I was at a church sale in March or so when this book caught my eye. Among the piles of Michael Crichton and Danielle Steel, The Dwarf distinguished itself by positively reeking of intellectual superiority. It was two bucks, so I bought it on a whim.
The story is stark, simple, and holds few surprises. The setting is apparently a realization of Macchiavelli’s The Prince, or so say the liner notes. The Prince in question rules a small kingdom from his castle, and is a renaissance man that enjoys all sorts of physical and scholarly pursuits. Throughout the book he has to make many challenging decisions about how to handle his warlike neighbours and how to balance the expenses of war with the necessity of providing for his people.
The Dwarf is a trusted servant of the prince, and is seen to mimic his appearance and mannerisms. The Dwarf, however, is nothing like the Prince in spirit. He is a singularly cruel and repugnant fellow, who empathizes with no one and takes pleasure in very little. He considers dwarves to be a different race than humans, but he loves his own kind no more than he does their larger brethren, which is to say, he generally hates them.
As the plot progresses, other characters are seen to change their behaviour and beliefs in response to the events around them, whereas the Dwarf remains incessantly frigid. He is called upon by the Prince to perform cruel but necessary deeds, such as the poisoning of an entire court of enemy revelers that have been invited to the Prince’s castle for a banquet. The Dwarf does not just perform his job well, but he uses the opportunity to slay a member of the Prince’s court that he disapproves of (the man was having an affair with the Prince’s wife, and the Dwarf could not stand him).
The Dwarf is eventually locked up underneath the castle for flogging the princess to death (at her behest). He does not appear worried, though, because as he says, “The Prince will have need of his dwarf again.” The combination of the unwavering cruelty of the Dwarf and his penchant for mimicking the Prince’s appearance exactly has led me to believe that he might not be “real” at all, but might rather be a personification of the violent and cruel nature that the Prince must cultivate at intervals in order to be an effective ruler. Since the worst of the conflict with the neighbouring kingdom has been extinguished and the largest internal problems have been resolved by the end of the novel, the “avenging” prince as embodied by the Dwarf is not needed for the time being, and is thus left to languish in the dark.
This is a quick read, and the prose is generally interesting, but the unchanging nature of the Dwarf meant that I didn’t really get a heck of a lot out of this book besides a pleasant few hours in the sun. Still, it is definitely worth picking up, if only to relish in the cleverness and logical solidity of the Dwarf’s inner monologue.
A couple of favorite quotes:
The Dwarf, with respect to the artist that the Prince has hired; The artist is amused and interested by practically everything that happens around him, no matter how small:
“Is he a lunatic? An enviable lunatic! One for whom a pebble has value must be surrounded by treasures wherever he goes.”
The Dwarf, on love:
“Above all, they sing the praises of love, which is quite as it should be, for nothing else is in such a need of transformation into something different.”
And, hrrm… after writing this, I just checked out the wikipedia article, and it appears as if the author of that piece shared many of my opinions and thoughts about the book. More stolen thunder…
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