![]() There’s a lot of laborious mashing-up of Greek mythology with Christianity, and much verbose reader-prodding about how all the different narrative strands might be connected. ![]() There is an Alain de Botton-style philosophical interlude on the meaning of tram stations. Things are repeatedly explained, unnecessarily. Progress is routinely halted by sketchy Wikipedia-style exposition-dumps about tidal flow or behavioural economics, or a character asking herself a whole page or two of questions about what just happened, or vague disquisitions on the meaning of identity. Gnomon, however, reads like the first draft of what might have been a tighter 400-page book rather than a rambling 700-pager. It reads like the first draft of what might have been a tighter 400-page book rather than a rambling 700-pagerĪ novel can be awfully long without being long-winded. Meanwhile, it begins to look as though someone doesn’t want Inspector Neith to conclude her investigation successfully. There is a fourth-century alchemist searching for a mythical chamber that exists outside time, to resurrect her dead son, fathered by St Augustine. There is an old Ethiopian painter living in London, whose daughter produces a bestselling video game. There is a Greek finance wizard who can somehow foresee the movements of the stock market and is stalked in his head by a shark. ![]() She finds the vivid experiences of a host of other people. ![]() What Neith finds inside the dead woman’s head, however, is not supposed to be there. ![]()
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