Genesis
A novel by Bernard Beckett
New Zealand's Bernard Beckett wrote this slight novel while he was on a Royal Society genetics research fellowship investigating DNA mutations, and when I think of how difficult it is for me to find the time to work on my writing while designing warehouses during the day, I'm just in awe of the magic that he created in this book. The man is clearly brilliant, and he's written an almost perfect novel, 150 pages that I can guarantee you will burn through in a single reading. It's that gripping. And that wonderful. I can't -- or I won't -- get into many details of the plot of the novel, because each page is a new revelation, but it ostensibly takes place in a future world in which a girl named Anax is undergoing an oral examination to join the vaunted Academy, and the novel is divided into four parts based on the four hours of her intense examination. As such, the story is largely told in a question-and-answer dialogue between Anax and her Examiners, but since her examination is about the history of Adam Forde, an important figure in the history of this future world (he lived from 2058 to 2077, we are told on the second page), much of the story is simply Anax recounting the history of this time, in response to the questions, but what a fascinating history (future history, in our case) it is.
I cannot go into any other details without possibly revealing too much, but let's just say that the twists and turns are truly stunning and completely compelling. It's a very cerebral work, not something that can be read lightly, but the language is clear and robust, and if you are able to take a few moments to reflect on the extraordinary themes in play about the nature of consciousness and freedom and fate and future, in the midst of your reading, I'd definitely recommend. But it will be difficult to pause and think, for this is also a wonderfully suspenseful thriller that you won't want to wait to finish. I'm not typically a reader of books like this -- I'm not sure how I ended up placing it into my "Saved for Later" cart in Amazon, or why I decided to purchase it many months later -- but in any case I haven't read a lot of sci-fi fiction, although I wouldn't call this a sci-fi book necessarily, and I'm not a philosophical reader, although this is certainly more than a philosophy book (even if several characters have great philosopher names), and I'm not really even a suspense novel reader (but this is much more than suspense). This is probably something akin to a Philip K. Dick novel, but since I've only seen the movie versions of his stories (Blade Runner, Minority Report), I can only guess. It seems to be thoroughly original to me. And highly recommended.
