Hopeful Monsters

Catastrophe Practice #5

by Nicholas Mosley, Sven P Birkerts (Introduction)

-- A sweeping, comprehensive epic, Hopeful Monsters tells the story of the love affair between Max, an English student of physics and biology, and Eleanor, a German Jewess and political radical. Together and apart, Max and Eleanor participate in the great political and intellectual movements which shape the twentieth century, taking them from Cambridge and Berlin to the Spanish Civil War, Russia, the Sahara, and finally to Los Alamos to witness the first nuclear test.
-- Hopeful Monsters received Britain's prestigious Whitbread Award in 1990.
-- Praising Mosley's ability to distill complex modes of thought, the New York Times called Hopeful Monsters a virtual encyclopedia of twentieth century thought, in fictional form.
-- First U.S. edition by Dalkey Archive ('90), most recent paperback by Vintage ('93).

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literature, 20th Century, British Literature, Novels, Philosophy

550 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Nicholas Mosley was educated at Eton and Oxford. He served in Italy during World War II, and published his first novel, Spaces of the Dark, in 1951. His book Hopeful Monsters won the 1990 Whitbread Award.

Mosley was the author of several works of nonfiction, most notably the autobiography Efforts at Truth and a biography of his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, entitled Rules of the Game/Beyond the Pale.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who we are in this world? Sapient beings or just some sort of thinking monsters?

The music had made my mind go blank; I had thought – If I were a snake, yes, I would be being drawn up out of a basket.

Hopeful Monsters is a book of ideas: some ideas complement each other and some ideas clash…

Nothing is that which makes possible the revelation of what is.

At first there is a war of ideas, then there is a war of ideologies and then there is a total war…

You can run towards love and perhaps bump into it and you can watch it running away: but when it is there it is like two people coming face to face on a tightrope; they have to keep moving or they will fall; they would like to pass into, through, one another; at moments this is possible!

And among the multitude of ideas there is an idea of love: love comes and goes and it interacts with the other ideas…

That which experiments is in a sense the same as that which is experimented on; but to understand understanding – would there not have to be developed some further level of mind?

When we observe an object, we see in it mostly what we want to see so any observed object is a kind of a distorted reflection in the mirror of our own mind.

[Szplug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing at all like I had anticipated and the most pleasant literary surprise I've experienced since Iain Sinclair's Downriver . Incredibly precise and measured, thoughtful almost to the point of ponderousness, philosophically heavy and deft at the same time, working its peculiarly compulsive and latticed progress through a pair of peripatetic and enigmatic souls in the interwar period—Eleanor Anders and Max Ackerman—who experience what might be termed gravitational love, the interlinking of thought processes, philosophical developments, life experiences, and physical attractions stemming from a particulate collision between them upon their first meeting as younglings at a Volkswanderung gathering in the early nineteen-twenties; two individuals alienated and harmonized as they survey the double-helix of science and philosophy evolving along with them—and wending the rippling and erupting terrain of a Europe convulsed by the rise and spread of Communism, Fascism, Anarchism, and Anti-Semitism and tunneling through the Stalinist Purges, the Spanish Civil War, and, of course, the Second World War—towards something quite special: a breaching of the patterned surface of our predicament in order to attune consciousness to the symphonic currents of chance which carry along the waters of lived reality.

Mosley's considerable erudition is on display throughout, but in a manner entirely copacetic to and in furtherance of the themes he is exploring via his pseudo-epistolary narrative pairing. His elegant fastidiousness exists for a purpose; and thus many of the stylistic complaints I've read about—here and elsewhere—regarding the way in which he constructs his dialogues and interiorities, while arguably valid on the aesthetic level, are functionally tone-deaf—and fuck it, this is a beautiful work of art, with exquisite moments that are revealed in phrases—often set up a hundred or two pages back—that strike the literary heart like a hammer blow, impart their passionate wisdom with a fiery kiss, or blossom with a fragrance that weakens the knees with its poignant timeliness. Yet with that said, I might hesitate in recommending this across the board—this is some dense, pause-and-ponder-per-paragraph quality stuff, with an intricate and subtle marriage between story development and the minute probing of human consciousness within the fields of science, philosophy, history, sexuality, psychology, warfare, and evolution, all set to the musical accompaniment of that old human chestnut kith-and-kin. In other words, you might have to be in the mood for five-hundred-and-fifty pages in which every level of existence is examined, questioned, shaken and stirred, as much for the reader to pursue and develop as the characters within—and not the least important of the questions undertaken is that of determining whether human beings are, at heart, irremediably insane—portrait models and stage actors all frozen and frenzied in scapes and scenes of a demented hue and cry—and doomed to one-day snuff the flame out entirely ere evolutionary progression has advanced to a stage at which another candle may be lit; and why such an inherent destructive madness may be a vital constituent element of mankind's capacity to mount the aforementioned, tallow-endowing stage.

It may be that existence requires hopeful monsters, mutations hatched upon the world before their time—of which the Jews may have been an early exemplar—who, in surviving in an environment hostile to their altered being, may exert a profound effect upon it: the masses, maze-bound and trapped, desperately trying to grip and follow an elusive thread through the passageways whilst avoiding the nasty bumps and protuberances in the corners, cannot see that they are held in their circular absorptions, their gravity-born stasis, locked into construing patterns from historical shapes and remembrances that, in their half-truths and ritualized routines, at times frozen snapshots as in a vast painting, serve to make life endurable. One of the most encompassing of these patterns is language, an invention to describe the inventions we have imposed in palimpsests upon our existence in an attempt to supersede our predicament—and both Max and Eleanor ponder whether, if God is Silence, our complex languages, in such a vast array of flavors and textures, have not irrecoverably removed his Heaven from our reach, if not our comprehension. In symbols and mythologies we have packaged much of what struck our primordial sensibilities as being true, though with each revolution of the wheel such codings became more difficult to discern and decipher; and now, in a life filled with coincidences once deemed divine will, with experimentations reaching down into the realm of the invisible where once were cast spells, we can intuit—but not realize—the desirability of conjoining the inside and the outside worlds. The monsters might just be able to not only see the predicament, but see through it—and, if monstrous enough, able to crack the patterns sufficiently to allow a portion of the light beyond to shine forth and reveal itself to those wrapped-up in themselves and continually being struck in the back of the head by the tunnel-vision stares with which they view their lives.

*********************************************************

Some rambling thoughts that occurred to me once I'd set this extraordinary Whitbread-winning wonder aside:

Humans exhibiting particle behavior—the wave form of energy, the all, become the particle form of the individual: the fact of being observed enters the observer into the reality of that which is being examined and alters its essential nature. The individual who perceives himself performs—changes—before the stare of the other, who then perceives the person who pantomimes before their senses in a singular manner—thus every solitary soul inhabits a sensory universe unique to themselves. Humans as wave/particle dualities; gravity inhering in souls. Quantum uncertainty as a metauniversal bedrock—reality the patterns established upon this cosmic chanciness by our conscious minds in order to make living bearable. The circularity of determining whether consciousness arose from the universe or the universe arose from consciousness—when we fully understand this paradox will we have moved further towards what it is that we are/are meant to be?

The power unleashed by the breaking apart of the atom as the power released by the shattering of patterns of consciousness—such a force, immanent with the potentiality for catastrophe, a required energy for the augmentation of humanity's capacity for elevating itself to a higher tier along the evolutionary progression; the power to destroy and the power to create the dialectic by which we can conceive of new permutations of our existence within an uncertain cosmos and reassemble new patterns that encode this information for the stabilizing of living reality; the light of observation circling the universe—bent by gravity—to strike the observer in the back of the head; perceived existence to be settled to be overturned to be settled anew, the cycle of life as ordered with consciousness' evolving understanding of the constitution of reality.

The hopeful monsters who are alienated from their species existing level of evolution are as the emitted alpha particles from an instance of radioactive decay in existence; if two such particles should collide, do they impart a portion—a gravitron?—of their being to the other, such that at any given moment each bears an influence upon the other? If one such being was observed and thus altered in nature to reflect the intrusion of the observer, could its linked companion be known without the disturbing interference of the other being brought to bear? Would two such particulate beings, ever drawn towards their mutated kin in the swim of time, have the capacity to course with this gravitational attraction to the degree of rising above the patterned routines of the everyday world and espying the ebb-and-flow of chanciness that stirs and directs encoded existence? Would this higher-level awareness enhance the wherewithal of such a pairing of decayed progeny to lift their maze-bound brethren out of their tessellated torpor and unto this elevated evolutionary tier? Would this process constitute a ladder that rises towards the Godhead, The Patternless State, Silence?

The development of the atomic bomb the logical result of the bifurcations of man's love of power and fear of power, man's longing for death as a surceasing and for the death of others as an easing. The emergence of a means for enacting these desires/terrors lifts us to a new position on the board, one from which—with the appropriate understanding of what has occurred—we can look down from above at where we were and the route we took.

One of the most interesting aspects of Max and Eleanor's long unconsummated love affair was the lack of jealously—for the most part—displayed by either, despite their being aware of the growing number of lovers that the heart-made-fonder absentee was taking on. It was handled quite subtly by Mosley, a well-proportioned admixture of the destructive aspects of jealousy that the two witnessed as youths—Max in the possessiveness of his mother, Eleanor in the bitterness of her mother—together with the glamour-shredding clarity they were able to bring to bear upon the tragic and ruinous elements immanent within the human condition.

Towards the end of the book, Max muses about mutations and the decay of radioactive matter, and how we can encompass our understanding of the word random within the statistical probability of such a particle emission; therefore, are mutations simply an instance of the state of being observed? Is the evolutionary process of life on this planet dependent upon the production of beings whose gaze (consciousness?) allows the probability of mutation to come into play? Should an increasing mass of cognizant beings realize an increasing likelihood of genetic mutations occurring? In regard to something like cancer, a cellular affliction, would we chart an increase in the number of cancer cases above what would be consistent with a leveled rise in the population to reflect this correlation? If the universe contains a sufficiently large enough number of observers, would it begin to undergo mutations at a dramatic rate?

[Karen·]

Hopeful monsters? They are the things born perhaps slightly before their time; when it's not known if the environment is quite ready for them. Thus the explanation given by Max Ackerman in this huge sweeping panoramic novel. His definition doesn't form a perfect fit with the origin of the phrase which stems from the controversial evolutionary biologist Richard Goldschmidt. Goldschmidt's theory of the hopeful monster placed that which is different, changing and monstrous at the heart of evolution - a more fitting characterisation of the cataclysmic madcap dance of death which forms the backdrop to this challenging, but richly rewarding read. Max and Eleanor, two particles that once having interacted with each other are forever entangled - and I use that term advisedly, because quantum theory plays a crucial role (yes, challenging) - alternate in their accounts of the fateful years between the two European wars of the 20th century, years of rivalry between Communists, Anarchists, Socialists, Fascists, years of feverish work towards the monstrous weapon that might either end war or the whole of mankind. Concurrent with the political upheaval is the maelstrom of intellectual ideas, shaken to the core by doubt in the validity or stability of language, realisation that the act of observation changes the phenomenon observed, a loss of faith in some kind of stable, objective reality and the impossibility of knowing what truth is.
It took a while to get accustomed to the mirroring of Max and Eleanor: doubling of certain quirky forms of expression, their common habit of permanently second-guessing what the hidden message behind every coded verbal expression might be, the repetitions, the dualities. But once (thanks to the serendipity of watching a BBC 4 documentary) I had accepted that they were representatives of quantum entanglement, I stopped expecting them to be discrete characters and just went along for the ride. And what a ride! Murder, mayhem, nail-biting suspense, the Spanish Civil War, Cambridge spies, audacious escapes, all in conjunction with Wittgenstein, Lysenko, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger's cat plus anthropology, psychology, quantum mechanics and myth.
I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it.

Addendum:
Ending a novel like this will always be a feat. Max and Eleanor just stop writing their accounts at the outbreak of WW2. There's an added on chapter by the 'correlator', which skips through the rest of their years in a desultory way. A bit of a let down.
Small quibble: Eleanor is supposed to be German. A German visiting the site of the infamous suicide pact at the Wannsee would not say they had visited the grave of the writer Heinrich von Kleist.
He'd just be Kleist.

Ending reviews isn't easy either.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let’s start with the chronological fact that this novel, the author’s recognized masterpiece, is the prequel to four other novels written earlier. The child is father to the man kind of head-twinger. So don’t expect this review to be linear.

There are dozens of characters including cameos by Einstein, Rosa Luxemburg, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Jung and all the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb. So there are journeys into physics, biology, evolution, and psychoanalysis, as well as the political teeterings between communism, fascism and everything else. Sexual teeterings, too, in a novel where everyone sleeps with everyone, gender choices as mixed as political leanings. One might even sleep with a Nazi if it gets you across a border. For there are physical journeys as well, the story beginning in Cambridge and Berlin, but churning through Russia, West Africa, Spain, Switzerland and an American desert.

There are recurring themes, motifs, phrases. Pick one – any one – and you could go down a rabbit hole. Here we go:

There is a character sketching a hand sketching a hand sketching a hand. Later, the author says that something is like sketching a hand sketching a hand sketching a hand. And much later still :

An actor comes on; he is watched; he watches himself being watched; he watches himself watching.

It made me think that I was reading about me reading about me reading! I wanted to scream: I’m trapped in an Escher painting! So I closed the book with a snap, cover up:



(M.C. Escher, The Fall of Man)

Well, that explains that! Except, Escher didn’t paint a snake in the tree, tempting Eve. It’s, instead, an art deco salamander. There are salamanders in this story, part of a salamander experiment to see if a macro-mutation within a species can then be inherited. These are the Hopeful Monsters, which was/is a hotly debated scientific hypothesis. It’s used here as allegory, of course, where any macro-mutation – Nazis, communism, the Bomb – changes the course of things, and spreads its seeds.

There’s another painting discussed: The Annunciation by Domenico Veneziano. Here:



There is no Biblical-style annunciation in this book, as far as I could tell. However, over and over there are two people facing each other with a pathway or a door just beyond them. A tableaux. The painting kept popping back into my mind when I would read such as: that shelter is like the closed door at the back of a courtyard. Or: Towards the centre of the town there were rows of buildings with brown arcades and arches. Or: The two Spaniards sat facing each other in the cabin at the back and rolled cigarettes. Or: we are in some sort of no man’s land: the insurgents on one side of the river, and the government forces are on the other. In this last, the main female character, wearing white overalls, walks out, thinking: Perhaps all in white I will seem to be the Virgin Mary.

And Perhaps the reader got it wrong. It is a book that requires attention. The reader is like the main characters who speak many languages but continuously run into people who spoke in a dialect that I did not understand.

The reader, too, is like the main character who repeatedly interrupts events or himself with: Then—but this is ridiculous. Not that the writing is so, but the wars, the politics, the relationships. This book demands that you enter it, like the hand sketching the hand, the actor watching himself act.

-- I have sometimes thought that people like us, you and I, by being observers, might be carriers of what might come after.

-- It would have been hard to watch the other animals dying, that first camel that got across a desert.

Perhaps the reader didn’t get it wrong and this book is itself some macro-mutation which will cause its own evolution, its own spreading of seeds. Which is to say, I’m still curious about this one, Josh. But then—this is ridiculous

_______ _______ _______ _______ _______
*There was this quote within that didn’t fit into whatever point I was trying to make in my review but which otherwise seemed profound and pertinent: History is put together from what people want to say or to remember: but how little of what is written seems to do with what an individual on the spot has experienced! History for the most part is made up from the public professions of politicians, but politicians are not primarily concerned with truth, so history becomes a statistical amalgam of special pleadings.

**This book talks often about coincidences, and there are indeed a fair number of coincidences occurring in the development of plot. Well, I found this book in a library’s used book sale and got it for a buck. It wasn’t until I got home that I brushed the pages with my hand and found a business card from a dentist, a man I played golf with regularly at one time, with a handwritten reminder to “Paul” that he had a dental appointment one April morning in 1992. From its placement in the book, I don’t think “Paul” made it across this desert.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final instalment (but first in the chronological sequence) of Mosley’s Catastrophe Practice series is also the 89-year-old Baron and Baronet’s masterwork. Chris has written one of those perfect reviews where no more need be said about the book, suffice to say I found Mosley’s stylistic tics often repetitive and his structuring not 100% lucid, hence the withering four stars. On the whole, I agree with Chris’s summary and regret that my take on this sweeping panorama of early 20thC thought is only one paltry paragraph. A splendiferous intellectual triumph and a tender-hearted romance epic for adults. The perfect literary end to 2012.

[Hux · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel of ideas has always appealed to me. But it requires one of two things to be entertaining. A unique voice and perspective which ponders (often on behalf of the reader) the ideas being explored, or, more strategically, a plot which builds and feels that it is arriving somewhere. Mosley slightly fails on the latter but (initially at least) has more success with the former. The book takes place between the wars and follows Eleanor (a German girl growing up in Berlin) and Max, an English boy growing up in Cambridge. The book alternates between them, Max and Eleanor taking turns to narrate their own story (all while seemingly aware of one another's presence) until they, inevitably it seems, come into contact with one another. They live through these great moments and the changes of this period, are touched by the events and experiences, and regularly give their own thoughts on the ideas and technologies being brought into the world at this time. Sometimes, they are literally touched by these events and people, Eleanor's mother being a friend of Rosa Luxembourg while Max's father is a friend of the disgraced biologist Paul Kammerer. Other big names are involved in the narrative; Einstein, Schrodinger, Hitler, Darwin, Franco, you name it. Both Eleanor and Max internally contemplate these ideas and changes, and they discuss them together (or with other characters) to an almost fetishisitic degree (it's all very heavy and sincere and not once does anyone talk about anything trivial). 

When Mosley is focused on these big ideas, it's actually very engaging and I found these parts of the book immensely enjoyable. When he's focused on pushing their lives along (adding some semblance of a plot) it somewhat drags in my opinion. And the longer the book goes on, the more he abandons the heavy subjects and spends more time on character interactions which, gradually, I found a little dull and slow. The first third of the book was gripping but it loosens up as it goes along and becomes a little bloated and scruffy. There are huge sections where Max goes to Russia and Eleanor goes to Africa which adds nothing and only slows everything down. You get the distinct impression that Mosley is simply filling their lives with something before the Nazis push the continent into war. This is often the trouble with books that take advantage of knowing the past while their characters don't.

Speaking of characters, Mosley has them both narrate their sections in almost identical fashion. While I'm open to the idea that Max and Eleanor are essentially meant to be the same person, it felt a little off that they both spoke and thought in the same way (Then I thought -- Then I wondered --). This is also not helped by Mosley's dialogue tags where he has all speech start with 'he said or she said.' It becomes rather repetitive and tiresome after a while.

I really loved the first third and, despite losing interest as we went along, would say that the book is actually superb and beautifully written. I like listening to smart people discussing the great changes and ideas of the century, debating them, examining their consequences etc. The plot (or developing relationship between Max and Eleanor) was less interesting, their love affair somewhat aloof and detached; I never felt that these two ever truly fell in love. It's a very middle-class relationship of convenience with no meaningful passion or commitment. They both write to each other about their various love affairs (people sleep together willy-nilly) despite apparently being soulmates. It's very Bohemian and smug (I thought). But given Mosley's background, that makes sense. I was especially irked by the section where Max goes to the north of England and Mosley describes it like it's some kind of post-apocalyptic hellscape where people haven't yet acquired civilisation. Mosley was, of course, a privately educated son of a fascist Baron (he makes a point of celebrating the Jews a little too often in the book -- almost winking at the reader) and you can certainly understand why. But his understanding of the world is profoundly privileged and it always has the feeling of the observer rather than someone actually living it (even when he forces them into Franco's civil war or other momentous periods of upheaval). They (Max in particular) are always outside of it. Like protected angels commenting on events that they will forever remain safe from.

The book is a mammoth achievement and I would highly recommend it. But, much like many other large tombs, it outstays its welcome a little and fails to follow its own established rules. After all, is it a book of ideas or a story about love? I mean, it's clearly the former so why bore me with Russian peasant girls who like a roll in the hay or queer students who like to be beaten up? None of that felt like anything other than a forced attempt to include some normal people in these great historic experiences.

But otherwise an excellent novel albeit one, I would say, which has many many flaws. Initially gave it a 3/5 but upped to 4 due to the pure ambition of the piece.

[Philippe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of a handful of books that will accompany me to the end of my days. I've read it three times and will continue to read it. It encapsulates a lot of what I hold dear and believe in. A few days ago I was rumagging a box with old correspondence and in one of the letters this quote turned up. I feel it's a luminous synthesis of what this whole story and indeed what life is about.

"... During the years that followed, Eleanor and Max were sometimes together, sometimes apart: but always, they said, they felt themselves together - as partners, that is, in the working-out of some design, under the guidance of what turned up. They evolved an ironic style of talking about their love and their marriage: sometimes they made jokes; sometimes they talked with great seriousness: usually they left spaces through which a listener or observer had to make his or her own way. What they seemed to be saying about marriage was that if there was disjunction there was no liveliness and if there was fusion there was no liveliness: liveliness depended on openness: on an energy going between.
(...)
When Eleanor came back from West Africa she spent some time writing a long essay on marriage: ... In literature, she suggested, marriage was seen first as an end to be aimed at but then as something boring and even deathly when achieved: what seemed to be almost impossible to write about (and indeed to experience) was marriage as a successfully going concern. Of course, Eleanor
argued, humans do get taken over by an exciting drving for surety and when this is achieved it is apt to seem second-rate: but what might happen if people just recognised this? Could there not be a going concern on some quite different level - one from which it could be seen that a drive for security, when achieved, might then have to be turned to a drive for freedom, for the sake of liveliness to be maintained; and vice versa; and so on: this level being to do with a recognition of pattern. It is a contrasting to-and-fro, like that of a heart-beat, that is life-giving: one strand on its own, pursued to an end, of course is deathly.
(...)
As a postscript to his papers on cybernetics Max published an article in a small religious magazine (Eleanor joked with him "you and I are religious not because anyone would recognise us as religious, but because we have recognised all recognitions are of a code"). There were obvious parallels, Max argued, between the idea of cybernetic levels and the efforts that christians had made trying to establish their doctrine of the Trinity. At the level of God the Father there was a simple cause-and-effect view of the world - God made his covenants with humans, which was a way of describing something like the mechanical functioning of a thermostat: if humans got too far above themselves then disasters knocked them down; if they got too far below themselves they they were ready to be boosted by the inspiration of a prophet: on this level humans did not much have much to say in the style of the to-and-fro. At the level of God the Son humans were given information about how to handle such a mechanism: life was indeed a matter of paradoxes - by dying you lived; fulfilment was achieved by sacrifice; you were to love your neighbour as yourself; and so on: but still, in this style humans seemed to experience a somewhat helpless oscillation between ecstasy and despair. But then there was, so it was said at least, the domain of the Holy Spirit, in which humans could be led into responsibility for themselves. This was not so much a level as an ability to move between levels, to see a pattern by means of an inbuilt knowledge of truth - such means, if observed and honoured, allowing ends to look after themselves. But about this style, this spirit, the so-called 'guide into truth', not much was ever said. And of course this was perhaps necessary, because the point of this activity, this understanding, was that individuals, now being somewhat godlike, might find their own way. But with this spirit humans could keep an eye on (take a walk away from every know and then) the mechanisms that to some extent necessarily ran themselves on the other levels; the nature of the world seeming to be such that this watchfulness, alertness, gave a sense of the miracle of control. ..."

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Idea novels or conceptual novels are seldom literary gems. That is certainly the case with this book. Mosley has been smart enough to process a nice love story in his book, and to evoke very dramatic historic periods of the 20th Century (especially the rise of Nazism and the Second World War). The passages that revolve around these themes are the easiest to read. But Mosley has given priority to the ideas and concepts, not to the story.

Sometimes this is to be taken literally: the book contains numerous discussions on the major 20th Century developments in physics (relativity theory, quantum theory, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, etc.), biology (Darwinists versus Lamarckians and the genetic debate), psychology (the wars between different psychoanalysis schools), philosophy (Heidegger, Wittgenstein), ideology (of course especially fascism and communism), etc. Ingenious and erudite, that is the least you can say.

But the uniqueness of this book is that Mosley illustrates all these perspectives by means of his concrete characters and what they experience or do amidst dramatic historic events: they constantly function in one of the above-mentioned scientific debates (for example, as particles that attract or repel each other, or that function as matter or wave according to the observer's point of view) and he constantly lets those characters, while they say or do certain things at the same time think of the underlying scientific-philosophical issues in themselves (resulting in an annoying repetition of "I said" and "I thought"; and on top of that, Mosley again and again underlines the ethical implications of these ideas and actions.

That gives a certain artificial character to these 'dramatis personae' (they literally seem to be actors who create their role and also undergo him at the same time). It takes quite some patience and attention to follow all this, and it makes the reading of this book utterly intriguing and difficult at the same time. Hence the very different reviews by the readers of this book, from wildly enthusiastic to absolutely horrified, and hardly anything in between. In the unlikely hope of being original, I opt for the ambiguous middle-opinion: this book is an incredible achievement of Mosley, but it is not a successful piece of fiction.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novel of ideas, patterns and levels. Though the plot itself is engaging, the big skill on display is his making complex ideas clear. The coincidences would sink the book if the characters themselves were not aware of the coincidences, to the point, yes, of making coincidence and pattern a topic of study. The repetition of certain prose mannerisms would sink the book (being that 2-3 narrators share the same verbal tics) if there weren't different levels of interpretation operating. This is a book of lacunae and the off-stage. It may not be for everyone, but I quite liked it. I have a feeling that to fully appreciate this I would have to read the other 4 related novels. Then perhaps I would be stunned at the magnitude of what Mosley has created. For now, I'll just imagine it as negative space. RIP Nick. Alas, we barely knew ye.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eloquent and complex novel of ideas - I remember finding this stimulating and enjoyable but would need to read it again to review it properly.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Heavens, so how about a book that relates a German Jew girl, an English boy, atomic bombs, Einstein, Wittgenstein, Franco, Hitler, homosexuality, Communism, Fascism, Schrödingers Cat, fission, pilgrimage, prostitution, war crimes, diamond trade, Hitler, Stalin, Kammerer, genetics, lizzards, Oedipal conflicts, triangular love relations and weird sexual fetishism? And even more? Welcome to 'Hopeful Monsters'. Welcome to one hell of a ride.

I can hear protest coming my way by now. "But Science is so boring! I want to explore the world and live and love and be part of history!". Why not both? Mosley effortlessly combines science and fiction in this magnificent novel about the Jewish Eleanor Anders and the British Max Ackerman. It's roughly an epistolary novel, but if you were expecting just another love story, well, think again.

Who cares about some guy named Max any way? Or some chick called Eleanor? This book is about humanity and humankind as a whole. Central to the book are the prevalent ideas on evolution of Charles Darwin - to evolve, there must be certain creatures that differ from their counterparts in a way which allows them to have a certain advantage over them. (Think of it as one giraffe having a slightly longer neck than the others, permitting it to eat more leaves and thus survive more easily). These creatures are the 'hopeful monsters', emissaries of change and eventually improvement of existing species. Story-wise this means that Max and Eleanor will identify with these 'hopeful monsters'.

The context is the main reason for this concordance. I mean, pre-World War II Europe was a pretty mad place. Fascist tried to kill Communists who tried to kill Trotskyists who tried to kill Stalinists who tried to kill Fascists (again I suppose) who tried to kill Jews who didn't really try to kill any body except anarchists I guess because everyone seems to want to kill anarchists in this book. There's a whole lot of destruction going on, ultimately. Great attention is given to the image of 'the Bomb', the ultimate weapon of destruction which should stop the war dead in its tracks. Operation Manhattan, primarily out of fear that the Nazi's should develop a similar weapon before the Allied troops. THERE IS SO MUCH SCIENCE IN THIS BOOK. Mosley is incredibly intelligent, as he manages to interweave complex philosophy and physics with personality traits of Max, Eleanor and the other characters, culminating in some sort of brilliant spaghetti bolognaise of erudite writing.

BUT IT'S ALSO A LOVE STORY. Max and Eleanor seem to be two gravitational poles attracting and repelling each other throughout the book, meeting at random moments in each other's lives. Their conversations seem almost surreal, any given character in this book is way too incredible and strong to actually exist, but isn't that just what we love in a good book? The capacity to transcend ourselves and our own boring perception of events?

'Hopeful Monsters' does all this, and it does so quite brilliantly. I've been complaining about the lack of ambition in contemporary fiction (well, in Belgium any way) and this book proves that it can still be done! It's a huge feat by MC Mosley, a slam dunk, a modern White Album by the Beatles, hell, it beats Big Brother.

Seriously though, you should read this novel/philosophic treaty/scientific introduction to everything. I feel enlightened up to the point that there will never be any more darkness in the universe. Ever.

PS: For a more in-depth and serious review, I recommend Chris's review which is very thorough and more than worth reading. (More than this bravo review any way).

PPS : I had typed another (more serious) review of this but I pushed the wrong button and it all disappeared (alas). I spent ten consecutive hours crying, cursing the Prophet, throwing egg shells at Justin Bieber's house and eating Ben & Jerry's but now I'm feeling better. Thanks.

[Michael Kuehn · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If we are to survive in the environment we have made for ourselves, may we have to be monstrous enough to greet our predicament?”

These are the Hopeful Monsters, born before their time, Englishman Max Ackerman and German Jewess Eleanor Anders, in the struggle between the two wars, the rise of Nazi Germany and the Spanish Civil War, in a sort of romantic quantum entanglement. At times so brief together, more likely far apart, but like particles borne of quantum mechanics, they are linked and forever connected. “I wanted to say – We will always be one: we will be like two of those particles - “ (245)

The chapters alternate between Max and Eleanor, always talking to each other – that entanglement – no matter the physical distance separating them. From Cambridge to Berlin, Spain, Russia, North Africa, and Los Alamos – Max and Eleanor are engaged in the great movements of the century, political, philosophical, scientific – Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, Schrodinger's Cat, the Bloomsbury Group, G.E. Moore, Darwin, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Bohr, Heisenberg, Wittgenstein –the rise of Nazism, the rise of the Bomb.

Mosley has achieved something beautiful here – beautiful, entertaining, and intellectually stimulating.

HOPEFUL MONSTERS was for me a happy reading accident. I was not aware of the book prior to its appearance in some posts on Goodreads that popped up among friends, or perhaps it was in one of those random blurbs the GR algorithm constantly throws up that attracted my attention. Whatever the case. Happy accident. One of the most enjoyable reads of the year.

[Dana Burda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Romanul " Monstri plini de speranta" scris de autorul englez Nicholas Mosley a apărut prima dată în limba romana la editura Vellant in anul 2008 in traducerea lui Cornelia Bucur. Prima aparitia a fost in anul 1990 cand s-a bucurat de un deosebit succes primind premiul Whitebread chiar in acelasi an. Cand am decis ca imi doresc acest roman in ciuda pretului nu tocmai atractiv, am facut-o mai ales datorita numelui scriitorului. Pentru cineva cat de cat familiarizat cu istoria interbelica numele lui Mosley este un nume care se tine bine minte. Coperta interioara ne si lamureste cine este Nicholas Mosley, al treilea baron Ravensdale, al 7lea Baronet fiul lui Oswald Mosley cel de al 6lea baronet, cunoscut mai ales pentru faptul ca in 1932 a infiintat British Union of Fascistes, miscare fascista dupa cum bine se observa din denumire si al lui lady Cynthia Molsey, fiica bine cunoscutului lord Curzon of Kendleston, vicerege al Indiei. Scriitorul s-a nascut la 25 iunie 1923 la Londra si astazi are varsta de 93 de ani fiind inca foarte activ ca scriitor. A publicat ultima carte in 2014. Mama scriitorului moare in 1933 si tatal se recasatoreste cu una din faimoasele surori Mitford, Diana. Istoria familiei autorului este in sine un roman care se suprapune peste istoria Marii Britanii si a Europei. De altfel Nicholas Mosley a si scris doua carti ddespre familia sa. Romanul " Monstri plini de speranta" este al cincilea roman din seria " Catastrophe Practice Series" si are ca subiect o cat mai cuprinzatoare istorie a Europei occidentale in perioada de dupa 1918 si pana dupa cel de al doilea razboi mondial privita prin prisma iubirii dintre Max , un student englez care urmeaza cursuri de fizica si biologie si Eleanor, o studenta germana de origine evreiasca prin mama sa, ce urmeaza cursuri de antropologie si psihologie. Romanul este scris mereu la persoana intai chiar daca cel care povesteste este mereu alt personaj. prima care vorbeste este Eleanor, apoi va vorbi Max iar la final Jason si din povestile lor aflam nu numai ce se intampla cu cei doi din faza de copii si pana la cea de oameni in varsta ci si ce se intampla cu lumea in care cresc, se formeaza, iubesc, muncesc si cauta raspunsuri la intrebri teribil de dureroase. Odata cu povestea lor cititorul face cunostinta cu tot ce a insemnat deosebit, maret sau ingrozitor in anii interbelici.Vom cunoaste astfel Republica de la Weimar, Germania nazista,Cambrige-ul intelectual de varf, razboiul civil din Spania, URSS-ul in timpul marilor epurari staliniste. Avem de toate in roman: incendierea Reichului, Einstein si teoria relativitatii, Lytton Strachery si Bloomsbury Tea, Franco si trupele sale, cursurile lui Heidegger si cele ale lui Vittgenstein, crearea bombei atomice si Robert Oppenheimer, psihanaliza si cercetarile antropologice din vestul Africii... Vom cunoaste marile idei stiintifice si filozofice ale acelei perioade dar si ideologiile dominante.Asa ca autorul spune prin personajul sau la un moment dat:" Daca e sa supravietuim mediului pe care singuri ni l-am creat, avem oare voie sa fim suficient de monstruosi ca sa ne ridicam la inaltimea nenorocirii?" (p.7) Romanul lui Nicholas Mosley este un roman complex, dificil de citit pentru cineva nefamiliarizat cu istoria epocii in discutie si mai ales insuficient de familiarizat cu teoriile stiintifice si filozofice ale acelei perioade care in fond stau la baza a ceea ce s-a construit si dupa 1945. Mie personal mi s-a parut un roman total, cuceritor, plin de provocari si de intelesuri. Mosley nu este singurul scriitor care a incercat sa faca o prezentare complexa a acelei perioade scurte in ani dar dense din toate punctele de vedere. Pentru cine a citit cele doua volume deja traduse din trilogia lui Ken Follet, Caderea Uriasilor si Iarna lumii sau cele trei superbe volume ale lui Jean D'Ormesson, Vent du soir, Tous les hommes en sont fous, Le bonheur a San Miniato sau lucrarea lui Kimberley Cornish, Evreul din Linz, Wittgenstein , Hitler si lupta lor pentru spirit, romanul de fata va fi mult mai usor de inteles. Dar este sigur o carte care cere si o a doua lectura.

[Quinn Slobodian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something about this book validates at the same time the savant-like intuitive wander and the time-clock slog to some version of omniscience. To say it's a dark Forest Gump narrative is to give it the highest compliment. Who didn't wish that Gump went darker? We are in the bedroom when Rosa Luxemburg visits, at the Hotel Adlon as the Reichstag burns, in the Russian countryside as the peasants starve, in North Africa when the officers revolt to begin the Spanish Civil War. But it's all lived in a hallucinogenic state so far from the History channel event-check of the newsreel collage, a state brought about by alternately love and, above all, endless, swirling self-observation and -examination done all in questions or really statements with question marks at the end of them that end up being so permissive that they give license back to the reader to do the same. I journalized for the first time in half a decade. Like the journal entry the novel fades strange, changes tone at the end, exhausts its insight or at least comes down from the oxygen highs of where it began and sets us down dizzy.

[Anne Earney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating novel of ideas, depicting the early lives of two characters, Max and Eleanor, in an almost epistolatory style, with each of them narrating alternate chapters, addressing the other as "you." The story takes place in Europe in the 1930s, a time of unrest (Nazi Germany, the development of the atomic bomb, the Spanish Civil War). Max and Eleanor make their way as best they can, exploring ideas and nurturing their love. The ideas are the main focus of the novel and it is through their ideas that the characters are built up and explored. This is not a novel for someone looking for a love story. I suspect that in order to like this novel, one must like ideas as much as one likes characters. Several times I put the book down to contemplate the ideas the book explores, not because it was difficult to understand, but because the ideas were so fascinating I wanted to give them room to breathe.

[Sylvia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I first read it many years ago after picking it up in an English-language bookstore in Milan, and I've probably read it a half a dozen times since. Something about the prose is hypnotic. The history is fascinating. The philosophical backdrop is riveting. The romantic student movement that led up to the Nazi regime is something I knew nothing about. And the author's cold-eyed analysis of everyone - Nazis and socialists alike - feels so very true. Finally, I am so, so intrigued that Mr. Moseley's father was apparently the head of the fascist party in England during World War II (what a piece of work he must have been!) - and the more recent stories of modern-day Moseley family members getting busted at Nazi-themed costume/sex parties. What a bizarre heritage. No wonder he had to write this book.

[Kevin Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I guess I’m going to have to read the rest of this series from Nicholas Mosley.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book of towering ambition so I am sad to say I found it to be an indigestible lump of cellulose, ink and paste and the most I got out of this book was the joy of finally put this prententious dreadful rubbish behind me.

As the author so originally states in the act of observing one changes the nature of what is observed. Looking at the enjoyment this book as brought other reviewers I can only layout what annoyed me so much about this book in the hope that my flaws as an observer become readily apparent to those who might read this. I think books can work in multiple ways: having amazing characters; using beautiful language; or finally illustrating new ideas. Of course the best of books bring all three. In my view hopeful monsters fails against all three.

1. The characters clump through history like idiot sauvants spouting tin eared dialogue at every turn. Its like "sprockets" on SNL but meant seriously and replace the touch my monkey with that is boring.

2. The language itself is just painful and wooden beyond belief.

3. The ideas are essentially a collection of ideas from across the 20 century and given the setting they are put in come across as regurgitation of a sixth form text book.

The emperor has no clothes.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up from one of those book-share shelves because I liked the title. It's a book that does everything I want a novel to do; tell a compelling story with pace, while constantly raising challenging questions and pursuing political and philosophical arguments. Mosley does all of this to an extraordinary standard in this novel, tracing the lives of its characters from the 1930's through the war beyond. Investigations into the characters' interests in science and politics never get in the way of the storytelling, which is gripping, particularly in the first half of the novel.

Mosley's non-fiction collection "The Uses of Slime Mould" is also a really interesting read, although the other fiction I read, wasn't as strong. Hopeful Monsters, however, is really great work.

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicholas Mosley writes:


Sometimes I walked with Peter Reece as he went about his business in the parish. He would go about on foot: he had a theory that people should normally go about on foot; then there might be time for things to sort themselves out.

I said ‘You believe things do sort themselves out? I mean you do what you have to do, and other people do what they do; and what happens is likely to be all right?’

Peter Reece said ‘What else is God?’

I Said ‘You mean “God” is a word for the fact that things sort themselves out, and not for the fact that there is a God.’

Peter Reece said ‘What is the difference?’

[Tuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

i didn't know who Mosley was till i happened on this WWII novel. he is a genius i guess. this saga takes you from the plain and painful streets of weimer germany to los alamos. and you all know what happened between those two places.

[Carol Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those novels that, if you like it, should be re-read every five years.

[Swarthout · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too many oblique poetic flourishes for my taste.

[Kendra Zhang · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably one of the most simultaneously entertaining and didactic novels I’ve read. It follows the tumultuous lives of Max, a physicist from Cambridge, and Eleanor, an anthropologist from Berlin during the rise of Nazism, the Five-Year Plans of the Soviet Union, and the Spanish Civil War. Writing a fictional story that takes place during such a period is an ambitious and risky task; the narrative manages to not just use the historical events as a backdrop, but rather focuses on them and presents itself as thoroughly intertwined with them. The two main characters question the different ideologies they are exposed to as they grow into adulthood, and explore a wide range of disciplines including physics, biology, philosophy, politics, and psychotherapy. Mosley was a well-read writer, to say the least.

Although Max and Eleanor are rarely together throughout the length of the story, their separate yet connected lives offer a wider-reaching perspective on the events that transpired shortly before the start of WWII. One of my favourite aspects of this novel is the style of writing Mosley employs which portrays scientific theories, the sociopolitical climate, and our personal lives as having many parallels; they do not exist in silos, but rather influence one another and behave with overlapping patterns. That which occurs on a microscopic level also occurs on a macroscopic level. The title itself is a recurring allusion to the phenomenon of genetic mutations, humans at war, and Max and Eleanor themselves—and they are all metaphors for each other.

Another major feature I enjoyed was the way it made historical figures, myths and the like come to life. From a playful portrait of controversial biologist Paul Kammerer to a mad speech delivered by Spanish dictator Francesco Franco, this book does not shy away from introducing both notorious and iconic people of the past. Eleanor and Max think about the ways in which they relate to Siegfried, or Faust, or Uriah the Hittite. Philosophical tenets posed by Wittgenstein suffuse the text as the characters constantly question the meaning conveyed by language and its ability to represent the ‘truth’. These are only a few examples of the deluge of thought-provoking moments in this book.

Overall, Hopeful Monsters is replete with unexpected and unimaginable turns of events, idiosyncratic characters that perform admirable and also unscrupulous actions, and in-depth primers on major theories and schools of thought that emerged at the time. It provides a sweeping view of 1930s Berlin, Moscow, Cambridge, Morocco, and Barcelona, among other places. Max and Eleanor both seem to live a thousand lives all in one, and we see them change and undergo paradigm shifts along with the world they inhabit. This book did sometimes feel insane, although this very well may have been intentional; what do we truly understand about anything, after all?

[Amberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was fine. Both the writing and paced of plot was okay but I found this book bit dull. The atmosphere was okay and ending was fine also the cover of book was stunning. The characters were okay but they were bit bland and needed be to be flash out bit more.

[Laisrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hopeful Monsters is basically an exploration of that now-tired Gramsci quote, 'The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear'. I don't need to recount the synopsis. Wittgenstein and Einstein have walk-on parts and the narrative ranges across all of interwar Europe. "Ideas" proliferate as ways of divining patterns in historical reality, a task made particularly apparent by that very same dying of the old. In that sense, Mosley does make a more substantial intellectual argument that was ultimately too obscure for me to properly understand. You get an idea from this little segment towards the end:

Up to this time the overall pattern of their story (So they seem to have been saying) had been one of trying to learn how to deal with the patterns of the self-destructive society they were part of - how to see these clearly, how to to try to become not destructive themselves, and by this to be doing what they could for society

Of more interest is the way which Max and Eleanor relate and conceive of their relationship in and through ideas: Wittgenstein's silence after language, the quantum entanglement of general relativity, to name a few. One I like is Max's frequent alertness to 'being [as if] in the inside of a painting'. These are no longer ideas in the factual or informative sense, but rather shapes or forms for the organization of experience. Just as they answer up to the task of reckoning with reality, so too does this manner of - for lack of a better word - relating, or experiencing, connect Max and Eleanor: separate and distinct but nevertheless 'agents in a larger context [...] they are together all the time'. This, I believe - not the panoramic sweep of its narrative or its erudition or its ease in conveying complex thought - this is the best part of what Mosley has achieved.

That sounds better (on paper?) than it does in practice. I just don't think entirely succeeds in rendering the simultaneity of consciousness (which he outright states in the first of the Catastrophe Practices series) or in a form that still lives up to a satisfying aesthetic. To his credit, Mosley has pioneered a truly bizarre style. Max and Eleanor go about the novel in an obsessive, almost autistic way where - especially in earlier scenes - they begin by asking a series of precocious questions from which they then derive answers by way of their overly intellectualized middle-class parents. Answers, propositions, are subsequently revised in light of reality, and both characters are constantly engaged in its interpretation. This is the entirety of the novel, aptly separated into part one, titled, "We know the predicament" and part two, "So what do we do". If Mosley occasionally manages to achieve genuine beauty in certain moments through the coherence of his ideas, form, and narrative in, the novel still lives up to the name, 'novel of ideas' said as a pejorative. Taken as a whole, it just doesn't work. Characters become flat ('...as in in a painting') and the prose just can't compensate.

Having said that, it's good stuff. One has to wonder how this ever got published in the UK. Props to Dalkey Archive for snatching up the publishing rights.

[Callie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm nearly 200 pages in but I'm giving up. This book is not my cup of tea. A few other reviewers have used the word 'pretentious' and I have to agree. Also, too calculated and constructed for my taste. It's hard to believe in the characters as real people. They seem like creations just to give the author a reason to lecture us on subjects like mathematical theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, etc. Also, to run into and make mention of famous people, Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. I am not going to force myself to slog through the rest of this. There is nothing in here worthwhile and I don't think it's going to get better not to mention that if I read the words, 'my beautiful german girl' one more time, I might shoot myself.

I don't mind a novel of ideas if the writing is superb. This is someone whose prose is just too precious. I'm sure he's highly intelligent and very well read and knows a lot about all kinds of disciplines, and history and politics, but you pack all that in there, and still you aren't a WRITER, so it doesn't gel. I felt slightly dyspeptic as I read this thing and kept hoping that sense would dissipate. I've got a pile of paperbacks under my bed waiting to be read and there's no reason to torture myself with this one any longer.

[LS · Rating 3 out of 5]

So much to admire/enjoy in this scopic novel which I read because its author's obit included such critical acclaim for it and out of curiosity about what the son of one of the 20th century's worst fascists might write. It began as strongly as Mann's Magic Mountain ... but forgive me a molehill allusion. Certainly, the events the two main characters move through like Woody Allen's Zelig are enormous, but the characterization eventually boils down to an intellectual love affair/marriage at a distance, and I never felt for/about the m.c.'s. Finally, it just felt tedious, and I went looking for books reviews from the time of its initial publication, 1991. And there I found a review in the LA Times by my absolutely favorite book reviewer of all time, Richard Eder [now, sadly missed], who felt exactly the same way about the novel.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This ambitious novel of ideas is a map of the science and ideologies – often difficult to distinguish – behind the major events in the first half of the 20th century. Albeit often tedious, it shows effectively how political events do not emerge in a neutral environment, but are triggered by the ideas that preoccupy society at a given time. In the story, the hopeful monsters are the mutants capable of genetically transmitting the mutated characteristics that helped them survive. We are all hopeful monsters, apparently.

Although it is an epistolary novel and both correspondents are larger than life, their personalities and persons seem to matter little in this exploration of the patterns of self-destructive society. The Russian Mikhail Shishkin made a more focused and satisfying use of this technique in his The Light and the Dark.

[Sewella · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very ambitious novel, part love story, part philosophical treatise. Takes on Darwinism, and Lamarckism, particle physics, the atom bomb, relativity, chance and fate, communism, fascism, creative and destructive forces in human nature, and of course, the nature of love. At times it drags, and the main characters' Freudian relationships with their parents were a bit annoying and heavy-handed. The last chapter tried to wrap up too many threads at once and came off a bit rushed and stilted. But overall, it was a mentally stimulating read as well as an entertaining story. It would have been worth reading even if only for the refresher course in European politics leading up to WWII. I recommend.