C Book

In essence this is a story of Serge Carrefax's journey through life from its very beginning in the late nineteenth century, his adolescence, his flying experience doing radio navigation during the 1st world war, his tumultuous after war period and the final part of his life serving in Egypt intelligence gathering. The unifying link of each stage of his life is the connection with radio waves and this is probably why I struggled to fully enjoy the book. The novel is written as a biographical account of Serge from his perspective at the time. For example, in describing his near drowning at the age of two, you really have a bird's eye view into his perception of the experience, and the same occurs again when his older and exceptionally gifted older sister dies. Similarly you are left guessing at the cause of his mystery illness and although I suspect it wasn't really an illness but a condition induced by teenage hormones, this type of cryptic writing is perhaps too frustrating for me. It is true that through life we don't always understand the precise cause and effect of our experiences but the result of reading this style of writing is it leaves you dissatisfied. People who love searching for clues may enjoy this, but a book that leaves me needing to ask the author a list of about 100 questions at the end has perhaps failed to translate itself well enough to me.
To people who are very familiar with the technology it is very readable and the scenes from the First World War and the psychic convention in London after the war are fascinating, well researched and extremely well transcribed. This book does not lack depth, storytelling, research or intrigue but the connection with radio waves alone is just a bit too tenuous for me and I felt, and perhaps this was deliberate on the part of the author, that it lacked any connections with emotional intelligence. It almost needed a feminine touch - an editor who would challenge some of the unfinished business. I was left feeling unintelligent because there were so many loose endings and I couldn't really see how they were tied together other than through radio waves - perhaps that's enough? Other reviews have suggested it is a book to read twice to really get the hidden meanings. I really would have to care more about the characters to expend the effort.

C follows the short intense life of Serge Carrefax a man who - as his name suggests - surges into the electric modernity of the early twentieth century transfixed by the technologies that will obliterate him. Born to the sound of one of the very earliest experimental wireless stations Serge finds himself steeped in a weird world of transmissions whose very air seems filled with cryptic and poetic signals of all kinds. When personal loss strikes him in his adolescence this world takes on a darker and more morbid aspect.

Nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2010, Tom McCarthys C follows the intense life of Serge Cerrefax, a man born at the end of the 19th century, who develops a chilling and spellbinding obsession with machines.