Book Review & Top Quotes: Gnomon by Nick Harkaway

By most standards, I do not fit the definition of a “masochist”. However, when it comes to books that slap us around with their lofty vocabulary skills and maze-like, multilayered plots, I for one reason or another, am always hungry for more pain.

Nick Harkaway’s latest novel, Gnomon, was the finest example of me begging for more literary beatings to date. Written in 2017, but set in a distant (or somewhat distant) future, this story dives into a Great Britain that is omni-connected by a super internet referred to as “The Witness”.

Image provided by Pixabay User SaraRichterArt

Throughout the book, we are privy to a number of characters, to the effect that it’s hard to lock down a true protagonist, but a safe bet would be Detective Mielikki Neith. We follow Detective Neith as she utilizes the Witness to investigate the wrongful death-by-interrogation of a quirky and enigmatic lady named Diana Hunter. And without even beginning to attempt to dive too deep into the plot(s), let alone spoil it, I will share with you that the book is an exploration of Hunter’s final thoughts and dreams, as viewed by Neith.

Lost yet? Feel free to blame my haphazard attempts at summarizing this book, but the real problem may lie with the material itself. When my wife asked me how Gnomon was, I could only offer, “That was the most disorienting book I’ve ever read.” And I meant it. So I hated Harkaway’s latest novel then, right? Oh no. As I mentioned about my relationship with abusive literature earlier…I freaking love this shit.

While undoubtedly a cautionary tale about surveillance and big government (yep, another one - insert massive eye roll here), Gnomon’s magic lies in the moments that make the reader pause with contemplation. Harkaway has an incredible way of integrating our own internal dialogues, questions and doubts into his stories, and in turn, we get to reap the thoughtful rewards. Here are a few:

Death is explored on a number of occasions by Harkaway, but this heart-breaking passage, when looked at with thoughts of our elders or our own mortality, was by far the most…unsettling:

...and I cried a little, as old men sometimes do. Death has a tendency with age to gather in around one, taking first the luminaries and friends of that subtly older generation one assumes will last for ever, and then picking off strangers and old flames, old enemies and finally one’s family, until what you might call without irony a skeleton crew remains, each of us fighting to be the last—or perhaps the second to last, to leave some poor sod the one who truly dies alone.

Some German vocab for those of us who have felt an emptiness when caught in between relationships, or maybe when looking to the stars and dreaming of aspirations…

Fernweh. It’s German—the longing to be somewhere one has never been, the grief one feels at the absence of persons yet unmet.

And finally, a passage that is as close as we may get to a thesis of this colossal puzzle. Naturally, a line of thought that makes you ruminate only the way Nick Harkaway can…

What is the difference between a person and a book? We can know the truth of neither. Both are encoded things seeking to make themselves clear. Both must be read and quickened within us—after all, we never know another person directly, soul to soul. We know only the gathered ghost that represents them inside our minds, the impressions they leave, the signs they give us that define them. The words that held the flavour of me have shrivelled into memory, but the thing that I am, the animus, has passed from the pages through the print and into you and can never be erased. In some it will burn low and even go out, though the blowing ash will still be there. In others—in you—it will persist.

Challenging, maddening and yes, disorienting, Gnomon will chew up and spit out plenty of its readers before the halfway point of the novel…but that doesn’t mean this book won’t prove incredibly rewarding for some. Especially for weirdos like me who like the pain. ; ) 4.5 Shark Fins out of 5.

Keep on Steem’n, folks!