About the Book
‘When I was sent by the Soviet state to London to further my studies in calculus, knowing I would never become a great mathematician, I strayed instead into the foothills of anthropology …’
It is 1950 and Nikolai Lobachevsky, great-grandson of his illustrious namesake, is surveying a bog in the Irish Midlands, where he studies the locals, the land and their ways. One afternoon, soon after he arrives, he receives a telegram calling him back to Leningrad for a ‘special appointment’.
Lobachevsky may not be a great genius but he is not he recognises a death sentence when he sees one and leaves to go into hiding on a small island in the Shannon estuary, where the island families harvest seaweed and struggle to split rocks. Here Lobachevsky must think about death, how to avoid it and whether he will ever see his home again.
Format: Hardback (208 pages) Publisher: Tuskar Rock Press
Publication date: 31st March 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction
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My Review
I’m not sure I ever imagined myself reading a book that combines events in the life of a man who fears persecution if he returns to his homeland in the Soviet Union, the surveying of Irish bogland and seaweed farming. And I probably wouldn’t have had it not appeared on the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
The Geometer Lobachevsky contains some wonderful descriptions of the wilder parts of Ireland and I liked the gentle rhythm of the life of the islanders described in the second part of the book. I also loved the amiable humour of Nikolai’s attempts to spell Irish names.
Nikolai arrives as an advisor but is happy to get stuck into the job of surveying the bog in preparation for large scale peat extraction even if he can’t get the team led by Rhatigan to understand the shifting nature of the area they’re trying to survey. Perhaps it’s in the nature of things to think you’re on solid ground even when you’re not? Having adopted a false identity in order to cover his tracks and fled to a small island on the Shannon estuary, Nikolai learns the secrets of seaweed harvesting from the families who live there. But although he might join in with things, he remains somehow always isolated from others.
There is a theme of old versus new that runs through the book. Old crafts are being lost, labour intensive tasks are gradually being mechanised and the landscape is being changed by the building of new factories and houses with modern amenities. You get a sense it’s being done to the local people not for them.
Many of the characters exhibit obsessionial traits. Rhatigan, the chief surveyor, is a perfectionist when it comes to the accuracy of surveying. One of the locals, French, has a ‘museum’ full of curiosities, such as many different types of hammer, that he has collected over the years. Nikolai himself becomes obsessed with observing the moon through a telescope in order to make precise topographical drawings of its surface. And once on the island he witnesses a prolonged and dangerous attempt, led by the son of one of the local families, to split a huge boulder seemingly for no other reason than to prove it can be done.
Right from the beginning of the book there’s an ominous sense that a bleak future in one form or another awaits Nikolai. Having seen friends (possibly lovers?) persecuted for their views, he’s afraid of what will happen to him if he returns to the Soviet Union. He describes himself as living every day ‘tired with fear’. The book’s dramatic ending proves he was right.
Given the title of the book it’s no surprise that Nikolai sees things in terms of shapes, angles and geometric patterns. I’m afraid this is where I struggled with the book because the geometrical stuff went over my head. No matter how hard I tried I could not envision the existence of a curve in a straight line or a straight line in a curve. Where Nikolai looks at the incoming tide and sees ‘plummeting curvatures’ I just see the incoming tide. Where he sees a wetland ‘mapped out with a constantly collapsing Cartesianism of intensities’ I have no idea what that is. I think this prevented me forming a stronger connection with the story. Although I admired the wonderful writing, I was left with the feeling that this is a book I was not quite clever enough to appreciate fully.
In three words: Evocative, elegaic, complex
About the Author
Adrian Duncan is an Irish artist and writer. His debut novel Love Notes from a German Building Site won the 2019 John McGahern Book Prize. His second novel A Sabbatical in Leipzig (2020) was shortlisted for the Kerry Novel of the Year. His collection of short stories Midfield Dynamo was published in 2021 and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. His third novel, The Geometer Lobachevsky, was published in April 2022. (Photo: Publisher author page)
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