Review: 'Beyond the Basin' by Alexander Beiner

Originally published in 2009 ‘Beyond the Basin’ is a novel by Alexander Beiner. It tells the story of a journalist called Alex, asked to cover a story in South America shortly after being hired for a new job, and Anjuiga, a young girl living with an indigenous tribe that subtly titters on the edge of catastrophe. Set against an increasingly wild and natural setting, their stories entwine through a strange ethereal presence created through dreams and plant hallucinogens, leading finally to a savage and experimental end.

Having interspersed passages between Alex and Anjuiga’s stories has the effect of disorientating the reader and creating an intrigue. Not simply because one wonders what, if any, the connection is between them, but in that it allows the creation of a closed operable space within the text, one which Beiner expertly manipulates. The rate of narrative revelation steadily intensifies, by first layering in other character threads, like the shaman Kuuhra, then simultaneously meshing Alex’s dreamscape with Anjuiga’s setting and collapsing the geographical space between the two stories; the culmination of which is a wonderfully inventive magic mushroom trip.