This intricate, demanding story of political and personal
commitment and betrayal - which won Scotland's Saltire Prize for
Best First Novel (in 1994) - introduces a young master of
postmodernist irony who will remind many readers of several of the
brainier postwar Eastern European novelists. The setting is a
futuristic Britain where "history" is expected to serve the
interests of the state and all dissent is ruthlessly suppressed. A
narrator whose relation to the novel he's writing is colored by his
own complicated erotic life speculates on the motives (which appear
similarly sexual) of his story's protagonist - who accepts
open-ended possibility as proof of the genius of Alfredo Galli, an
experimental writer whose work celebrates what might be called the
principle of uncertainty. ("Galli had this idea that our whole life
is just a story, and there are all these other ways the story could
go, but somehow they get stolen from us.") Yet both writer and
character seek a conclusive explanation of the mysterious, and
perhaps not accidental, death in an "automobile accident" of the
latter's father, Robert Waters, a historian unwisely involved with
both a supposedly seditious publication and a physicist friend,
Charles King, with whom he seems to have shared musical and amatory
interests. All this is every bit as complex and teasing as it
sounds, and the book's obsessive concern with the ethics and logic
of settling for received wisdom is further elaborated by such
amusing leitmotifs as King's unhappy acquaintance with a probably
deranged pseudo-scientist determined to undermine the reputation of
Albert Einstein and "the pernicious ideology of relativity." This
is a genuine novel of ideas, more than a little disorienting in the
early going, as we labor to understand how its several parts will
intersect - and surprisingly stimulating and exciting, as we see
how Crumey imperturbably puts it all together. A formidable debut,
from a writer whose possibilities, so to speak, seem virtually
unlimited. (Kirkus Reviews)
"Two people meet on a train: the young man is imagining a novel,
and imagining the life of the young woman. A waiter rushes out to
find a girl he fancied who hasn't paid her bill, only to find a
diary in which their fictitious flirtation is anatomised. But the
story actually begins with a man taking a leak after making love to
his wife. He has the inklings of a novel, but thoughts will keep
intruding, with all their seductive possibilities. The man on the
train is living in an England that has decided, with characteristic
diffidence and lack of fuss, that it no longer wants to live under
a totalitarian regime which has lasted for 40 years. I say
totalitarian, but think more of Brazil, a world of terribly genial
tyranny, where officialdom tries so hard to be accommodating. And
Duncan has another story, one prompted by the memory of his
father's car crashing down a slope. As with all good postmodernist
novels, the endless digressions are more soothing than
jarring."Murrough O'Brien in The Independent on Sunday The
strikingly inventive structure of this novel allows the author to
explore the similarities between fictions and history. At any
point, there are infinite possibilities for the way the story, a
life, or the history of the world might progress. The whole work is
enjoyably unpredictable, and poses profound questions about the
issues of motivation, choice and morality." The Sunday Times"A
writer more interested in inheriting the mantle of Perec and
Kundera than Amis and Drabble. Like much of the most interesting
British fiction around at the moment, Music, in a Foreign Language
is being published in paperback by a small independent publishing
house, giving hope that a tentative but long overdue counter-attack
is being mounted on the indelible conservatism of the modern
English novel.With this novel he has begun his own small stand
against cultural mediocrity, and to set himself up, like his hero,
as ' a refugee from drabness. From tinned peas, and rain.'"Jonathan
Coe in The Guardian
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