注悬疑小说侦探小说的读者（我的兴趣一向都在历史小说和奇幻小说上），从情节设计的角度来写书评肯定是再外行不过，会让大家笑掉大牙。
作为一个以《荆棘鸟》的译者为终身榜样的小翻译，从语言和翻译的角度来写书评会像写论文一样无聊，何况我已经把它写进了毕业论文，不想重复做功。
想来想去，我只能从喜欢的方面和不喜欢的方面来评评这个故事。
Think of a Number的最大优点是精雕细琢的语言，这一点我个人认为在现代欧美文学中已经不常见了。作者为读者描述了美国东北部山区的景色，那种简约却厚重的美，美得让人屏息静气；作者为读者描述了主人公内心的所感所想，真实得句句都触动着读者的心；作者还在文字间插述了一些犯罪心理学的内容，将故事深入到人文关怀的层面上。如果从认知的角度来看，文学语言的作用即是将作者的所见所感诉诸于刻意挑选的文字，让读者阅读后见作者所见，感作者所感。这一点，John Verdon很成功。刚开始阅读时，我对作者是一万分的惋惜——他有高超的语言驾驭能力，还有对社会对人类的深刻思考，为什么偏偏要拿如此俗不可耐的题材创作！（实在抱谦，我对此类小说抱有不可饶恕的偏见）
第二个优点是对人物的塑造。有点儿狄更斯化，但不得不承认，几个性格迥异、矛盾突出的人物放在一起，非常极其已经特别的有喜感。只有格尼、玛德琳、克拉姆、纳多看着还算正常，剩下的人物中，警监和“克鲁斯”兄弟太愚蠢，思拉舍和哈德威克玩世不恭，梅勒瑞太虚假，霍尔登菲尔德太高傲，克兰则是个典型的政客。既然我没有把本书划入严肃的经典文学队列中，多些有喜感的人物我毫不介意，反而认为是突出的优点。
第三个优点就是故事中铺设得恰到好处的悬疑了。不过，鉴于我是那种从不介意别人剧透、自己还经常给自己剧透的人，长久以来我已经对各种小说中的悬念没有了感觉，好的悬念不会让我手不释卷挑灯夜读，坏的悬念如果书中的其他方面有优点我也不会觉得读来味同嚼蜡。说了这么多废话，我只是想表达这第三个优点可能在许多人看来根本不是优点，因为我在这方面已经没有了判断力。
说完了优点，也要说说缺点。
有个地方我一直认为有破绽。就是鞋底调过来的那段，人的鞋底又不是前后长得一样，一般都是前头比较宽，后头比较窄，如果真是从另一双鞋上剪下的鞋底倒过来贴在原来那双鞋的鞋底上，窄的那头就变宽了，宽的那头会覆盖不住，应该能在雪地上留下印记才对，为啥情节里没提这个细节？难道这个牌子的雪地靴鞋底前后长得一个样？
再有就是，其实情节稍微有点儿俗……尤其是结尾，心理变态的坏蛋要死翘翘，英雄则胜利归来，从此对人生和近在咫尺的幸福更加珍惜，blah, blah, blah……
剩下几个缺点并非针对作者，而是针对翻译。
首先是诗歌翻译得非常极其以及特别的烂。不知是不是受过刺激，我小时候特别不喜欢诗歌，老师讲诗歌，我就左耳朵进右耳朵出，课下向来只看小说，对诗歌从不关注。直到念大学的时候才知道诗歌的奥妙，可惜因为专业的原因，只懂了英语诗歌的那些事儿，对汉语诗歌的平仄对仗韵脚还只停留在高中那会儿涂鸦般对付作业时写的几幅对联上。于是，整本书中不超过十首的小诗轻而易举地就让我杯了具——等我发现需要恶补汉语诗创作技巧的时候，时间已经不允许了：我要同时对付老师指派的presentations、周末往返三个小时回家、还要保证每天两千英文字的翻译量。原诗有些对仗非常工整，有些则更近于打油诗。打油诗我勉强对付得来，但对aabbccdd肚子里墨水甚少的我就完全麻了爪，其结果就是我直接毁掉了在情节中占很重要地位的诗。
每个翻译都知道，当时翻译完是看不出问题的，需要像过滤水碱一样镇静个一年半载，再看时，就可以发现这样或那样的问题，这里多个“的”字，那里少个“了”字，某个长句应该分为短句表述，某个段落翻译腔很重，等等。虽然一年之后读来还没有那种痛恨自己水平太臭的撕书情绪，但在读到一些段落或句子时我确实十万分地羞愧。思果的书里提到过，把一本好书翻译坏了是译者的罪过。这是一本好书，而我正是罪人。在此向想读此书、正在读此书和已经读过此书的读者郑重道歉。
最后补一句，这本书和盗梦空间根本没有可比性，完全是南辕北辙的两码事。Think of a Number没有那种华丽丽的逻辑推理过程，也没有宏大惊人的场面。它只是一个以普通的情感、普通的生活和出乎意料的悬疑机关来吸引读者的故事。建议阅读时，请把任何与盗梦空间有关的内容排除出脑海。
列几段文字供大家欣赏，表达我希望弥补自己罪过的诚心。
先把诗歌都摘出来，不要因为我而影响Verdon的书。
How many bright angels
can dance on a pin?
How many hopes drown in
a bottle of gin?
Did the thought ever come
that your glass was a gun
and one day you’d wonder
God what have I done?
What you took you will give
when you get what you gave.
I know what you think,
when you blink,
where you’ve been,
where you’ll be.
You and I have a date,
Mister Six Fifty Eight.
I do what I’ve done
not for money or fun
but for debts to be paid,
amends to be made.
For blood that’s as red
as a painted rose.
So every man knows
he reaps what he sows.
I ran through the snow.
Fool, look high and low.
Ask where did I go.
You scum of the earth,
here witness my birth:
revenge is reborn
for children who mourn,
for all the forlorn.
These are some of my favorite things:
the magic change a bullet brings,
the blood that spurts out on the floor
until there isn’t any more,
their eyes for an eye, their teeth for a tooth,
the end of it all, their moment of truth,
the good that I’ve done with that drunkard’s gun --
all nothing compared to the cleansing to come.”
I see how all you did was done,
from backwards boots to muffled gun.
The game you started soon will end,
your throat cut by a dead man’s friend.
Beware the snow, beware the sun,
the night, the day, nowhere to run.
With sorrow first his grave I’ll tend.
and then to hell his killer send.
再摘几段我很喜欢的文字：
美国东北部山区秋季的美景以及格尼对自己不厌其烦地分析再分析…He realized that planting tulip bulbs on a glorious Indian summer day in a hilltop garden overlooking a rolling panorama of crimson autumn woods and emerald pastures under a cobalt sky was not a particularly onerous assignment. He just hated being interrupted. And this reaction to interruption, he told himself, was a byproduct of his greatest strength: the linear, logical mind that had made him such an effective detective -- the mind that was jarred by the slightest discontinuity in a suspect’s story, that could sense a fissure too tiny for most eyes to see.
梅勒瑞的形象: After rereading the email a third time, Gurney put it back in the folder and let his mind wander over the recollections it stirred up from the back bins of his memory: the morning classes in which Mellery had looked hung-over and bored, his gradual coming to life in the afternoon, his wild Irish jabs of wit and insight in the wee hours fueled by alcohol. He was a natural actor, undisputed star of the college dramatic society -- a young man who, however full of life he might be at the Shamrock Bar, was doubly alive on the stage. He was a man who depended on an audience -- a man who was drawn up to his full height only in the nourishing light of admiration.
大爱那句“They were more like an intangible presence in the atmosphere than the product of a specific storm”: The sparkling autumn weather deteriorated that afternoon. The clouds, which in the morning had been joyful little cotton-ball clichés, darkened. Premonitory rumbles of thunder could be heard -- so far in the distance that the direction from which they originated was unclear. They were more like an intangible presence in the atmosphere than the product of a specific storm -- a perception that strengthened as they persisted over a period of hours, seeming neither to draw closer nor entirely cease.
夕阳美景：Gurney drove most of the way home oblivious to his surroundings. It was not until he had driven up into the high end of the valley past Abelard’s General Store in Dillweed that he became aware that the clouds which had gathered earlier in the day were gone, and in their place a remarkable glow from the setting sun was illuminating the western face of the hills. The snowy cornfields that bordered the meandering river were bathed in a pastel so rich his eyes widened at the sight. Then, with surprising speed, the coral sun descended below the opposing ridge, and the glow was extinguished. Again the leafless trees were black, the snow a vacant white.
再来一段山区雪景：A family of cautious crows, their harsh cries the only sound in the cold air, took flight from bare treetops a hundred yards ahead of him and soon disappeared over the ridge, leaving behind an even deeper silence.
As Gurney emerged from the woods onto the promontory above Carlson’s hillside farm, he saw Madeleine. She was sitting motionless on a stone slab, perhaps fifty feet from him, looking out over the rolling landscape that receded to the horizon with only two distant silos and a meandering road to suggest any human presence. He stopped, transfixed by the stillness of her pose. She seemed so ... so absolutely solitary ... yet so intensely connected to her world. A kind of beacon, beckoning him to a place just beyond his reach
来段幽默的，这段是我认为全书中最搞笑的段落，因为——我一开始和Blatt的想法一样！Holdenfield smiled unhappily. “Is everyone at least familiar in a general way with the Holmes Typology of Serial Murder?”
The assortment of murmurs and nods around the table was generally affirmative. Only Blatt had a question. “Sherlock Holmes?”
Gurney wasn’t sure whether this was a stupid joke or just stupid.
“R.M. Holmes -- a bit more contemporary, and an actual person,” said Holdenfield in an exaggeratedly benign tone that Gurney couldn’t quite place. Was it possible she was mimicking Mister Rogers addressing a five-year-old?
最后一段是描述人物内心的：She ignored what he said, following her own train of thought. “I hoped if we opened the box, looked at his little drawings ... we could say goodbye to him together. But you don’t say goodbye, do you? You never say goodbye to anything.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,“ he protested. But that wasn’t true. When they’d been about to move from the city up to Walnut Crossing, Madeleine spent hours saying goodbye. Not only to neighbors, but to the place itself, things they were leaving behind, houseplants. It had gotten under his skin. He’d complained about her sentimentality, said talking to inanimate objects was weird, a waste of time, a distraction, that it was only making their departure more difficult. But it was more than that. Her behavior was touching something in him that he didn’t want touched -- and now she’d put her finger on it again -- the part of him that never wanted to say goodbye, that couldn’t face separation.
P.S. 7月12日，兰登书屋旗下的皇冠出版社刚刚出版了Think of a Number的续作，给了我一个大大的惊喜，虽然我去年查资料时就得知John Verdon一下签了三本小说的合同，都以Gurney为主角，但一年一本的写作速度还是让我吃了一惊，回头看看我写论文的速度，真是惭愧羞愧以及愧得无地自容。坚定地打算继续追下去，不过以自己的财力，铁定是要等到明年出简装版才能买了（好在今年有冰与火之歌垫底儿，五大砖头般的厚本，不至于馋Verdon的书到望眼欲穿的痛苦地步）。此书名为 “Shut Your Eyes Tight”。
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发表于 2013-5-13 21:17:41
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