C [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Tom McCarthy (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 7, 2010

C has been shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.


The acclaimed author of Remainder, which Zadie Smith hailed as “one of the great English novels of the past ten years,”gives us his most spectacularly inventive novel yet.

Opening in England at the turn of the twentieth century, C is the story of a boy named Serge Carrefax, whose father spends his time experimenting with wireless communication while running a school for deaf children. Serge grows up amid the noise and silence with his brilliant but troubled older sister, Sophie: an intense sibling relationship that stays with him as he heads off into an equally troubled larger world.

After a fling with a nurse at a Bohemian spa, Serge serves in World War I as a radio operator for reconnaissance planes. When his plane is shot down, Serge is taken to a German prison camp, from which he escapes. Back in London, he’s recruited for a mission to Cairo on behalf of the shadowy Empire Wireless Chain. All of which eventually carries Serge to a fitful—and perhaps fateful—climax at the bottom of an Egyptian tomb . . .

Only a writer like Tom McCarthy could pull off a story with this effortless historical breadth, psychological insight, and postmodern originality.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Remainder established McCarthy as a contemporary champion of the experimental novel and heir to the postmodern stylists of the late 20th century, but it's difficult to come up with a suitable thematic or stylistic precursor to his unclassifiably brilliant latest. The enigmatic title signifies (for starters) Serge Carrefax, who grows up in early 1900s England on the grounds of the Versoie House, where his inventor-father Simeon runs a school for the deaf, using his pupils to test the copper-wire telegraphs and radio gizmos that are his obsession. There, Serge and his ill-fated sister, Sophie, enact strange experiments in chemistry and star in a school pageant depicting Ceres's journey to the underworld. More C-words follow, as an older, haunted Serge travels to a Bavarian sanitarium in search of the healing chemical cysteine and, following his enrollment in the 104th Airborne Squadron, enjoys flying reconnaissance while high on cocaine. The young century unfurls, bringing with it spiritualists, Egyptian espionage, and a fateful tryst in an ancient tomb, where Serge will at last discover the delicate wavelengths that connect him to the historical signals for which he is an ideal receiver. Each chapter of McCarthy's tour de force is a cryptic, ornate puzzle box, rich with correspondences and emphatically detailed digressions. Ambitious readers will be eager to revisit this endlessly interpretive world, while more casual readers will marvel at the high-flying picaresque perched at the crossroads of science and the stuff dreams are made of.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Even with a good deal of mainstream attention for his third novel, C, Tom McCarthy is still something of a fringe writer. That's by choice, and not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe McCarthy, who owes a debt to James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and the French nouveau roman, has it right when it comes to the writer's prerogative. "There is an intrepid attitude to Mr. McCarthy's literary sally that has little to do with pleasing publishers or an audience," writes the Wall Street Journal. The result is simultaneously brilliant, cryptic, reflexive, and difficult, and McCarthy seems to be content with letting his audience find the story here. Despite being an "experimental" novel, C is never less than thought-provoking, particularly for the multilayered narrative whose threads invite recognition while resisting interpretation. Only the New York Times thought otherwise--but that's Michiko Kakutani for you.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (September 7, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307593339
• ISBN-13: 978-0307593337
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #412,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 87 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Central Character Is A Cypher of Curious Detachment August 31, 2010

By K. Harris HALL OF FAMETOP 10 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I actively sought out Tom McCarthy's "C" based on the reputation of his previous work "Remainder" as well as the initial rapturous reviews from England. I truly expected to love "C!" But while I admired the effort and I found the middle section enthralling, ultimately I was left a little cold. More of a postmodern experiment than a conventional novel, McCarthy's work will certainly fire the synapses of your brain--but as an intellectual and literary exercise, I'm not sure that it will touch your heart. To be fair, I don't think it was McCarthy's intention to go anywhere near the territory of "heart touching," but I just wanted to offer up a alternate viewpoint (and I'm sure I'll be crucified for it--start your negative campaign now) for more casual readers.

"C" is not particularly concerned with conventional narrative or characterizations. In fact, Serge Carrefax--the central character--is a blank slate cypher who observes the world more than he understands it. One of the things I most enjoyed about "C" is that McCarthy oftentimes gives us clues about important aspects of Serge's life that he is completely oblivious of--and thus, these things never get discussed or developed in any tangible way. It's an ingenious device that both amused me but kept the novel aloof. "C" follows Serge from birth, through his relationship with his troubled sister, to a recuperative health spa, to his experiences in the war, to his homecoming as an adult, to his sojourn to Egypt. Each section is relatively stand-alone, developing on its own topics and ideas. Once Serge leaves home to start discovering the world, I started getting into the rhythm and cadence of McCarthy's prose and I was fully hooked until the final sequence in Egypt. Instead of reaffirming what I had admired about the book, its denseness only served to distance me from it irrevocably.

Much discussion has centered around the meaning of the title "C" as it references many plot points or themes within the work. I think that it is fair to say that connectivity and communication are developed throughout "C" as central thesis points, and as such, it's odd that I'd end up feeling curiously detached at the novel's conclusion. Once again, there is much ambition and intelligence at work here and, in no way, would I discourage someone who is intrigued by this work to avoid it. But know what you're getting into! I have no doubt that "C" will continue to be embraced--I just wanted to counter with my opinion that "C" was ultimately easier for me to admire than it was to love.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Quintessential Literary Fiction September 5, 2010

By Nicole Del Sesto

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

C is not so much as story as a series of eclectic snapshots of the life of Serge Carrefax. These snapshots seem to include tidbits of information about things the author surely must be interested in. Things like, the making of silk, teaching the deaf to speak (and perform Greek tragedies), the mechanics of WWI, wireless communications (i.e. Marconi, not the iPhone), Egypt, etc. There's a lot of scientific explanation and detail, which for the most part was very interesting. If feels, to me, a bit like Serge was created so the author had a vehicle to express his varied interests. I'm not criticizing that, by the way, just expressing an opinion.

It's certainly well written. There are moments of sheer brilliance and perfection.

There's a part during the war where Serge's leader is telling him that a mission is being undertaken, by "tunnelers" to lay explosives underneath enemy trenches. They are concerned that the Germans are perhaps performing the same task even further down.

McCarthy writes:

"Serge becomes fascinated with these tunnelers, these moles. He pictures their noses twitching as they alternatively dig and strap on stethoscopes that, pressing to the ground, they listen through for sounds of netherer moles undermining their undermining. If they did hear them doing this, he tells himself, then they could dig an even lower tunnel, undermine the under-undermining: on and on forever, or at least for as long as the volume and mass of the globe allowed it--until the earth gave over to a molten core, or, bypassing this, they emerged in Australia to find there was no war there ...."

A strange book, you get hints of character's eccentricity, but I'm not sure you ever fully know any of the characters. Even Serge. Also, a number of characters are unceremoniously dumped, never to be heard from again. That's part of the "snapshot" thing, but it left me wondering, but what about...? There's some great humor in this book, but no emotion. Which I find so odd, because there are parts which would ordinarily be emotional. There were times I was enthralled and times not so much. Oddly (for me), I found the war parts the most engaging, and the Egyptian part the least so.

A really interesting read.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Clever, intriguing and funny - this is a terrific book September 8, 2010

By Ripple

Format:Hardcover

"C" follows the life of Serge Carrefax. Set in the early part of the twentieth century, the reader encounters Serge at various key moments in his life and each of these is quite fascinating and engrossingly related. It's one of those books that is like Dr Who's Tardis - so much happens that when he recalls an earlier part of his life, I found myself thinking `oh yes, that was in this book too, wasn't it?' The book has been described as post-structuralist but don't let that literary labelling put you off. Yes, it's a complex book that can be read at many levels, (and one which I know I'll come back to), but it's completely readable and not at all `difficult'.

You will probably be wondering what does "C" stand for? Well, so am I and I've finished the book! There are a lot of contenders - perhaps it stands simply for Carrefax, but it could also stand for Communication, as this features throughout the book. C also features at one point as a symbol for a place where it's possible to buy Cocaine. Symbols are another recurring theme. McCarthy likes his recurring themes and images. Or perhaps C stands for something else entirely....

Serge (English father and deaf French mother) is born into a house in rural England that serves both as a silk production factory and a school for the deaf. His father is obsessed with experimental wireless communication. If you start there, it's not too surprising that your life is going to be a little strange - and his early life is filled with cryptic signals of various kinds. But it's all very grounded in reality.

Later, following a personal tragedy, Serge finds himself in an East European spa before the next time we meet him serving in the Air Force as a radio operator in World War One. Although we jump from stage to stage in his life, each one is so perfectly told and beautifully described, there's no discordant sense to the reading experience. The descriptions of what it felt like to be an early aviator in the Great War are frighteningly real. If you enjoyed Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong, then you will find equal terror here above ground. It's here that drugs start to appear as cocaine is used to heighten the eyesight of aviators.

Drugs remain on the scene upon his return to 1920s London and weird communication and signals again re-appear with public seances as bereaved parents seek to contact their lost sons. Finally Serge finds himself again in communication, this time in Egypt.

If this all sounds rather deep or dry, fear not. There's plenty of humour too. Discussing losses to friendly fire and experimental flying during his stationing in France in the War, "Serge, chewing on his omelette, wonders if it's really necessary to fight the Germans after all: they could all just lounge around, each on their own side, dying in random accidents until nobody's left and the war's over by default".

And while set in the early part of the twentieth century, the idea of inventions that are supposed to help, ultimately ending up harming is perhaps one that we have yet to learn from. If the book has a weakness it could be said to be in character development - I never got much of a sense of Serge's character, but this isn't a character-led book.

It's one of those terrific books that reads well but which also stands up to a more critical analysis. It's only 300 or so pages, but reading it, I felt like I'd lived Serge's life. I urge you to read it too.