The Mean Streets

Kennedy’s Brain

by Henning Mankell

The New Press (October 2007)

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(Full review to follow)

Henning Mankell is an incomparable stylist. His prose possesses a chilly rigor and his plotting is as precise and elegant as a laser sculpture. His latest novel (Kennedy’s Brain), however, is episodic and meandering. Don’t get me wrong; this is still Henning Mankell, after all. Thus the book is still powerful and, despite being less than completely satisfying, still well worth reading. It’s just that long time fans will undoubtedly be expecting more than what they get here.

Louis Cantor is an archeologist working on a dig in Greece. She returns to her native Sweden to deliver an academic address only to discover her twenty-eight-year-old son, Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule the death a suicide. Louise is not convinced. Her investigation into Henrik’s last days reveals his hidden HIV-positive status, an inexplicable obsession with the alleged disappearance of President John F. Kennedy’s brain as well as connections to a rather sinister AIDS hospice in Mozambique.

Rich characters with genuine human emotion as well as wonderful use of local color (Greece, Sweden & Mozambique) abound in this novel. At the same time, however, the motivation of some of the characters remains frustratingly obscure. Louise, to be sure, is fueled by grief. Precisely what motivated Henrik, however, is never fully or convincingly elaborated. Thus as mother re-traces the steps of the son here it becomes a classic case of the blind leading the blind.

In the end, the author’s emotional involvement with his topic (the AIDS epidemic* in Africa) seems to overwhelm his artistic sense and immense novelistic talent.

*Henning Mankell divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique where he is the director of Teatro Avenida. His is passionately committed to the fight against AIDS and to his memory books project.

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