Philip Notman is going through what looks like a midlife crisis. Travelling home from an academic conference, he feels sick and disoriented to the point where he is barely able to function. Back in London, he can’t quite explain to his wife Anya, or indeed to himself, what’s ailing him. Is it just me, he wonders, or is everything unbearably toxic? Instead of working on his next book during a sabbatical, he sets off on a journey in search of a remedy.
Rupert Thomson’s new novel has no full stops. In their place are paragraph breaks, with sentences abandoned on the page, increasing the sense of dislocation:
Everything sick, he thought
Everything in pain
Starting from the title, the atmosphere grows increasingly ominous. Thomson skilfully balances things on the brink of explosion, creating suspense worthy of a thriller in a work grounded in literary tradition.
Set over several months in 2019, the book leads us through the ‘poisoned labyrinth’ of contemporary western ills that Philip is desperate to escape. He flies to Spain to see Inés, a young woman who may or may not have triggered his predicament. Their platonic conversations do little to solve it – Inés can’t give him more than a sympathetic ear – and when the thrill of adventure peters out, Philip moves on to Greece. On his way there, he loses his phone, cutting himself off from what was once his life.
Holed up in a Cretan village, he tries quiet contemplation, poetry, physical work and religion. Eventually he realises that what he is experiencing is ‘civilisation sickness’, a condition inflicted by modern times. Then a local man relates a violent episode from his past, the tale nudging Philip to the conclusion that there is only one solution to the world’s problems. Returning to London, he starts working on it.
The other characters – Anya, Inés, strangers Philip meets – are sketchily drawn, the better to focus our attention on the hero. Seeing everything through his eyes, we are impressed by his sharp vision. Whether he’s remembering his romance with Anya, whose heart he won with his humour, or watching random street scenes, his descriptions are lucid and mostly relatable. Things get less convincing when he tries to express his worldview in a manifesto. ‘We have been seduced or coerced into an existence that is completely factitious’, he writes, proposing a ‘steady-state or degrowth version of society’ as the antidote. Styling himself as a latter-day Don Quixote, he presses on, despite suspecting he might be ‘simply dredging up old arguments’.
Every now and then, Philip’s thoughts return to Anya and their son, a troubled teenager – people he deeply loves. It does occur to him that they need him more than the rest of humankind ever would:
He had sacrificed everything – and for what?
For an idea
By now, though, he is ‘trapped in a double bind of his own making’, and it’s too late to turn back. Or is it?
This eloquent novel manages to give a new resonance to the big questions of our age, inviting us to look for answers within. Along with the protagonist, we remain uncertain about what is to be done. One thing transpires clearly: to change the
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