The Book of Science and Antiquities
Thomas Keneally
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
The Book of Science and Antiquities
Thomas Keneally
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
... a book of philosophy, a novel that seeks significance in the most vital arena.
... markedly Australian.
... sometimes has the feel of a late-life stock-taking exercise in novel form.
Is The Book of Science and Antiquities a sly existential joke, or an entirely solemn endeavour? It’s billed as the latter, as Keneally’s most candid work of fiction to date, a kind of grand human hymn. But there’s a wink or two that suggests he is chuckling into the cosmic void.
Keneally is a writer of immeasurable talents, with an eye for the human drama that makes history. The intertwined stories of men from different eras keep the reader wondering how it will all come together. But this novel falters in the alternately perplexing and overwrought writing in Shade’s voice, which reads like The Clan of the Cave Bear as imagined by 'Penthouse' magazine.
By looping these seemingly disparate narratives across time, Keneally meditates on the unchanged rhythm of human emotion from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epochs. Unfortunately, with the focus squarely on philosophical musings, this novel suffers from a wandering plot and a lack of character development. Keneally’s language ranges from richly descriptive to captivating, but the structure of the book ultimately works against its readability.
Big topics are addressed: manhood, love, war, humanity’s past and future, the meaning of life, the nature of death. But Apple isn’t engaging in his ponderings, and Learned Man’s world befuddles as often as it intrigues. The women in both eras are strong but mostly serve as objects of men’s affection or lust—and those prehistoric sex scenes should maybe have been taken out back and buried.
... inventive but disappointing.