PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

This novel reads like intercepted radio transmissions from the first two decades of the 20th century: a looping cacophony of coffins, cabaret, cocaine, and cryptology. Serge Carrefax hunts for meaning in minutiae and for secret messages from his dead sister, his journey carrying him to a multitude of locales: the mansion where he spent his childhood, a German spa, the trenches of the First World War, Soho séances, and Egyptian tombs. McCarthy betrays the truth that life can hold moments of flickering significance, even if they're hidden in a deluge of patternless data and doggy-style sexual encounters.