Gnomon

I found this an exceptionally difficult book to not only read but to review also. I consider myself quite a prolific reader and yet Gnomon has taken me half a year to read! I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's the time of life I am in and I just can't find the opportunity to read as much as I would like to? Or maybe it's just that this book didn't engage me.

As I received the book for review I made a determined decision to read it all and see it through and today I reached the end.

What makes this difficult for me, is that at another time of my life or in the hands of another reader this book would be considered excellent. It's clever, it's multi-layered, there are stories within stories and it's complex.. All things I usually go for in a book. It also has some of the most beautiful, quotable sentences I have read in a long time. Some passages I read twice I was so stunned by their effectiveness. Harkaway has a rich and eloquent vocabulary which I delighted in, including managing to drop a few into conversation here and there during the course of my reading.

I also enjoyed the sub-stories of the seemingly disparate yet eventually inter-woven characters. The cocky swagger of a Greek banker being chased by a shark, the alchemist who puts a bishop or two in their place, the artist coming to terms with family and identity. There is so much to like in this book (even a cameo of a Julian Assaunge inspired character).

It has all the makings of a great book so why did it take me six months to read? I believe it was due to a lack of caring about the story or the characters. It was like looking at something you know is aesthetically beautiful yet fails to capture the emotion. There wasn't a single point in the book where I thought 'one more page'. It meanders, says a thousand words where a paragraph would suffice. The story is convoluted and challenging. One needs to think when reading this book, and yet I don't think it was worth the emotional payoff after all that thinking.

Perhaps most damning is upon reaching the end my thought was, 'whatever'.

Capture me in my teens with this book and I'm going to tell you it's awesome. As a busy casual reader it fails to engage.

Near-future dystopian fiction which requires the reader to pay close attention.