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In Review

21 November 2008 20:10 BST

The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway

Published by Random House, out now, hardback, 532pp, £17.99.

In a nutshell...

Post-apocalyptic pirates seek new iconoclasm

What's it all about?

Gonzo Lubitsch stands out in a world that is dominated by weirdness and singularity. With the apocalypse past and the Go Away War still haunting the survivor's waking and sleeping thoughts, Gonzo is a bastion of unswerving heroism looking to make the globe as right as it can be. Reined in by his unnamed but eternal friend and spurred on by his gang of ex-military adrenaline junkies, Gonzo and co set about correcting a problem that has the potential to end the world as they know it. Again.

Setting out in growling and monstrous new trucks, the group head to the heart of the problem travelling along the Pipe, a vast artillery that crosses the liveable globe pumping out a mysterious and vital chemical that is the known world's only protection against a shroud of unspeakable mayhem that descended after the Go Away War.

For The Pipe is on fire - and that cannot happen.

Who's it by?

On his own terms, Nick Harkaway is a Cornish Cambridge graduate who found a small degree of success writing movie scripts and copywriting for designer lingerie websites before turning his pen to work on this debut novel. He lives with his girlfriend and enjoys practicing kung-fu badly.

However, to those who know him and (thanks to the internet at large) to anyone who cares to find out, Nick Harkaway is in fact one Nicholas Cornwell, son of David Cornwell, who is in turn more commonly known as John le Carre.

As an example:

"And then, as swiftly as it had come upon us, it was gone. A small place, after all. Gonzo turned the wheel, bringing the truck in a wide, powerful turn, and the last empty cottage vanished behind us. Bone Briskett's tank went roaring out ahead, and Gonzo rapped his hands on the wheel, papapapahhh!

'The open road!' I shouted into the radio.

'Oh, ecstacy!' cried Jim Hepsobah and Sally Culpepper.

'Oh, poop-poop!' yelled Gonzo Lubitsch.

Bone Briskett didn't say anything, but he said it in a way which made it clear he thought we were mad.

Please, dear Lord.

I want to go home."

Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster

It could be done, although the suspension of disbelief necessary to read this novel is absolute and it would be a facile and wasted effort to try and find some collection of images that could tether it to the terra firma of the believable. It would be a huge detraction and derision of the author's purposely ambiguous narrative intentions and the reader's gawking assumptions about this world he has created. It would also take a colossal amount of money. Harkaway deserves to have his decision to tell this story in a literary form honoured.

What the others say

"With the right wind behind it, The Gone-Away World could easily become a modern classic. Its scope and ambition are extraordinary, its execution is often breathtaking, and its style is by turns hilarious, outrageous, devastating, hip and profound." - Independent

So is it any good?

The Gone Away World is a dangerously strong debut novel. It is audacious and it is epic in form and in content, gilding a plot that is of both Homeric and quixotic magnitudes. Its intelligence would be its downfall were it not matched by a keen and deprecating wit that in tandem soon pummel the reader into the kind of malleable state that only the most natural talents can manage. Like all great books, it will have its detractors, with the author's lineage and privilege an easy line of attack. A slightly more credible criticism is that the book's sheer and limitless possibilities could leave the reader feeling that Harkaway is perhaps a little too indulgent.

And this book is indeed indulgent, but it is by no means corpulent or indolent or any other pejorative term one cares to associate with excess. There is simply no denying the singularity of talent necessary to achieve what Harkaway has managed.

While no novel is perfect, there seems little valid argument that this book, with its arcane and inimitable plot course and style, could have been done better by anyone else.

9.5/10

Mark Burton