It seems believable that a young storyteller who has spent an itinerant childhood in Japan, Brazil, Ecuador and the United Kingdom should write a novel about two young storytellers, one of them from England and displaced in Ecuador.
That is the premise of James Scudamore's splendid first novel, "The Amnesia Clinic," about Anti (short for Anthony) and Fabian, 15-year-olds in Ecuador, each of whom has a propensity for storytelling that is so strong that soon it is the basis for their relationship.
One story that is not told for a long time is about what happened to Fabian's parents, a mysterious thread that runs through the book, and the reader continues to discover different versions of it.
Scudamore calls it "the maguffin" — a term Scudamore said was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock in 1939 as "the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers."
Describing himself as "a compulsive imaginer," Scudamore studied language and creative writing at Oxford and the University of East Anglia, and has written a lively novel that is a model for excellent writing.
Yet between his two university experiences, he worked for an advertising agency. "I chose advertising because it was a halfway house for what I wanted to do," Scudamore said by phone from his London home, "and it was a great way to spend my early 20s. Yet I knew I didn't want to do it forever."
He wanted to write his novel "from the perspective of a foreigner in a strange land, because it reflects my experience, but I didn't want it to be too autobiographical. I chose 15-year-olds because when I was that age I didn't live abroad — I was in the U.K. So none of the actual events in the novel are true to life."
Scudamore, who is 31, loves telling stories, and he has "a tendency to embellish things. I think everyone does. In fact, telling stories about storytelling fascinates me. I studied both French and Spanish at Oxford, and there is conflict between truth and illusion in the Spanish language ranging back to the 1700s."
In the novel, each of the two adolescents tell different versions of things that happen to them. "I consciously decided I didn't want the reader to walk away with a story he or she knew categorically happened, because sometimes a lie is just as valid as the truth. Hardly anyone has a foundation of complete truth."
Yet the author doesn't like books that leave the reader thinking nothing has happened at all. "There could be no dramatic conclusion unless Anti has some sense that the truth is catching up with him. If you lead a complete lie, the world collapses around you."
Scudamore asserted that "even adults tailor what they say to the people to whom they are talking. This novel is my attempt to be a storyteller worthy of my friend (Fabian). I was trying to show him in action. It was fun to write it.
"There are aspects of me in both characters. Being my first novel there is bound to be some autobiography in it. But probably everyone knows people at school who are heroes to them — (Fabian), who can do anything and get away with it. Or those who have tragedy in their lives and it gives the impression of being glamorous.
"So Fabian needs a person to be with who is not exotic but craves it — (Anti), someone who is living abroad but is kind of in a bubble. They are a study in opposites. Suarez, Fabian's uncle, is sort of a catalyst to make the conflict exciting. He fires up the boys. He knows the way to tell a convincing story is to pretend it is the gospel truth."
While Scudamore chose a dynamite title, he was halfway through the book before it occurred to him. "I didn't know for a long time what the quest was. When 'amnesia' popped into my mind, I was drawn to the humor of it. Then I just knew it was the title."
The boys take a long trip together in search of an "amnesia clinic," where perhaps Fabian's mother will be found. Fabian knows his father died in a terrible auto accident, but it bothers him that his mother's body was never found.
So Anti invents the amnesia clinic as a way of helping Fabian reach closure — but Fabian doesn't know his friend has made it up.
Scudamore is now working on what will be his second novel, this one set in Brazil, and hopes to finish the first draft in about two months. He sees it as "quite different" from "Amnesia." He plans a research trip to Brazil in April, even though he has previously lived there. "I am fascinated by the growth of enormous cities with 20 million people or more, like Sao Paulo and Bombay, almost unmappable because of the areas where the streets don't have names. It's a very exciting novel to write."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com