The Hidden

August 3, 2009
British author Hill's fourth novel, a chilly existential thriller, is dazzling in places, but suffers fatal problems of pacing and plausibility. Ben Mercer, a disaffected Oxford classics student, runs off to Greece to escape the fallout of a failed marriage. There, a chance encounter with former colleague Eberhard affords Ben the chance to work on an archeological dig in Sparta, Spartan civilization being Ben's area of expertise (his “Notes Towards a Thesis” on Spartan culture are interspersed throughout the novel and make a fascinating parallel text). Ben receives a frosty reception from Eberhard's secretive group, but after finding deformed skulls at the dig site, participating in a jackal hunt and developing a relationship with the beautiful Natsuko, Ben is accepted and begins to realize his compatriots have a sinister agenda. Hill's use of the thriller structure to make broader commentary about modern life provides many rewarding and intelligent turns, but the plot itself is slow, predicable and, due to the villains' largely unexplored motivations, unsatisfying. The evocations of Greece and historical details of Sparta are excellent, but too much of this novel is muddled or at odds with itself.

September 1, 2009
Ancient and modern Greece meet in this ambitious, slow-paced story of an archaeological dig whose members have a hidden agenda.

Hill (The Love of Stones, 2001, etc.) uses as his viewpoint character a 25-year-old archaeologist. Ben Mercer, a postgraduate teacher/student, has spent the last seven years at Oxford. While there, the Englishman married foreign-born Emine; they had one child, Vanessa, before Emine divorced him. Ben still loves his ex-wife and daughter. Feeling like an abject failure he runs off to Greece with no clear goal and finds work at a meat grill in an Athens suburb. He hears of a dig outside Sparta and is hired to join a ragtag bunch of"shovelmonkeys" working for an American director. A core group of five appears to have a secret they refuse to share with their director or Ben. In this they are no different from the original Spartans, who thrived on secrecy while terrorizing their helots. We learn this from cogent academic notes interpolated through a narrative that constantly draws parallels."We're the real Spartans now," says one shovelmonkey. Ben, whose greatest need is for camaraderie, feels increasingly frustrated, though he finds relief (rather too easily) in the arms of Japanese Natsuko. Readers will also be frustrated. The talented Hill is fizzing with ideas, but they're only half-executed. Why doesn't the collapse of Ben's marriage get fuller treatment? Why is Max, the ringleader of a complicated scheme, kept in the background? The account of group dynamics meanders on until Ben is let into the club and learns the secret. It's shocking but quite far-fetched and comes way too late. Just as disappointing, Ben gains no insight into the source of his recurrent anger; in the end, he's still running from himself.

Hill's grasp of history is more impressive than his hold on his characters.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2009
Ben Mercer has a penchant for walking awayfrom his wife, his daughter, and even his Oxford thesis on the history of the Spartans. An archaeologist, he drifts aimlessly toward Athens, where work waiting tables and a room shared with Albanian dishwashers appear to be as much responsibility as he can handle. But a chance encounter with academic rival Eberhard Sauer, who reluctantly admits that he's in Greece to join an excavation at Sparta, arouses enough professional jealousy to light a fire under Ben. Wrangling a position with the close-knit and unwelcoming dig crew, Ben becomes a pawn in a disturbingly sinister game. An affair with the enigmatic Natsuko skews his judgment and compromises his ability to extricate himself from the group when he realizes that they are not what they seem. VERDICT Acclaimed British poet and novelist Hill displays an enviable facility with descriptive language and has certainly researched the politics of ancient and modern Greece. What remains "hidden," however, is the character development necessary to understand the motivation underlying the antisocial behavior of Hill's protagonists. Effective marketing to book groups may encourage readers to give it a go, but it's not essential reading.Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Myers, FL

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2009
Ben is at loose ends. He has fled Oxford, and abandoned his wife and child along with his moribund archaeology thesis. He goes to Greece, working as a waiter in a seedy restaurant as Lent approaches. Through strange happenstance, Ben ends up as a shovel monkey on a dig looking for relics of Sparta, his thesis topic. The international team, one a fellow student from Oxford, locks him out of their social sphere. Something strange and dark is going on, but his need to belong compels his involvement. As Ben becomes a part of the group, his sense of something terrible happening grows, but he seems powerless to break the social freeze. Easter brings the climax. Hills sharply evocative prose conveys a sense of doom and failure. The authors ability to depict the dusty backroads of Greece combined with a palpable overlay of dread is remarkable and unsettling. The background provided about Sparta is intense, but is it factual? We are left with questions and no answers about loyalty, honor, and truth.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)