C - Tom McCarthy

This dense, wide-ranging novel is packed with different strands that recur, cross over and combine to create something that is highly complex – too complex indeed for a single reading.

The book follows the life of Serge Carrefax, the son of a faintly wacky scientific innovator whose work concentrates on the biggest scientific development of the early 20th century – the first communications revolution. As Simeon, Serge’s father, creates grand plans for sending voices and images over wires, Serge’s deaf mother runs a silk business. Serge and his sister, Sophie, are encouraged to be academically inquisitive, and the whole household is something like an academic Royal Tenenbaums, with various funny incidents and curious relationships.

Serge is socially distant, sharing a rivalry with his precocious sister, but seemingly having few interactions outside the household. As he progresses through life, including time in a German health spa, a descent into hard drug use as a pilot during WWI and finally as a researcher/spy in Egypt, we see him continually finding more fulfilment from his inner voices than from relationships with others. Indeed, Serge seems to see the outside world as somewhere distinct from his own sphere, a place that he is merely observing from afar – spying on reality to report back to his own imagination.

Communication is a key theme, with frequent references to codes hidden within newspapers, to Morse Code, to séances ‘communicating’ with the dead, and of course to the new possibilities that radio and telephonic communication brings. Serge’s father, when he is not experimenting with new technology, runs a school for the deaf that promises to teach its pupils to speak, through understanding that speech is a matter of shaping’s once mouth and expelling vibrations of air – bringing communication to those who were previously mute.

‘Vibrations’ is one of a number of recurring words within the book that cause the reader to tie strands of the story together and which give the impression that the reader is involved in a masterplan that is obvious only to the author. These words, such as ‘soma’, ‘beetle’, ‘tumour’, ‘perspective’ and various references to Greek literature, often passed over my head, suggesting that this is a book that may well reveal more on the second reading.

McCarthy’s writing is jam-packed, with not a word wasted, and seemingly every single sentence carefully planned so as to tie in with the overall game that is played on the reader. It’s not an easy book to read as a result, and requires work and patience. As an overall work it’s impressive – if only I could work out quite what it all means!