Aug 07 2009
‘Quicksilver’ by Neal Stephenson
Last month Helen’s mum picked up a copy of Quicksilver for a book group, but chose the wrong Quicksilver. (I don’t know which one she was supposed to buy, but I can only hope it wasn’t quite as long as this one!). She passed along to us the one she hadn’t meant to buy — Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson.
I enjoyed Quicksilver in the same way I used to enjoy Saturday afternoons watching the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. There’s nothing to beat a good fictionalised retelling of history. And Neal Stephenson’s stories are tinged with enough science fiction that when you read up on some fact or other and discover it to be true it makes things that much more fun.
The story is set in the mid-17th century — the newly-crowned Charles II and the newly-created Royal Society are important features of the story. The events of 1660-odd onward are recounted from the view of a not-brilliant Natural Philosopher, a vagabond and an escaped Turkish slave.
Apart from a much greater familiarity with Restoration-era England and the European royal family (let’s face, it is just one family) I also picked up more interesting facts like the origin of the word “dollar” and the surgical method for removing bladder stones. Which, not coincidentally, are also known as calculi.
The book is exciting — Plague! Fire! Invasion! — and devious, held together with encrypted letters and metaphors. There are interludes of absurdity, such as chapters written in the style of a Restoration comedy, and others devoted to slight-veiled descriptions of important scientific discoveries. The events of the story never seem to stray too far from reality.
If you’re looking for something engrossing, irreverent and enriching to get your mind around, this might well be the book you need.
Despite being over 900 pages long, this book comprises only the first part Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle series. I’m really looking forward to getting the next two, The Confusion and The System of the World.
hey, if it’s that good, can we have it back when you folks are done with it…? I could do with a ripping yarn.
As you know from asnother thread, I loved it.
And particularly where Stephenson throws in lots of sly, ludicrous anachronisms that only a modern audience would twig. eg. Isaac Newton pondering the rudiments of quantum theory. Absolutely delight. And daft as hell.
He also does such a great job at making everything sound chaotic and fantastically bonkers that it’s startling to discover later that a lot of the most outlandish details are historically accurate.
Still can’t believe you read it that quickly. You are obviously a Terminator or a Cylon.
[…] Another book down! I am now officially either a Terminator or a Cylon, though I never saw a Terminator relaxing with a good book so we’ll go with Cylon for now. (For context, see this comment.) […]
[…] last volume of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, The System of the World. Back in August I was effusive with my praise of part one but never got round to saying anything when I finished part two (The Confusion). So let this entry […]