Three narratives,
centuries apart; five characters who begin as strangers; and one, or not even
that, ancient Greek comedy attributed to Diogenes; are all weaved together to
produce a memorable novel.
In the past,
mid-fifteenth century Europe, a young girl named Anna is learning to embroider
(badly) in a Constantinople sweatshop. She is more interested in the world
outside and finds a way to learn Greek, using the skill to earn a crust by
raiding a long-abandoned library and selling on the texts. However, approaching
the city is the Sultan’s vast army, intent on conquest. With it, conscripted as
an oxen driver, is young Omeir, disfigured and shunned, but devoted to his
oxen.
In the present, in a
local library in Lakeport, Idaho, an old man named Zeno is taking a group of
schoolkids through a dress rehearsal of a play he has cobbled together.
Downstair, Seymour, a troubled teenager, lurks with a bomb in his rucksack.
In the future, a
young girl named Konstance lives with her family and similar volunteers on the
Argos, a spaceship on a generations-long mission to a new beginning on a planet
of a distant star. All the mission’s needs are met by an all-knowing AI, going
by the name of Sybil.
The link, initially
and tenuously, is the Diogenes text. Anna steals it in Constantinople and keeps
it for herself. It passes through Omeir’s hands and is lost for centuries. Once
rediscovered and shared on-line, Zeno makes his amateur attempt at translation
/ reconstruction. Seymour and Konstance both get involved (to say how would be
a spoiler), and the text’s importance to all their lives increasingly emerges.
It is well written
and cleverly constructed in narratives spliced in terms of time and space. The
nearly six hundred pages race by in engaging prose, full of depth as each
character’s back story and future is revealed with compassion and insight.
Up there with the
best reads of recent years.
