in a strange room

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (Europa Editions, 2010)

A very odd, interesting book.  A novel in three distinct parts, each one narrated in first person by a character (?) named Damon.  In the first section he meets a man hiking in Greece and they form an immediate but uncategorizable bond that keeps them circling around one another for several years, being close but never really connecting in any way.  In the second section Damon joins three Swiss people hiking through Africa and once again falls almost mystically in love with one of them, a young man who seems to return his feelings, although the two of them seem never able to be alone together and declare their love (language also intervenes).  Once again their efforts to connect are ultimately futile and rather tragic.  In the third section the narrator takes his very close woman friend, who is crazy and suicidal, to India with him on the misguided notion that the trip will do her good.  It ends disastrously in a hellish Indian  hospital where she languishes in a coma after a suicidal drug overdose.  The haplessness (and hopelessness) of the narrator is compensated by the vigor and quality of his language and his observations, and his ability to chart tortured and tortuous relationships dramatically and vividly.  A very unusual and engrossing book.