Iain Pears: Arcadia (2015)

Edition: Faber & Faber, 2016
Review number: 1508

Iain Pears' 2015 novel may seem to be something of a departure from his earlier work - if I'd been asked to read it blind and guess the author, I think I'd have picked David Mitchell. As both are among my favourite authors, this boded well for enjoying the book.

Arcadia is a complex narrative, with multiple strands and connections which involve time travel. The order of the chapters is (at least to begin with) not actually hugely important; indeed, it is sufficiently random that there is an app available to allow readers to restructure the book (which I haven't had the opportunity to try out). The complexity comes partly from the shortness of the chapters, but is mainly because they don't follow a chronological order as experienced by an individual character.

The structure is closely entwined with the form of time travel which Pears uses as the basis of the novel. Many time travel novels are built round an exploration of the grandfather paradox - how a time traveler in the past can influence the future to make it different from the one they came from - and this is no exception. It is, however, unusually fully thought through. In Arcadia, time travel is about manipulating probabilities. Only one universe can exist, but if that universe is no longer the most probable, then it disappears and a new sole universe not only come into being, but has always existed (except in the mind of the traveler). Pears is not absolutely consistent about this position, and there is debate among the characters about whether this is a true description of the universe. So far as I can remember, this is the only time travel novel I have read which is so ruthless about multiple timelines without making change impossible, though it perhaps has a predecessor in Clifford Simak's Time Quarry, which I was coincidentally reading at the same time.

There are three main universes in Arcadia. The central one is a version of Oxford in 1960, where a minor writer, one of the Inklings alongside Tolkien and Lewis, has written about his own fantasy world. This world itself is also a universe, deliberately brought into being in Professor Lytten's basement by Angela Meerson. She is a fugitive character from the third universe, a dystopian England where research into time travel is being carried out on a Hebridean island. A third major character is Rosie Wilson, a fifteen year old girl who becomes a friend of Professor Lytten and discovers Anterworld in the basement. A major theme, which I suspect may have been the original motivation for writing the book, is the relationship between Lytten and the world he imagined.

Clearly, Arcadia is extremely ambitious, more so than any of Pears' earlier novels. I found it challenging, partly because my reading of it wasn't helped by having to put it aside for days at a time on a number of occasions. In the end, I would have enjoyed it more if the narrative had been more traditional and linear; it felt as though the content was not quite interesting enough in itself to reward the effort of comprehending the structure. I think I'd have enjoyed it more at a time when I wasn't so distracted by other things. My rating: 6/10.

Iain Pears: Stone's Fall (2009)

Iain Pears has to be one of my favourite crime authors. The magnificent An Instance of the Fingerpost is an incredible historical thriller, with three different solutions to the mystery being presented by different narrators, while the Jonathan Argyll series is an entertaining and amusing romp through the Italian art world. The two are very different sides to Pears' talent, and his newest novel, Stone's Fall is cut from the same cloth as An Instance of the Fingerpost.

Indeed, it uses quite a lot of the same structure. Stone's Fall is divided into three main parts, with a short introduction; they are arranged in reverse historical order. All are concerned with Edwardian financier John Stone, whose death falling from a window prompts his widow to employ a young journalist (Matthew Braddock) to investigate the strange bequest in his will to a child that neither she nor the will's executor knew existed, under the guise of researching an autobiography of Stone. The investigation becomes entangled with the finances of the companies owned by Stone, which are mainly armaments firms, with international politics, and with Braddocks infatuation with Stone's widow. He does eventually find a solution which convinces him, but that is only the end of the first part.

In the second part, we go back thirty years, and the narrator is now Henry Cort, a spy from the first part, now at the beginning of his career in Paris in the years after the Franco-Prussian war. This again involves Stone's (future) wife, and a plot to destabilise the Bank of England by discrediting Barings Bank, one of the biggest Victorian investment banks. This sheds further light on the personalities involved in the first part, and suggests that the convenient solution for Stone's death may not actually be correct. The narrator of the final part is Stone himself, as a young man in Venice in the 1860s; characters include Cort's father. Here we find out the origins of Stone's fortune - Braddock had wondered how someone without the training of an engineer had been able to set up a company to produce a revolutionary torpedo from a design he provided. And, again, new light is shed on Stone's death; he wrote the memoir just before his fall.

I did feel that the re-use of the tripartite structure, with a similar purpose to that in An Instance of the Fingerpost, reduced its impact. On the other hand, Agatha Christie finishes many of her novels with scenes where Poirot confronts the murder suspects as a group, and these scenes are so similar they almost follow the same script as each other (Poirot describes the evidence against someone innocent, they protest, Poirot agrees and skewers the real killer). That is not the case here; Stone's Fall is a very different thriller from An Instance of the Fingerpost, not just because it has a later historical setting. It just seems a repeat because of the striking nature of the concept. While in Pears' earlier novel, it seems as though the use of the device is making the point that it is possible to come up with multiple solutions as convincing as those most crime novels have, here his little reminder to the genre is that the kind of clear cut solution common in murder fiction are not the way that things really are; the truth behind most killings is more complex than just who did what when, and it can be the case that the roots of the death of a man like Stone could run many years back into the past. It is perhaps fair to say that Stone's Fall is concerned with emotional depth, while An Instance of the Fingerpost is about glittering cleverness. But in the end, the earlier novel was always clearly destined to be a classic of the genre, while Stone's Fall is just very good indeed. My rating: 8/10.


Edition: Vintage, 2010
Review number: 1413

Iain Pears: The Dream of Scipio (2002)

Edition: Jonathan Cape, 2002
Review number: 1122

Although An Instance of the Fingerpost is a great deal more literary than Pears' other earlier novels, it remained part of the crime genre. Now he moves on to something else, an extremely literary idea in an accessible style. The Dream of Scipio is a historical novel, which has three parallel narratives separated by 1500 years but all set in the Avignon region of France. Each story centres around an individual, each a man trying to do their best to preserve what they love as their world falls to pieces around them: villa owner Manlius as Rome decays; poet Olivier de Noyes in the fourteenth century plague; and historian Julien Barneuve under the Vichy government and the German occupation of France in the war. From the start, the reader with even the most rudimentary knowledge of history knows that their efforts are basically doomed to failure, which helps Pears to create the atmosphere of the novel.

As an author, Pears seems to be fascinated by this kind of structure - An Instance of the Fingerpost also features multiple viewpoints on a single issue. In that novel, he used the idea to give weight to a mystery; here, it has a more literary end as it is used to elucidate the characters of men through history. The women in the story, though essential to the plots, are far less completely realised as characters. In fact, they are used to introduce the other major theme of The Dream of Scipio, which is an attack on anti-Semitism. The men's abstract interest in maintaining the culture around them is matched by a personal desire to protect a Jewish woman close to their hearts.

Of the three stories, that of Julien is the most interesting; offered a post in local government, he has to balance his repugnance for the regime against the feeling that if he didn't take it up someone more zealous could be appointed and that he might be able to do some good by accepting. The other major characters have similar choices to make about compromising their ideals, but Julien's is on a larger scale - the earlier anti-Semitism is basically mob violence springing from ignorance, stupidity and fear, while the Nazis went a step beyond that, putting technological organisation behind their killing.

The simple style which Pears uses in The Dream of Scipio (named after a philosophical work by Manlius based on that by Cicero, read by the other two men) makes it seem easy to read; it is rather like his Jonathan Argyll books in the way it is written instead of pretentiously proclaiming itself as a deep work of literature, which is what it really is. (That isn't to say that pretension isn't ever enjoyable, just that this is a refreshing change.)

Iain Pears: The Bernini Bust (1992)

Edition: Gollancz, 1992
Review number: 556

The third of Pears' Jonathan Argyll novels is by far the most wide ranging in setting, much of the action (including the murder) taking place in Los Angeles rather than Italy, the country which basically contains the other stories. Jonathan travels there because he has sold a Titian to a minor Californian museum for an inflated price. (The museum was set up by billionaire Arthur Moresby because purchases could be written off against tax.)

At a party given by the museum at which Moresby is to announce plans to massively expand the museum, Jonathan meets an acquaintance from the Italian art trade who has a somewhat dishonest reputation. Herbert di Souza has also made a big sale to the museum, and has been asked by their European buyer to bring over a sealed crate containing a sculpture. When, at the party, it is revealed that this is a bust by Bernini of Pope Pius V, de Souza becomes agitated and demands to speak to Moresby about it in private.

It is just after this meeting that Moresby's body is discovered, while di Souza has disappeared. After this rather complicated setup, the plot develops as a soundly constructed, fairly traditional murder mystery, whose art connections mystify LAPD homicide detectives more used to drug gang killings.

Like the rest of this light-hearted series, The Bernini Bust is enjoyable and worth reading if you like crime fiction.

Iain Pears: The Last Judgement (1993)

Edition: Gollancz, 1993
Review number: 373

I presume that this is the third of Pears' Jonathan Argyll series. It is a little difficult to tell given the evidence presented with this edition, which is perhaps something Gollancz should have done rather better. (It's a hardback, likely to be bought by libraries, where readers cannot always see all the books by a particular author on a single visit.)

I would not have thought there were so many reasons to connect fine art with murder, but Pears has been consistently inventive throughout the series. The repeated characters are charming, well drawn and interesting, the mysteries nicely constructed, and the art world background adds a touch of glamour. Like most crime fiction series, the details of the puzzle are the only elements undergoing major change from one book to the next; the relationship between Jonathan and Flavia slowly develops. But I expect the series to provide consistent entertainment for some time before it starts to pall.

Iain Pears: TheTitian Committee (1991)

Edition: Gollancz, 1991
Review number: 296

The second of Pears' Jonathan Argyll art world detective novels is set in Venice. Like other novels by Pears, it re-interprets some history to fit a detective story around it. In this case, the plot is based round an event in the life of the painter Titian, together with the investigations into his life and works by a committee of academics. The idea is that, as was done for that other prolific artist Rembrandt, they would examine every work supposed to be a possible Titian, and give the last word as to authenticity, producing a definitive catalogue marking out his real work from the 'attributed to', 'after' or 'from the school of' uncertainties.

When one of the committee, the pushy Mary Masterson, is murdered, the Italian police's art crime bureau sends Jonathan's friend Flavia to help in the investigation, much to the disgust of the local police. She begins to feel that their facile dismissal of the death as the result of a robbery gone wrong just won't work, and then another committee member dies (the police theory this time being that he accidentally fell into a canal and was drowned).

Masterson had become interested in a particular work studied by the committee, an altarpiece in Padua depicting St Anthony, painted when, as a young man, Titian had left Venice for a while following the death of a friend. The interesting thing about this altarpiece is that one panel had been repainted after the original composition was deemed improper by the church that had commissioned it. Masterson had been particularly interested in a supposed Titian that could have been a sketch for the abandoned panel, which the committee had deemed inauthentic just before she had joined it. Argyll becomes interested in a possible connection between this interest and her death.

I borrowed this book from my local library, and the copy illustrates one of the more annoying aspects of reading a book that has been read by others. Masterson's age is mentioned several times in the novel, and there is a misprint which means that it is sometimes printed as 38 and sometimes as 58. Now, it is only given as 58 once, the first time it occurs, so it is fairly clear that 5 is a mistake for 3, and that 38 is what Pears intended. However, someone has gone through the entire book, correcting every occurrence of 38 to 58, and writing sarcastic comments in the margins. Writing on a book that doesn't belong to you is bad enough, but being wrong as well is very irritating.

Iain Pears: Death and Restoration (1996)

Edition: HarperCollins, 1999
Review number: 261

One of Pears' series of art-related detective stories built round the character of art-dealer Jonathan Argyll, Death and Restoration is an extremely well put together crime novel. Argyll is taking a break from his profession to lecture students in Rome on the less well known art treasures of that city. His girlfriend, Flavia, works in the Italian police, in the department specialising in fine art crime. When she hears that an old acquaintance of the couple, charming thief Mary Verney, has returned to Rome, she is concerned to keep an eye on her. Before long, Mary is the chief suspect in a crime that doesn't quite add up. An ageing priest, head of an obscure order of monks, is seriously injured during a robbery at the church of the order; but not only is violence out o Mary's character, but the wrong picture seems to have been taken. The reputed Caravaggio, the order's main artistic treasure, has been ignored in favour of a small icon of the Virgin Mary, probably brought to the monastery hundreds of years before by a refugee from the Turkish conquest of Constantinople.

The story of Death and Restoration is quite ingenious, the novel falling into the category of crime novels where the identity of the villain is not difficult to work out, while the precise nature of the villainy and its motivation is kept obscure and provides the main interest of the plot.

Iain Pears: An Instance of the Fingerpost (1997)

Edition: Jonathan Cape, 1997
Review number: 246

Iain Pears' current best seller is something of a tour-de-force of historical detective novel writing. It is the story of the visit made by a Venetian, Marco de Cola, to Oxford during the 1660s - the early years of the Restoration of the monarchy after the rule of Cromwell. Politically, these were days of shifting loyalties (due in large part among the upper classes to Charles II's somewhat inconsistent rewarding of services made to him and punishment of attacks against him during his years of exile). It is also an exciting time for science in England, seeing the formation of the Royal Society and the emergence of modern scientific methods. Specific aspects that make themselves apparent in An Instance of the Fingerpost include: more and more pre-eminence accorded to experiment; almost daily advances in medicine as dissection of human bodies becomes more acceptable; the feeling that ideas and knowledge should be made public.
During Cola's stay in Oxford, one of the fellows of New College dies in somewhat suspicious circumstances; using some of the new scientific techniques, it is discovered that he drank wine poisoned with arsenic. Suspicion falls on a young woman, a former servant dismissed by this man; she is in the end hanged on her own confession.

An Instance of the Fingerpost (the title is a quotation from Francis Bacon's Novum Organum Scientarum about the feature of a puzzle which points the way to a true explanation of it, which in the original context is to do with the foundations of modern science which so concern this book) consists of four accounts of these events from the points of view of different men. Each writer has his own concerns and obsessions, their own reasons for recording or suppressing (or forgetting or misunderstanding) parts of what happened, and Pears manages the literary feat of making each seem to come from the pen of a different personality.

As with any historical novel, the main ingredient by which the reader judges An Instance of the Fingerpost is the evocation of the period in which it is set. It has a very strong seventeenth century atmosphere; the accounts may be in modern English, but they are full of ideas and modes of thought which are typical of the period, akin to the writings of the early scientists who are the major characters of the book. A word of warning, though: descriptions of seventeenth century medical practice and experimentation are not for the squeamish reader.

The novel of which An Instance of the Fingerpost most reminded me is Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. There are several reasons for this, including similarities in genre (both being at the literary end of the historical detective novel market) and setting (among those involved in the philosophical developments which led to modern science - and among celibate communities, Oxbridge college fellows being forbidden to marry until well into the nineteenth century). It is the quality of the writing within the genre, though, which is perhaps the most important link.