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Zugzwang

Starved for choice

Ronan Bennett
Bloomsbury, pp. 273pp, ££14.99,

Tom Fleming

Wednesday, 5th September 2007

Zugzwang
by Ronan Bennett

Spethmann, the son of a poor Jew from the slums of the Vyborg district, has earned himself a large house and a good reputation. When a liberal newspaper editor is murdered, however, and Spethmann and his daughter are implicated in the killing, he finds that his position is precarious. Assorted thugs threaten him, but for whom are they working? And why does everything seem to hinge on Spethmann’s newest patient, Avrom Rozental, the seemingly innocuous, near-autistic chess genius who is favourite to win the forthcoming tournament? The initial murder, it turns out, is only the tip of a large, conspiracy-shaped iceberg. To complicate matters further, Spethmann has a new female patient, Anna, with whom he is in love but whose nightmares are perplexing him as a psychoanalyst; moreover, her father, a hugely influential lawyer, has forbidden him from seeing her, and crossing him may prove dangerous.

Zugzwang was serialised in the Observer in weekly instalments, so it’s no surprise that the plot is steadily compelling, even if several key twists are predictable. Bennett is at his best, though, when examining the terrible ambivalence of his characters’ political and personal loyalties. The truculent Lychev, for instance, a policeman with an unkempt fringe and a nasal voice, is bound by duty to several masters, but small acts of independence reveal depths that make him an admirable character. Spethmann’s desire to maintain the status quo at all costs, in a society that does not exactly treasure Jewish people, is also sympathetic and well drawn, although it makes him unappealingly ineffectual as a narrator, constantly at the mercy of the stronger men around him.

Unfortunately Bennett’s prose lacks inspiration, and the chess metaphor carries a gentle air of cliché — Speth-mann says of the man behind the conspiracy ‘He cared nothing for the innocents who strayed into his path, and he crushed them with the same icy calculation with which chess masters exchange the pawns cramping their game.’ Bennett’s evocation of his turbulent setting is memorable, but as a thriller Zugzwang is not surprising or fiendish enough to satisfy.