BY ANNE CROWLEY
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAID
“A century from now, a literature scholar pieces together a picture of our times in a novel that quietly compels us to consider the moral consequences of a global catastrophe.” The Guardian.
The book’s epigraph sums it up well: “It concerns the kind of human truth, poised between fact and fiction, which a biographer can make as he tells the story of another’s life, and thereby make it both his own (like a friendship) and the public’s (like a betrayal). It asks what we can know, and what we can believe, and finally, what we can love”.
MY THOUGHTS
A Russian warhead detonates accidentally in the mid-Atlantic, triggering a tsunami that – compounded by rising sea levels – leaves little standing beyond a Europe-wide archipelago of mountain tops.
Part 1 is narrated by Tom Metcalfe, a literature lecturer at a British university in 2119 – a place far more interested in science and maths than poetry. He becomes fixated on tracking down a lost poem: a “Corona” (15 sonnets linked in a chain, with the last looping back to the first), supposedly written by Francis Blundy, a (fictional) poet who read it aloud to his wife as a 50th birthday gift in 2014.
Metcalfe is consumed by the Corona, by Blundy, and especially by Blundy’s wife, Vivien. He trawls articles, social media and journals to piece together a portrait of the missing “masterpiece”, the couple, and the contemporaries invited to that party. And becomes besotted with Vivien in the process.
Frankly, I found Part 1’s singular focus and verbosity extremely tedious. I didn’t share Metcalfe’s fascination with the poem, and still less with his detailed conjectures about the mundane aspects of this group’s lives.
I began to suspect the poem never existed – and even if it did, I kept thinking: who cares (apart from Metcalfe)? Even the audience at the supposed reading seemed bored to tears!
For me, the only compelling moments in Part 1 were when Metcalfe briefly diverged from his obsession to make passing comments on the forces behind the global catastrophe – and its aftermath. Almost incidental to the plot, these remarks read as prescient warnings for people in our own time to change course on war and climate.
Thank goodness for Part 2! Here, the story shifts from biography to autobiography, narrated succinctly in the voice of someone who was actually there. It’s far more engaging than Metcalfe’s arrogantly surmised bland version of events, for example, the real Vivien is complex – and not quite the devoted wife-and-muse figure Metcalfe assumed and admired.
The contradictions of Part 1 found in Part 2 neatly expose the limits of a historian’s ability to capture personality and relationships from secondary sources – especially when the people involved have worked hard to conceal the truth and deflect public scrutiny. This, I think, is where the novel shows us ‘what we can know’.
My book club mates were evenly (and strongly) divided on their opinions of Part 1, but everyone enjoyed Part 2. And we all agreed there was a huge amount in the book worthy of robust discussion.
