Yes, it’s possibly 100 pages too long, and there are moments when Harkaway’s philosophical musings start to ramble and it could be argued that the story, once you scrape away all the convolutions and digressions, is very simple, but like Michael Dirda says in his review for the Washington Post the novel dazzles.
Well, Gnomon is certainly agenda driven – it deals passionately with human rights, privacy, political corruption and out of control capitalism – but boring? Fuck no. The other claim is that it’s agenda driven. What’s explicit in those who detest the political SF novel, which they term ‘message fiction’ is that it’s boring. While I haven’t read Nick Harkaway’s previous novels, Gnomon is a bright and extraordinary example of this sort of work. Clearly, we’re dealing here with a very narrow definition of politics because even something as escapist as… I don’t know… Flash Gordon is political just by the sheer fact that Flash is opposing the tyrannical rule of Ming the Merciless.īe that as it may, the apolitical position, as incoherent as it is, is really a critique of authors who wear their politics on their sleeves. There’s this prevailing view in certain corners of Science Fiction fandom that the genre should be apolitical, that Science Fiction is meant to provide a sense of wonder, a sense of escape rather than shove the author’s political views down the reader’s throat. It’s not just the ideas, the shifts in perspective and the overarching mystery that makes Gnomon so entertaining. Whatever the case, I’m enjoying these changes in perspective and tone. Like the previous segment of the book dealing with Constantine the brilliant banker – who infected by a shark brings down the world economy – this first-person account would appear to be a stored memory, one that’s been relived… recalled by the Inspector. Now I could be wrong but the section of Gnomon that I’m currently reading would appear to be from the perspective of Saint Augustine’s mistress (who, according to the interwebs, was never named but did give birth to Augustine’s only child Adeodatus). If that sounds a bit fucking insane well welcome to Gnomon. Now a shark seems to have infected his mind, a meme or a metaphor or a sub-conscious trigger that’s allowing Constantine to rake in the moolah by providing him with hints on when to sell and when to buy on the stock-market. As I note above Constantine survived a shark attack. Constantine’s story – the name of our wealthy banker – is a cross between The Big Short and the Wolf of Wall Street.
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