Gnomon (novel)
| Author | Nick Harkaway |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Published | 2017 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 704 |
| ISBN | 978-1-473-53954-9 |
Gnomon is a science fiction novel by Nick Harkaway. The book deals with a state that exerts ubiquitous surveillance on its population. A detective investigates a murder through unconventional methods that leads to questions about her society's very nature.
Plot summary
In a near future United Kingdom, now governed by continuous direct democracy, all of Britain is under constant surveillance by the nigh-omniscient AI called "The System." Witness inspector Mielikki Neith it tasked with investigating the death of refusenik Diana Hunter's death following her forced interrogation—where Hunter's memories were extracted—while in custody. Neith quickly finds that Hunter's memories are a maze of other lives and narratives and must discover what this means for the continued operation of the System.
Reception
In The Independent, Darragh McManus gave a negative review,[1] calling the book a "baffling utopian epic ladled with elegant nonsense." While praising Harkaway for "writing women extremely well" ("Hunter, Neith and Athenais are the book's most vivid creations and strongest elements"), and saying "there are a lot of things to enjoy in Gnomon," she nevertheless felt it was "hugely confusing."
It's not the length, though the novel is much too long. It's not that Harkaway has a tendency to overwrite: both in labouring a point or observation before labouring it some more, and using arcane (and possibly non-existent) words where a normal, widely-known one was available. [...] My main problem is that Gnomon doesn't make a lick of sense. Or maybe it does, in the author's mind, but I'm afraid I was baffled, to the point of paralysed stupidity. I genuinely couldn't tell you, by the end, who did what and when, whether anything reported here actually occurred, whether any or all of these characters even exist.
In The Guardian, Steven Poole also gave the book a relatively negative review.[2] "Gnomon [...] reads like the first draft of what might have been a tighter 400-page book rather than a rambling 700-pager. 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. Things are repeatedly explained, unnecessarily." Still, Poole also said, "Such defects wouldn’t be so annoying were it not obvious that Nick Harkaway can sometimes be a very good writer indeed. Readers who are prepared to mentally edit the book as they go along, as the author and editor have not, will encounter a host of highly enjoyable fragments and suggestive ideas."
References
- ^ McManus, Darragh. "Baffling utopian epic ladled with elegant nonsense". The Independent. Retrieved 15 April 2020.
- ^ Poole, Steven. "Gnomon by Nick Harkaway review – a future of total surveillance". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 April 2020.
External links
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