Gabriel’s Moon/William Boyd
A newly published William Boyd novel is a big literary event especially for his legion of followers.
The general critical view is his recent novels fall short of his earliest West African ones and Any Human Heart. He is a master story teller and Gabriel’s Moon conforms to that.
There are essentially 3 stories:
(1) a domestic fire in 1936, when Gabriel Dax is just six, which takes the life of his mother and from which he narrowly escapes.
(2) after Dax becomes a travel writer with several published works he visits the Congo in 1962 and interviews the new President Patrice Lumumba. In that interview Lumumba discloses his fear of being assassinated and names three likely assassins. On the plane journey back Dax notices a woman reading one of his works.
(3) the woman, called Faith Brown, works for MI6 and becomes his handler. Dax agrees to undertake the collection and delivery of a painting by a Spanish surrealist artist called Bianco. Bianco was the lover of the MI6 Madrid station chief Kit Caldwell.
Dax also has three main relationships with women:
(1) Dax’s younger working class waitress Lorraine.
(2) Faith, with whom he becomes obsessed.
(3) his psychoanalyst Katerina Haas. whom he consults in regard to his insomnia and nightmares related to the fire. As a result of her prompting and advice he reinvestigated the circumstances of the fire.
The novel whilst a page-turner does not always link the themes. Dax is confused, but so is the reader, until the end when most – but not all – is explained. When it comes to the female relationships, these are stated as fact but not always credible.
Aside from the narrative, the novel depicts and describes so many places that it could be listed as travel book: London, Claveyfield in East Sussex; Madrid; Cadiz; Southwold; and Warsaw.
Boyd also enlightens his readers on topics as varied as the Cold War and Cuban Missile crisis, pyschoanalysis, dealing with mice infestation and the ‘smoke and mirrors’ world of espionage.
However, as with so many page-turners, the after taste is unsatisfactory – probably because of the failings I have mentioned.