Submergence

Starred review from February 4, 2013
This beautifully written novel, the second from Ledgard (after Giraffe), a correspondent for the Economist based in Africa, tells two stories in parallel. James More, a British spy posing as a water engineer, is taken captive by jihadists in Somalia; the counterpoint to this viscerally horrific tale is his love affair with Danielle Flinders, a “biomathematician” working in the field of oceanography. The affair is related as a series of flashbacks from a recent vacation in France. The book is told in short, episodic chapters that probably reflect the journalistic sensibilities of the author, who not only captures the enormous barbarity of More’s al-Qaeda captors but also manages to convey some of their innate humanity. But there is no sentimentalizing of the evils of the jihadists, “empowered by the prospect of martyrdom” and comforted by a “medieval” fatalism. (In one horrifying scene, a young girl in Kismayo, Somalia, is gang-raped—then “convicted” of adultery by the local Muslim cleric and sentenced to death by stoning.) Danielle’s milieu, the deep ocean (which “challenges our sense of who we are and where we came from”), offers a contrast to the gruesome and misguided efforts of Islamic fundamentalism. The book is exciting in the way of a thriller, though Ledgard seems uninterested in maintaining or even developing that sense of suspense. What makes the book remarkable is its poetically rendered and remarkably intelligent glosses on Islamic fundamentalism versus the West, on Africa, and on the oceans. This may be more of a novel of ideas than a novel full stop, but it is profoundly readable and unfailingly interesting. Agent: Gillon Aitken, Aitken Alexander Associates.

February 15, 2013
The second novel by British author and political journalist Ledgard (Giraffe, 2006) is a tangle of rich imagery, philosophical nuggets and factual anecdotes. And yes, there is also a plot, but one that the book abandons and rejoins at will. Much of the action takes place within the mind of James More, a British spy posing as a water inspector in Somalia, who's been caught and imprisoned by jihadists. In his memory, More relives his previous Christmas in a French hotel, where he had a brief and intense love affair with Danielle Flinders, a brilliant marine biologist. As the two characters head for very different destinies, the narrative heads off on tangents whose relation to the main story isn't always immediately clear. James is a descendant of Utopia author Thomas More, which apparently makes him prone to philosophical thought; and Danielle has her own questions about the nature of religion and society. Shortly after the two lovers meet, she explains her fascination with the complexity of undersea life and concludes that human society is merely "a film on the water...nature's brief experiment with self-awareness." This less-than-hopeful worldview is borne out by a later scene that describes, in concise journalistic style, the stoning of a young girl. Though it covers only two pages and involves neither of the main characters, it's a powerful sequence that underlines the existential anger at the book's core. While the nonlinear structure is initially frustrating, there are enough brutal and beautiful moments to make this book absorbing.

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Starred review from March 15, 2013
Directed by the Secret Intelligence Service to assess al Qaeda activities in Somalia, Nairobi-based Englishman James More poses as a water consultant but is promptly taken prisoner by jihadists when he arrives in Kismayo and is confined to a lightless, vermin-infested room before being marched through the unforgiving Somali landscape. While marching, he recalls meeting Danielle Flinders the previous Christmas at France's Hotel Atlantic, where they conducted a discreet, sparring affair. Half-Australian, half-Martiniquan, and coolly independent, Danny is on a journey of her own. A mathematician who applies her skills to the study of ocean life, she's preparing to plunge deep into the ocean underworld, an almost unnatural act that "challenges our sense of who we are." Since Ledgard wrote the coruscating "Giraffe", which used a herd's destruction in communist-era Czechoslovakia to explore totalitarian thinking, it's no surprise that he offers not just an acute portrait of a man and a woman on the edge (or dangerously submerged) but an almost defiantly intensive novel of ideas. As Ledgard concludes, utopias come and go, but the intractable laws of survival in a damaged world and "the comfort of collective awareness" are what matter. VERDICT Highly recommended for thinking readers.--Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2013
Submergence is an example of an emerging genre: postmodern literary airport fiction. Offering myriad pleasures in its prose, it is studded with references and takes a nonlinear, episodic approach to a story featuring glamorous James More, an English spy and descendant of Sir Thomas More, and Danielle Danny Flinders, of Martinique and Australia, a sexy oceanographer and biomathematician. They meet and fall in love at a small, charming European hotel just before Christmas. As the tale begins, More is a prisoner of jihadists in Somalia, while Flinders is on a scientific mission on the Greenland Sea, exploring deep-sea vents. As Ledgard, author of Giraffe (2006) and an Africa-based correspondent for the Economist, tacks between widely divergent experiences, delightful essayistic digressions erupt. At times the story becomes superfluous, an armature for rhapsodies about the ocean, the desert, ideology, and the meaning of life. Ledgard strikes all the octaves on the keyboard. The result is a novel that is at once silly in the James Bond mode, beautiful, and extraordinary. An ambitious work that will provoke strong reactions.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)