Reviewed by Catherine Cheek
The Somnambulist, by Jonathan Barnes, will defy your expectations at every turn. It’s a murder mystery set in post-Victorian London, full of odd characters and even odder events.
The main character is Edward Moon, a stage magician who has seen better days. His omnipresent sidekick is the Somnambulist, a golem-like giant of a man who drinks nothing but milk, writes notes on a slate instead of speaking, and can’t be killed no matter how many swords are thrust through him (a cornerstone of the act.) Moon’s popularity is fading, and he no longer commands the audiences or the regard he once did. However, he still has a reputation with the police as an amazing sleuth, so when a fat actor named Honeyman is pushed from a high tower, the victim’s wife asks Moon for assistance in solving the crime.
Moon and the Somnambulist are stymied in their investigation by a lack of clues and by animosity from the Honeyman family. Just when they’ve given up solving the case, the police inspector tells them another man has been pushed from a high tower, only this one is still alive. They rush to his deathbed, where the man recognizes Moon and tells him “God be with you.”
Moon visits a Madam, whose prostitutes are all sideshow freaks. She tells him about a man known as “The Human Fly” who can climb any wall and could have pushed the victims to their deaths. They confront the Fly, and he all but confesses to the crime, but then he, too, recognizes Moon, and says “God be with you,” after which he rushes off and throws himself from a high building.
Moon wants to be free of the case, but he’s convinced otherwise by an albino named Skimpole, with whom Moon has an unhappy history. Skimpole works for a mysterious organization called “The Directorate.” Skimpole convinces him subtly and then forcefully that he must follow through to the end. London will be destroyed soon, Skimpole tells him, unless Moon solves the mystery and puts an end to it in the next few days.
The strength of this novel is in its odd characters. Instead of Mina, the prostitute with a heart of gold, we have Mina, the bearded prostitute with a vestigial limb. Thomas Cribb, a man who lives backwards in time, becomes maudlin and sentimental the first time he meets Moon, because for him it is the last time they will ever see each other. The author also gives us Benjamin Mackenzie-Cooper, an Eton man who pretends to be a Chinese Butcher; Madame Innocenti, the elegant and ladylike medium (who may or may not be a fake); The Prefects, assassins who dress like schoolboys, and Barabbas, also known as “The Fiend” who lives in a jail cell and collects beautiful things.
It was hinted that Barabbas might have been the once lovely (now hideous) dear friend of Edward Moon’s, who was corrupted by Skimpole, but like many things in the novel, this was never said outright. Moon embarrassed himself at the Clapham incident, but this too was mentioned several times yet never explained. Moon’s sister appears as a character later on, but she tries to leave soon, saying that bad things happen when she and her brother spend too much time together. This is the kind of fascinating detail you could hang a whole novel on, but here it’s just thrown out and then abandoned. I wished that the author would have saved these great ideas for another book, and spent more time with the ones he had. As in a museum, a good curator leaves most of the pieces in storage, and only brings out a few of the best ones, where they will have plenty of space and light so people can see the artwork properly. The ideas were creative, but there were too many of them and they started to detract from one another.
While this novel had many interesting characters, I wished more of them were likeable. Edward Moon, the main protagonist, is curt with the prostitute he frequents, rude to his housekeeper, and barely more than cordial with the Somnambulist (who appears to be his only friend.) When he meets Thomas Cribb, Moon shows nothing but disdain for him, even though Cribb goes out of his way to be friendly and helpful. The only time he shows affection is when he sees his sister, but even then he puts her in danger for the sake of his investigation. A likeable main character will keep me reading no matter how byzantine the plot, but after about a hundred pages, Moon had worked through the benefit of the doubt. The Directorate and others kept insisting that London was about to go up in flames, but it didn’t seem to matter, as this London didn’t have anyone I cared about in it. (And also, Thomas Cribb lives backwards through time, and he’s alive in the twentieth century, so that indicated that London wouldn’t get destroyed at the end of the week. Nothing like a voice from the future to put slack in the tension.)
The plot is convoluted, with many stops and starts. It’s only a murder mystery in that Edward Moon’s investigation into the deaths of Honeyman and Dunbar leads him further into the real plot against the city. The real plot involves doomsday cults, zombies, dead poets, assassins, dragons, exploding statues and sentient computers. Okay, so it only involves four of those elements (and I won’t tell you which ones, because I don’t want to spoil it) but the fact that you can’t tell gives an indication of how twisted the story is.
Sometimes in a novel, there’s one line that pretty much sums up the whole book for me:
Irritation rose in Charlotte’s voice. “You’re being mysterious again.”
“I know.” He shrugged. “I can’t help it.”
The Somnambulist is all about things left unexplained. The novel never tells the history of the Somnambulist (why he can’t die, etc.), the reason why he’s called a sleepwalker, or even why the book bears his name as a title. They suggest early on that Edward Moon has real powers, psychic or otherwise, but these never manifest. The narrator does not even identify himself until almost the three hundredth page. Small mysteries can pull the reader along, but only if for every new mystery, another one is resolved. It’s like a compact between reader and author; if the reader keeps caring, the author will reward her with an explanation. With so many loose ends left dangling, I felt unsatisfied.
This novel is more Wunderkammer than diorama; it’s a collection of strange and wondrous things. Barnes has an extensive vocabulary and recreates the nineteenth century vernacular skillfully. However, it lacked enough clarity for my taste.
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