Thursday 7 June 2007

The Somnambulist -Jonathan Barnes

"Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and wilfully bizarre. Needless to say, I doubt you'll believe a word of it. Yet, I cannot be held wholly accountable for its failings. I have good reason for presenting ypou with so sensational and unlikely an account. It is all true."
So starts the extraordinary tale of Edward Moon, stage conjuror and detective, his silent associate The Somnabulist, The Sleeper and a devilish plot to bring the British Empire crashing down.
With a wonderfully and whooly ambigious narrator, a gallery of vividly grotesque characters and a richly evoked setting of Victorian London this is an amazingly readable literary fantasy and a brilliant debut.

I loved it! This falls somewhere between Dickens and Sherlock Holmes and is a lot of fun. The characters are so rich and bizzare, and the narrator superb! The book's back cover is correct in its statement that it is frequently ridiculous, but its hugely entertaining ridiculousness! No explanation is given as to who the Somnabulist is, or why he is an eight foot tall mute who communicates through a blackboard. The leading character, Edward Moon, is a flawed individual, with a taste for deformed prostitutes, yet I loved him. There are a few twists and turns in the story, the eventually identification of the narrator is nothing short of genius. Barnes' imagination knows no bounds!

1 comment:

Sabine said...

cool, that will definitely be the next book I read.