As I reported yesterday I finished another one. I am still not really making any dent in my collection of books but at least I am having fun trying.
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The Rule of Four - Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason
I am not exactly sure what to make of this one. I kind of liked it, was able to read it quite quickly (2.5 days) but somehow it has not blown me away.
There's both old and new friendships being forged and torn apart, people trying to unravel a great secret and the great search or answers, narrow escapes from campus police, some murder, a fire, intrigue, double cross, love lost and won and at the end the promise of more to come. In short: there is a lot in this book and it seems to have all the ingredients to make it a really good read.
The story is about a group of friends at Princeton, all from different backgrounds who live together on campus. There's Tom trying not to make the mistakes his father made and in the process making sense of Frankenstein in 190 pages or less. Then we have Paul -the loner, the genius. He is the one writing a thesis on this mysterious book the Hypnerotomachia. A Renaissance book possibly filled with secret knowledge. A book that Tom's father has spent a lifetime trying to understand. The next one is Charlie, a hardworking student with the promise of greatness thrust upon him and you know he will fulfil his potential. The last one of the group is Gil. He is a rich kid destined to become what his father became before him even though he has no idea what that is yet. Paul's work leads him to all sorts of wonderful discoveries and straight into a heap of trouble. The others try to help him and then all hell breaks loose.
We get some background on all of the characters - how they came to Princeton, how they met as friends and we learn a bit about their families or lack of them. However, the emphasis of the story seems to be on Tom. We learn about the relationship between him and his father. How his father tried to find the secrets of the Hypnerotomachia, how it influenced his life, work and friendships and in a way nearly destroyed the relationship between him and his family. We see how Tom has coped with his father's death and the shadow of his father being cast into his life by this mysterious book, the Hypnerotomachia.
The books as a whole tends to jump from past to present, from one character to another and from one storyline to another. For me all this takes the fluidity of the main story line out of the whole book. It seems to distract you from what the main focus of the book should be, what it proclaims to be: what the blazes is so special about this book they all keep going on about?
Fine, there are secrets hidden in the text of the Hypnerotomachia, there are riddles to be solved to get to the next level of understanding and find even more "truth" hidden inside the book. However, most of this is done from a distance. We are told about this but we are not really involved in the finding of the solutions themselves. We do not suffer sleepless nights with the characters investigating every avenue that can led to a breakthrough, and then stumble upon the solution together. Paul is the one writing the thesis about the Hypnerotomachia and all he does seems to be to go away to investigate something and then come back and tell us what he found, how it solved the next bit of the puzzle. All this meant that in the end I did not even care that much what the "big secret" was or in what clever way it was discovered. I was not involved that much and was too busy being distracted about the whole story of Tom and his relationship with his father. Let me explain: one of the main characters Tom has lost his father a few years ago. His father was a scholar trying to uncover the mysteries of the same book that Tom's roommate Paul is now writing his thesis about. Tom's father was obsessed by the Hypnerotomachia and torn between his love for the book and the secrets it held and his love for his family. A similar ting seems to be in store for Tom but he has love to save him and manages to tear himself away from the book. Tom realises that his life is more important than trying to solve the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia, a choice his father was never able to make. This Tom-storyline weaves it's way in and out of the astounding discoveries that Paul makes about the Hypnerotomachia. You could almost say that it takes over as the most lasting memory of what the book is actually about.
Perhaps that is the strange thing about this novel? A part of it wants the emphasis to be on the research that Paul is doing on this obscure Renaissance book. A book that both Paul, Tom's father and several others in the book keep trying to understand and decipher. Yet the novel's main character seems to be Tom. He is the most rounded character, the best developed, we learn the most about his past, his life features most in the flash backs. Paul, who does most of the work on the Hypnerotomachia, whose life is almost consumed by the book (like Tom's fathers' was) remains the lesser developed character, the outsider, the loner, out on the edge of life being quietly brilliant. He does not get the prominent part in the novel that all his work on the Hypnerotomachia would easily justify. Instead we get Tom. Why is that? Is he novel actually more about life and human relationships than about a book and the secrets is holds?
PS: if Tom does not want to run his mum's other bookshop.... can I apply for the job please?
PS2: they do explain the meaning of the title of the novel somewhere so no worries there!
Title: The Rule of Four
Author: Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason
Century
372 pages
ISBN 1-8441-3005-3
Books bought: 0
Books to be read: 70
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