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A review by nbynw
C by Tom McCarthy
5.0
In my pursuit to read all the Man Booker nominated books by October 12,I spent little time researching each book's plot. I understood this book to be a post-modern book about cocaine, but thankfully it's not. Not really.
Serge is the protagonist and this book is him as interpreted through the cryptic communications of his life. Be it phonetic sounds, Morris code, ancient hieroglyphs, or bodily functions we learn who Serge is and how he views his circumstances. We see him through many stages of his cognitive development, we see him thinking and interpreting as a child, a man, and yes, as a cocaine addict.
The historical setting of the early 1900s provides a small narrative track for his exploration of these everyday messages and developments. The settings: childhood, WWI, seances, or even dreams play against the context: deaf/drug addicted mother & a semi incestuous relationship, war observation & reconnaissance from the cockpit of a fighter plane, desire to talk with the dead, and drug filled dreams. Yet we only understand these circumstances as Serge experiences them & decodes their meaning or faces the consequences.
Although a bit of a technical, dry, emotionless (emotion-dulled?) narrative I thoroughly enjoyed the intricate layers of C. I mean that literally, the work as a whole, and I mean the author's ability to wind so much into that 3rd letter of our alphabet. It was like all my university comm classes as a fictional story, which here is a good thing.
Serge is the protagonist and this book is him as interpreted through the cryptic communications of his life. Be it phonetic sounds, Morris code, ancient hieroglyphs, or bodily functions we learn who Serge is and how he views his circumstances. We see him through many stages of his cognitive development, we see him thinking and interpreting as a child, a man, and yes, as a cocaine addict.
The historical setting of the early 1900s provides a small narrative track for his exploration of these everyday messages and developments. The settings: childhood, WWI, seances, or even dreams play against the context: deaf/drug addicted mother & a semi incestuous relationship, war observation & reconnaissance from the cockpit of a fighter plane, desire to talk with the dead, and drug filled dreams. Yet we only understand these circumstances as Serge experiences them & decodes their meaning or faces the consequences.
Although a bit of a technical, dry, emotionless (emotion-dulled?) narrative I thoroughly enjoyed the intricate layers of C. I mean that literally, the work as a whole, and I mean the author's ability to wind so much into that 3rd letter of our alphabet. It was like all my university comm classes as a fictional story, which here is a good thing.