Tag: WalterScottPrize

#BookReview The Geometer Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan @serpentstail @waltscottprize

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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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#BookReview Ancestry by Simon Mawer @littlebrown @waltscottprize

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AncestryAbout the Book

Almost two hundred years ago, Abraham, an illiterate urchin, scavenges on a Suffolk beach and dreams of running away to sea … Naomi, a seventeen-year-old seamstress, sits primly in a second-class carriage on the train from Sussex to London and imagines a new life in the big city … George, a private soldier of the 50th Regiment of Foot, marries his Irish bride, Annie, in the cathedral in Manchester and together they face married life under arms.

Now these people exist only in the bare bones of registers and census lists but they were once real enough. They lived, loved, felt joy and fear, and ultimately died. But who were they? And what indissoluble thread binds them together?

Format: Hardback (432 pages)      Publisher: Little Brown
Publication date: 28th July 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

‘That is the trouble with the usual historical documents: they don’t say how things happen, merely when.’ Ancestry is the author’s attempt to address this problem and to paint a picture of the lives of some of his ancestors, and a picture more vivid and immersive than that set out in official documents – birth, marriage and death certificates, census returns – although even these provide interesting detail and a few puzzles.

The story begins with the author’s great-great-grandfather Abraham Block, the illiterate son of agricultural labourers who in 1847 leaves home at the age of fifteen to sign on as an indentured (apprentice) sailor aboard a merchant ship travelling between ports in the Mediterrean, as well as further afield.  Occasionally the ship docks in London and I particularly enjoyed, as imagined by the author, Abraham’s first impressions of the teeming city – its sights, sounds and smells – a place so different from the Suffolk village in which he grew up. ‘There were familiar smells – horse piss and horse shit, human shit, rotting vegetables – blended with smells he was only beginning to discover – the pungent smell of spices, the sour stench of vinegar, the stink of a tannery. The streets ran between cliffs of buildings. Pubs, factories, warehouses, a covered market, a church, shops, houses all slammed together as though by some ill-tempered child playing with pebbles and mud ….Whistles blew. Whips cracked. Shouts rang out.’

In London, Abraham meets Naomi Lulham, a young seamstress, who will eventually become his wife. As we discover, the life of a sailor’s wife in nineteenth century England is a lonely one with information about the whereabouts of crew, and even the ship, taking week, possibly months to arrive. And when it does, it may contain bad news.

Part two of the book focuses on another ancestor, George Mawer a soldier serving with the 50th Regiment of Foot. Married life for him and his Irish wife Annie involves frequent moves between barracks whose cramped conditions offer little privacy. When George’s regiment is sent to Crimea, he and Annie may be aware of the dangers but our sense of foreboding is greater knowing the history of that conflict. In fact, as the book demonstrates the danger was not restricted to the battlefield; many soldiers died of disease. Others died as a result of disastrous decisions by army leaders.

In George’s absence and later when she finds herself alone in the world, Annie has to find ways to fend for herself and her children. It’s a hostile world for a woman alone and Annie is forced to make desparately difficult decisions affecting her children’s future.

Alongside the human stories, there is a wealth of historical detail but this is subtly woven into the narrative in way that never makes it feel like you are reading a history text book. The details amplify the story, not interrupt it.

Throughout the book, the author makes plain the responsibility he feels to bring to life the experiences of  his ancestors whilst respecting the documented facts, so far as they are known. ‘Abraham Block, Naomi Lulham, these are real people with whom I am playing – their live, their loves, their innermost secrets. I feel the obligation to place the pieces with infinite care.’  Where there are gaps, he uses his imagination to give the reader a sense of them as individuals. We learn about their hopes, dreams and struggles, of which there are plenty. At times, this involves  speculation on his part. For example, at one point the author give us three possible versions of a pivotal moment in Annie’s life.

Another theme the author explores in the book is those things handed down through the generations.  Not just genetic material but the ‘intangible, unmeasurable things that run through families – memory, stories, myths and legends’.  He makes the point that physical evidence – not just documents but buildings, places – can disappear. For instance, November 1848 sees Abraham walking along a street that no longer exists towards a house that no longer exists.

I found myself especially drawn to the female characters, especially Annie. Her resilience and determination to find a way around the obstacles that confront her was inspiring. Sadly, both Naomi and Annie have to deal with the aftermath of tragedy, bringing up their children alone.

In comparison to the detail lavished on recounting the lives of the author’s distant ancestors, the manner in which the two branches become conjoined is covered in relatively short order. The absence of a family tree seems a strange omission. I would have found it helpful, especially given many names recur down the years.

At first sight, the lives of Abraham, Naomi, George and Annie may seem very different from our own but in Ancestry the author skilfully draws out the human connections that exist between them and us.

In three words: Fascinating, compelling, authentic

Try something similar: The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph

Simon MawerAbout the Author

Simon Mawer was born in 1948 in England and spent his childhood there, in Cyprus and in Malta. He then moved to Italy, where he and his family lived for more than thirty years, and taught at the British International School in Rome. He and his wife currently live in Hastings. He is the author of several novels including the Man Booker shortlisted The Glass Room, The Girl Who Fell From The Sky, Tightrope and Prague Spring.

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