Kevin Brazil
Out of Leningrad
The Geometer Lobachevsky opens with a dying man lying in bed. A photograph suddenly appears in his mind’s eye: five men stand ‘on the edge of acres of unworked bog’, among them the dying man, Nikolai Lobachevsky. In what follows, Lobachevsky tells the story behind this image, intimating that it will reveal what has led him to his deathbed. Throughout, the story is told in the present tense: ‘I am standing on the edge of a bog … A gust of wind breaks and rushes at my face.’ It’s a style that mimics the frozen present of a photograph, while also disguising the element of retrospection that is an essential part of this narrative: these events have already happened to our narrator; he knows where his story will end. The story he tells is a kind of deception, and it is the subtle deceptions of language that are this novel’s true subject.
Lobachevsky is a Russian mathematician sent to help an engineer he calls Rhatigan drain a bog in the midlands of Ireland in order to provide peat fuel for a new power station. They met some twenty years before, when Rhatigan, who killed his own brother in the Irish
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'This is entertainment of the highest class.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews new thrillers by Mick Herron, Kassandra Montag, @LVaughanwrites, @AuthorSJBolton, @ajaychow, @tombradby, @SaraParetsky, @writejemmawayne & @GillianMAuthor.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/may-2022-crime-round-up
'The day Simon and I Vespa-d from Daunt to Daunt to John Sandoe to Hatchards to Goldsboro, places where many of the booksellers have become my friends over the years, was the one with the high puffy clouds, the very strong breeze, the cool-warm sunlight.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/temple-of-vespa
Some salient thoughts on book collecting from Michael Dirda with a semi tragic conclusion that I suspect many of us can relate to from the @Lit_Review #WednesdayMotivation