The novel is a delicate and deliberate construction with an experientially Derridean feel; a playful web of subtle wordplay and leitmotif tick into place with the meticulous articulation of clockwork. This is not to say the plot is secondary to McCarthy’s style, it is, in actuality, rather engaging – it’s more the prosaic backdrop is so intricate and playful that is takes as much attention as the plot itself.
McCarthy’s prose is a kind of tunneling, a digging underneath the surface of things – mirrored in the novel's bomb trenches in WW1, or the Pharonic dummy chambers – which, in a nice Blanchotian move, as each textual tunnel undermines its predecessor, “breaks down into grains and runs away".
On occasion however, the style becomes questionable: aspects of McCarthy’s rendition of WW1 in this playful mode feel a little incongruous, and even bordering on inappropriate, considering the actual horrors of the period. There are also occasions where it gets confusing and hard to follow, specifically in scenes of planning, exposition & heavy dialogue – the early scenes of WW1 again, and also those early in the Egypt quarter. This doesn't detract too much however, and in parts where it's more suited it's a real pleasure to read. An enchanting section in Serge’s youth where a game of Monopoly is extrapolated up to life size and then distilled down again, along with Serge digging to freedom in prison and a later sequence at a séance deserving particular mention.
Along with the novel's Derridean character there are subtle nods to other stars of continental philosophy: Serge’s discovery of Hölderlin’s poetry, alongside his tendency to pick apart all forms of communication, seem particularly Heideggerian and an exquisite sequence where he’s is nearly executed at the war's climax seems too close to Maurice Blanchot's The Instant Of My Death to be coincidental. These continental nods will not be highlights or even noticeable for many readers, and if you don’t pick them up it won’t hamper your enjoyment of the book; but for fans of the inter-text and the postmodern and poststructural these references will be a guaranteed winner, giving the novel a rich philosophical backdrop.
In C McCarthy develops an interesting practice of inverse imagery, where the framework for a metaphoric image is built in prosaic description and then repeated later as a metaphor itself. For example when describing red mineral deposits in ice he avoids the easy metaphor of blood and milk, creating the image purely in descriptive prose. Later, in an ingenious repetition, blood and milk is compared back to the earlier deposits, clarifying what has already passed; in this way images tunnel synchronically through the book from start to finish. This process however, isn’t always successful, and it’s often only when the repetition comes around that the initial image becomes clear.
Tom McCarthy at the Booker Prize.
Thematically the novel tends to be a kind of dialogue, an anti-dialectic if you will - another nice touch for the poststructuralists out there - which in the measured and interesting prose contain some really engaging moments. The primary focus being the mechanics of communication and the communication of mechanics – the novel delves into every mode of communication imaginable, and some you would never have imagined before their inclusion here. It’s a literal cacophony of networks and communication – Serge spends his childhood at a deaf school investigating Radio signals before moving into Morse code, and, later, after a panoply of others, archeology; it's often quite a task – enjoyably so – to try and discern the signal from McCarthy’s white noise.
C is rich with these thematic dialogues another being between processes of history and genealogy, the novel itself trying to embody these processes of synchronic history in it’s very repetitions, and this process has interesting connotations for the field of literature: the novel being set during the rise of the avant-garde is no coincidence, as McCarthy himself noted in the guardian: "The task for contemporary literature is to deal with the legacy of modernism. I'm not trying to be modernist, but to navigate the wreckage of that project". The strains of Modernism can be plainly felt in the novel – it's been compared to Beckett, Bolano and Pynchon – but their usage (and repetition) is refined and delicate, feeling more of an acknowledgment than a dry reusing.
The novel's title - an interesting conundrum that keeps you guessing to the end - is probably the best example of the intelligence and precision of McCarthy's writing, at one point or another interacting with every single theme and motif. Whether it refers to the repetitious CCs of carbon copies, the elemental C of carbon, Serge's surname (Carrefax), Cocaine, or merely the processes of Communication, I couldn't tell you, but, I suspect in a move of Différance, it refers to both all and neither.
There is however, a slight incongruity here, as all this poststructuralism snags on the linear narrative of Serge's life. The evocation of the linear dialectics of history seems to undermine some of the novels more interesting techniques and quirks, but again, not too seriously to cause any lasting damage on its overall effects.
C amongst the rest of the Booker nominees
A question you find yourself asking afterwards, as the novel fades away, concerns the drawing of the characters. The novel’s focus is more on ideas of interpretation, issues of subjectivity and internal coherence, and thus the portraiture of characters becomes a secondary concern; which at the time of reading is not an issue, but as one looks back, trying to recapture some of the highpoints, you can’t help but find, instead of Serge, Sophie’s face peering out from the surreal final sequence: “a featureless oval of the texture and off-white colour of the fluoroscope machine”.
The most serious issue in the novel comes in the continuous repetition of the theme of communication and problems with signifying languages, by the end it really does get rather heavy handed. With all the subtlety in the leitmotif and wordplay this overarching focus on communication gets incredibly repetitious, excessively hammering home the point.
In C McCarthy has created an excellent, thoughtful and intelligent novel, one that’s worth reading and rereading, not just for its philosophy, but for the great story within which it’s housed and the intricate prose forming that. Its only real letdown is the profusion of the central theme; if Borges and Coetzee have taught us anything it's that philosophical fiction works best when less exposed, affording the reader the work of disinterring – the prose merely beginning the process.
Definitely pick up a copy of the beautiful hardback here.