Bookshots: 'Metamorphosis' by Nicholas Mosley

Bookshots: Pumping new life into the corpse of the book review

Title:

Metamorphosis

Who wrote it?

Perhaps best known for his Whitbread award-winning novel Hopeful Monsters, which dealt with the question of using science to manipulate human nature to effect change, Nicholas Mosley’s new novella explores similar subjects.

Plot in a Box:

A journalist living in Ireland with his family relives a chance encounter with an aid worker in an African refugee camp that changed his life — and may continue to do so.

Invent a new title for this book:

I would call it: Evolution: Not Just a Theory.

Read this if you liked:

David Mitchell’s divisive novel Cloud Atlas.

Meet the book’s lead:

A late thirty-something journalist and writer who’s spent time in Africa and Gaza covering conflict and tragedy — and who’s never named.

Said lead would be portrayed in a movie by:

A not-so-handsome Hugh Grant with a hint of Christopher Eccleston about him.

Setting: would you want to live there?

Set in Ireland at an unspecified time, the conflict between Loyalists and Republicans—or the “Troubles”— seem to have a peripheral effect on the story; it’s hard to pin down, but there is a sense of the unsettled about the place. Not appealing

What was your favorite sentence?

I was wondering — Could one smuggle explosives in the belly of a whale?

The Verdict:

I didn’t enjoy this. Mosley’s narrative wanders between the past and present, but I rarely got a sense of purpose or that I was being led to a particular place. The narrative is full of sometimes nonsensical thoughts in the main character’s head which don’t shed any light on the subject.

There is a lot of speculation about the potential of the human mind/body/spirit and what might happen if we were to fulfill that potential — that’s probably the only thing that foreshadows the appearance of a god-child in a refugee camp that is “special”. Annoyingly, we only get small glimpses of what that specialness entails or her abilities, and the story ends before anything really happens.

I got very frustrated reading this, as it felt like part of something larger, and left me feeling that Mosley didn’t know how to finish a longer work. Not one I can recommend.