Reviewed by Harriet
William Boyd’s latest novel has been almost overwhelmingly greeted with admiration and praise. ‘A Spy Story to rival Restless’ is the Guardian’s headline, harking back to Boyd’s 2007 masterpiece. Like that novel, this one is set in the past – this time, the 1960s. In fact the novel begins in 1960 with Gabriel Dax, the young protagonist, travelling to the Congo to interview the newly elected prime minister Patrice Lumumba. The interview is never published, and the tapes end up gathering dust in Gabriel’s office. But much to his amazement, they turn out to be political dynamite after Lumumba’s 1961 assassination, as they contain his murmured naming of several very high-up people who he believes will be trying to kill him.
All Gabriel really wants to do is keep writing his rather florid though successful travel books. But after what he initially thinks is a chance meeting with glamorous older woman Faith Green, he gets recruited into MI6 and sent off to Spain on a mysterious errand to buy a painting from a celebrated artist and deliver it to charming, witty, gay Kit Caldwell, head of MI6 in Madrid. Soon, despite his unwillingness, Gabriel finds himself more and more in demand for carrying out secret missions around Cold-War Europe.
While all this is going on, Gabriel is trying to discover the reason for his persistent insomnia, and consults Dr Katerina Haas, a rather mysterious foreign psychoanalyst, who convinces him that he needs to uncover the true facts about his childhood trauma: aged four, he had escaped from the burning house in which his mother died. He also finds himself desperately in love with his handler, Faith Green, but the glorious nights they spend together do not lead to a happy future.
The novel ends on an ambiguous note, and it seems that Boyd may be planning to make this the first of a series. Will I read the next one? Probably not. Sadly, unlike most of the rest of the world, I was not gripped by Gabriel’s Moon. Boyd is certainly good at evoking historical periods, and the 60s are convincingly depicted here through the details of peoples’ clothes, the meals they eat, the wine they drink, as well as the various places Gabriel visits and the overall political background. But as a character, Gabriel did not grab me, or even interest me particularly. And I wasn’t convinced that MI6 would so readily trust him with important missions, nor was I sure of the relevance of the analysis/childhood trauma thread that runs though the novel. I guess it was there to give some life to Gabriel, who does come across as a bit of an uncertain ditherer. But who wouldn’t be if they were recruited out of the blue by a glamorous lady spy? I won’t go as far as the Amazon reviewer who gave it one star and wrote ‘Without doubt the worst book Boyd has written. To call it facile drivel is to underestimate just how poor this book is.’ But I did find myself somewhat in agreement with The Scotsman, which calls it ‘a jangling experience’.
It’s not our practice at Shiny to give less than positive reviews and I’m sorry to be writing this one. Perhaps I missed something in this book that others have found? Or could it possibly be that Boyd is such a cultural icon that the press fall over themselves to shower whatever he writes with praise? Anyway, I certainly won’t tell you not to read it. You’ll probably love it.
Harriet is a co-founder and one of the editors of Shiny.
Harriet is a co-founder and one of the editors of Shiny.
William Boyd, Gabriel’s Moon (Penguin Viking, 2024). 978-0241542057, 272pp., hardback.
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