In this timely and explosive novel, an academic’s seemingly mundane midlife crisis takes an alarming turn after his visit to a Greek monastery.
It’s February 2019. Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian with a German wife and a troubled nineteen-year-old son, is on his way back from a conference in Norway when he has an unexpected and disturbing experience that completely alters his view of the life that he has been living and the world that surrounds him.
Believing that Inés, an attractive Spanish sociologist whom he met at the conference, can shed light on what he is feeling, he travels to Cádiz to see her. But his journey doesn’t end there. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that he appears to find unbearable? Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic existence or is he utterly self-deluded? And if he is in denial about what he is doing, how far will he go to avoid facing the truth?
In this highly original and unsettling novel, one of the UK’s most celebrated writers portrays an ordinary man in an extraordinary dilemma, a dilemma that will push him to the very edge of annihilation and disaster.
Release date:
October 17, 2023
Publisher:
Other Press
Print pages:
432
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
What triggered it was utterly innocuous A young woman standing a few feet away from him took out a travel card and tapped it against the card reader, the gesture instinctive, automatic, like a reflex There was also the noise the card reader made A kind of beep Then there was the tram’s interior, the metal poles upright and painted orange, the seats upholstered in a practical, hard-wearing charcoal gray Though he was sitting still, his head began to float sideways and backwards, the motion frictionless and easy, like an ice cube sliding across a pane of glass But that wasn’t all A hand had wrapped itself around his brain, and it was squeezing He was worried he might throw up or pass out He was worried he might scream He couldn’t think There was nothing left to think with
If he suddenly found what surrounded him unbearable, it was because it was artificial Everything had been designed and manufactured, and he was trapped in it He had also become aware of possibilities that might or might not have been explored Behind that beep, a thousand other beeps Behind that upright orange metal pole, a pole made out of something different, or molded into a different shape, or painted a different color Somehow all the conceivable alternatives were still there, stacked up behind the version that had been decided on, and all of them unnoticed, overlooked Except by him
He had boarded the tram at Nonneseteren He was on his way back to London, after a four-day conference in Bergen Studying the map above the window opposite, he counted twenty-five stops to the airport The journey would take approximately three-quarters of an hour He ran his eyes through the various stations Paradis, Hop, Lagunen In normal circumstances, he would have reveled in the foreign sounds That afternoon they made him feel nauseous Behind each station’s name lurked all the names that station might have had instead
The tram slowed down A series of electronic notes, a sort of jingle, and then a woman’s voice Kronstad He lowered his eyes How many women had auditioned for that role? Like an image from a hall of mirrors, the queue of applicants curved off into a distance that seemed infinite As for the voice itself, decisions would have been taken about character and tone His mind began to spin and swirl with all the options, and once again he had the feeling that his head was leaving his shoulders, his neck as soft as chewing gum that has been chewed for hours He had become the host for a sensitivity—a hypersensitivity—that he couldn’t regulate or even influence He was tempted to get off the tram He could sit on a bench and breathe the cold Norwegian air Would it make any difference, though? What if he felt no better?
He looked out of the window, hoping to distract himself, but the tram had stopped next to a billboard He didn’t notice what the product was, only that it began with an A, and that the apex of the A was colored white, as if the letter was a snowcapped mountain This was the most unbearable thing so far It was so obviously made-up Dozens of ideas would have been discussed, presented, and rejected in favor of the one that now confronted him Behind the surface of reality lay other surfaces, other realities Behind every single thing was something else
He brought his eyes back to the tram’s interior, and there, as before, were the seats and the poles This is just a ride on a tram, he told himself, a ride on a tram in Bergen He hung his head again and closed his eyes He could still hear the beeping of the card reader as new passengers got on The sequence of electronic notes The female voice Slettebakken
He opened his eyes and stared at the smooth gray floor The smoothness was sickening The grayness too He couldn’t close his eyes or keep them open There was nowhere he could look I might have to kill myself, he thought It seemed like a perfectly reasonable response to what he was going through It might even be the only solution available to him How else could he make it stop?
Miraculously, he managed to hang on until he reached the airport
He stepped off the tram The nausea was still there, though it was milder, more subdued It reminded him of what happened when he took medication for a headache The pain might lift, but it would leave a memory, a kind of afterimage A place that was dazed and listless Hollowed out
With an hour to spare before his flight was due to board, he found himself standing in front of a seafood restaurant called Fiskeriet Here again the feeling was one of overload or surfeit There was a prawn salad, a grilled salmon salad, a smoked salmon salad, a crab salad, and a salad with tuna, red onion, and black olives And that was just the salads There were also fish cakes and fish soup and fried fish and steamed mussels Choice was one of the hallmarks of modern society Choice was a kind of hell
He couldn’t have said how long he stood there for, though there came a point when he attracted the attention of the woman behind the counter If she thought he was behaving suspiciously, she would call Security, and then there would be trouble He selected the dish that was closest to him—a prawn salad—then paid for it and took it over to a table The woman seated nearby was dressed in a dark-blue blazer and a white skirt She might have just stepped off a yacht She had ordered a plate of fish-and-chips and a glass of rosé He doubted it had been difficult for her
He took a breath, but couldn’t seem to fill his lungs It was as if he had been transported to a planet with a different atmosphere, and he was struggling to acclimatize He picked up a wedge of lemon and squeezed a few drops onto his prawns The woman in the blazer looked at him It was the kind of look you give a lift door when the lift is on its way
Her mind was almost certainly elsewhere He ate slowly, feeling he had made the wrong choice Perhaps they were all wrong choices Was he even hungry? He forced himself to go on eating He remembered a faint taste of salt water Nothing else
Half an hour later he set off towards his gate
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
