January 2, 2012
Recalling Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, but with a stolen painting substituting for sex, McCarthy’s early novel, set in 1990s Prague, follows a purloined religious icon as it passes through the lives of Anton, a Bulgarian football referee turned black marketer; Ivan, a Czech abstract artist turned forger; and his British roommate, Nick, an aspiring art critic and artists’ model. Additional assorted hangers-on of Dutch, American, and ex-Yugoslav stripes constitute a teeming cross-section of Eastern European life in the wake of the Communist governments’ collapse. Observing them all is a nameless police inspector covertly tracking the painting’s movements. And above them all is the symbolic specter of a Russian cosmonaut stranded in space. And then there is the mystery behind the painting itself: what does its floating, enigmatic central figure represent? In his novel, much of which was written before his debut, Remainder, and published in the U.K. in 2007, McCarthy (C) raises more questions than he answers and creates more plot elements, including several deaths and double-crosses, than he resolves. But the author, who lived through this tumultuous historical period and wrote this book in Prague, makes tangible the heady rush of freedom; his bone-deep understanding gives this transformative period a visceral charge. Agent: Jonathan Pegg, Curtis Brown.
February 15, 2012
Issued now for the first time in the United States, this intriguing first novel from the acclaimed British author of C mostly takes place in the heady atmosphere of 1990s Prague. McCarthy deftly knits together a continuous, chapterless narrative of changing viewpoints. The central story is intense and interesting: Anton, a Bulgarian gangster, needs to copy a mysterious stolen icon painting and enlists local artist Ivan to do the work. In addition to Ivan and Anton, the plot incorporates a budding art critic; a couple of interesting American expats; an enigmatic, unnamed former state security surveillance agent; and a Dutch gallerist's letters home. The characters intersect through the central story of the art forgery that is as much a re-creation as a copy. Particularly compelling are the mechanics of how the icon is reproduced from original materials. This hectic symphony all concludes with a spectacular death, retribution, and new life, leaving the reader with deliciously unresolved questions. VERDICT Best described as Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly meets Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; this is a tribute to what the novel can be. Enthusiastically recommended.--Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos P.L., CA
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 1, 2012
The latest of Booker Prize finalist McCarthy's (Remainder, 2007; C., 2010) novels to be published in the U.S. begins in Prague and does everything in its power to achieve escape velocity. Nominally, the plot concerns a Bulgarian criminal organization, its plans for a stolen icon, and the bohemian milieu they find themselves in (Prague is the capital of Bohemia). There are unexplained deaths and drug-fueled love affairs, one-night stands, a possible suicide, and a slow descent into melancholy madness. Several characters, with distinct registers of speech, seem to vie for McCarthy's attention in this episodic and occasionally epistolary novel, which sometimes becomes diaristic or fragmentary. McCarthy is feeling his way, fighting for air in the confined space of narrative realism and not as in control of his material as he is in later works. But readers will forgive his losing the dramatic arc of the story and enjoy his ambitious flights, the vertiginous feeling of imaginative liftoff, when the willing suspension of disbelief becomes compulsory and as irresistible as floating in zero gravity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)