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A Thought Without Collision
'An utterly distinctive voice in contemporary Irish literature'
IRISH TIMES
'One of our most original writers' IRISH INDEPENDENT
Summer, 1923. Six-year-old Catherine Carolan grows restless on her parents' farm. It's already clear that her intellect will soon outgrow the two-room schoolhouse across the fields. But in post-Civil War Ireland, an education is not an easy thing for a girl to access, and young Catherine is not the only one in her family who will come to tire of rural life.
Summer, 1951. To ease him through his final days, Dr. Josef Alois calls for someone from his past. Enter Catherine Carolan, now an Oxford professor. As Alois's mind and body falter, Catherine must decide how far she will follow this man that she loves.
A novel in two strands, A Thought without Collision is a beautiful meditation on how we construct our relationship to the world around us.
'Duncan offers a different model of novelistic causality, with characters that feel alive in their vivid and quiet complexity' SUSANNAH DICKEY
'Very moving, very funny, it will make your brain dance' JO LLOYD
'An original voice, a writer who has come to recreate the world on his own terms' COLM TÓIBÍN
'One of our most original writers' IRISH INDEPENDENT
Summer, 1923. Six-year-old Catherine Carolan grows restless on her parents' farm. It's already clear that her intellect will soon outgrow the two-room schoolhouse across the fields. But in post-Civil War Ireland, an education is not an easy thing for a girl to access, and young Catherine is not the only one in her family who will come to tire of rural life.
Summer, 1951. To ease him through his final days, Dr. Josef Alois calls for someone from his past. Enter Catherine Carolan, now an Oxford professor. As Alois's mind and body falter, Catherine must decide how far she will follow this man that she loves.
A novel in two strands, A Thought without Collision is a beautiful meditation on how we construct our relationship to the world around us.
'Duncan offers a different model of novelistic causality, with characters that feel alive in their vivid and quiet complexity' SUSANNAH DICKEY
'Very moving, very funny, it will make your brain dance' JO LLOYD
'An original voice, a writer who has come to recreate the world on his own terms' COLM TÓIBÍN
224 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 13, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 23, 2026
The book’s opening chapter positions this as a novel in two strands. The analogy used is that of a piano keyboard with the starting point as middle C and your right hand striking ascending notes and your left hand striking descending notes, alternately. (It probably helps if you’re familiar with a piano keyboard.)
The ‘ascending’ strand follows Catherine from the age of six growing up on her parents’ farm in rural Ireland. Her schoolteacher, Master Francis, quickly recognises she possesses extraordinary mathematical ability far beyond her years. Guiding her through increasingly complex concepts provides him with a sense of fulfilment, something lacking in his interactions with his other pupils many of whom struggle with simple tasks of reading and writing. As we discover, Catherine perceives numbers not just as things to be used to solve equations or calculations, but as objects that can possess different properties. Exploring such concepts will set the direction of her future academic career.
Catherine’s early years immerses the reader in the life of a rural Irish village, introducing some fascinating characters. As in the author’s previous book, The Geometer Lobachevsky, many of these possess obsessional traits. Austin, a local photographer, dreams of building a golf course (as it happens on the land currently owned by Catherine’s family) and has spent time drawing a design in meticulous detail, including calculations of degree of difficulty based on each hole’s topography, length and the effect of prevailing winds. It’s sight of this map that first prompts Catherine’s thoughts about the properties of numbers.
The descending strand takes place thirty years later and focuses on Catherine’s former university mentor, Dr. Josef Alois, as he lives out what we know to be the final weeks of his life in a house he built himself in a remote part of Scotland. ‘This man is more unwell than he believes and will perish in one month and eleven days.’ Alois’s story is one of mental and physical decline whereas Catherine’s story has been of intellectual progress and achievement.
Their relationship is based on shared intellectual curiosity about subjects such as mathematical probability, philosophy, logic and linguistics. Also by the nights they spent together in air raid shelters during the Blitz. Briefly perhaps there was the possibility their relationship may have moved beyond friendship, on Catherine’s part at least. For Alois, it’s more a case of admiration for Catherine’s exceptional intellect. Their bond remains strong enough that Catherine travels to Alois’s home to care for him through his illness. There are moving moments as Alois becomes frailer and less and less able to communicate his wishes clearly. The remote location of the house means there’s a claustrophobic feel to this strand of the story.
Catherine is a mathematical prodigy. I am not. This is where I struggled because many of the mathematical concepts went over my head and I found myself skipping sections that were just too abstruse. I think this prevented me forming a stronger connection with the story. Although I admired the wonderful writing, I was left with the feeling I was not quite clever enough to appreciate everything the author was trying to convey.
The ‘ascending’ strand follows Catherine from the age of six growing up on her parents’ farm in rural Ireland. Her schoolteacher, Master Francis, quickly recognises she possesses extraordinary mathematical ability far beyond her years. Guiding her through increasingly complex concepts provides him with a sense of fulfilment, something lacking in his interactions with his other pupils many of whom struggle with simple tasks of reading and writing. As we discover, Catherine perceives numbers not just as things to be used to solve equations or calculations, but as objects that can possess different properties. Exploring such concepts will set the direction of her future academic career.
Catherine’s early years immerses the reader in the life of a rural Irish village, introducing some fascinating characters. As in the author’s previous book, The Geometer Lobachevsky, many of these possess obsessional traits. Austin, a local photographer, dreams of building a golf course (as it happens on the land currently owned by Catherine’s family) and has spent time drawing a design in meticulous detail, including calculations of degree of difficulty based on each hole’s topography, length and the effect of prevailing winds. It’s sight of this map that first prompts Catherine’s thoughts about the properties of numbers.
The descending strand takes place thirty years later and focuses on Catherine’s former university mentor, Dr. Josef Alois, as he lives out what we know to be the final weeks of his life in a house he built himself in a remote part of Scotland. ‘This man is more unwell than he believes and will perish in one month and eleven days.’ Alois’s story is one of mental and physical decline whereas Catherine’s story has been of intellectual progress and achievement.
Their relationship is based on shared intellectual curiosity about subjects such as mathematical probability, philosophy, logic and linguistics. Also by the nights they spent together in air raid shelters during the Blitz. Briefly perhaps there was the possibility their relationship may have moved beyond friendship, on Catherine’s part at least. For Alois, it’s more a case of admiration for Catherine’s exceptional intellect. Their bond remains strong enough that Catherine travels to Alois’s home to care for him through his illness. There are moving moments as Alois becomes frailer and less and less able to communicate his wishes clearly. The remote location of the house means there’s a claustrophobic feel to this strand of the story.
Catherine is a mathematical prodigy. I am not. This is where I struggled because many of the mathematical concepts went over my head and I found myself skipping sections that were just too abstruse. I think this prevented me forming a stronger connection with the story. Although I admired the wonderful writing, I was left with the feeling I was not quite clever enough to appreciate everything the author was trying to convey.
October 6, 2026
At some of the early sections of this still rather scattered book, he sees in his mind a curly-haired man in his mid-fifties circling a hole, while speaking aloud to himself, but with his hand to his brow. When this man utters sentences using versions of the verb 'to be', he draws nearer to the hole; then, when he utters sentences using versions of all other verbs, this figure draws further away. And when he adds an adverb to these sentences, the hole all but disappears and the sun of the world begins to shine a little brighter and makes the surrounds somewhat warmer. The circling this man makes around the hole is always of an irregular radius, as if the forces of attraction to the hole fluctuate as he at once circumnavigates and verbs. The game in his mind, as he writes, is to draw this man as close to the hole as possible while at the same time ensuring he – this entity – never becomes aware or in turn fearful of the hole's existence.
To "verb". Hmm. As a description of the obsessiveness of a golfer working on a putt, or possibly of a man writing a novel about himself writing a novel (navel?) Adrian Duncan's admirable scientific prose is put to work here in a somewhat more elaborate way as compared to his earlier work. Here we have a structured interplay between a woman (herself obsessively mathematical) and a man (himself not at all well and much given to performing little experiments with the components of things like kites - for no reason other than the doing of itself). His death is imminent and the novel slowly works its way towards an imagined conflagration of the house he had built with his own hands, intending to be burned in it himself.
The imminence of death, swathed in the usual pathos, is my only complaint about this novel. It seems we Irish are never happy unless we are desperately sad. This longing for death is everywhere in the contemporary Irish novel (the master of it being probably the great John McGahern) and I suppose I might have hoped Adrian D would have managed to keep away from it.
That aside, the excerpt I have provided of his intriguing prose style (carefully and no doubt, gently edited by Colm Tóibín, as AD explains in his afternotes) is a guide to what the reader should expect: absorption and delight. Adrian Duncan is interested in how things form, coalesce, and then diffuse again, like murmurations of starlings and with the same inexplicable science.
The book is structured as a succession of very short chapters (which makes them easy to read in these short-attention-span days) that bounce between the two characters, and also bounce across time to early years of them as children of prodigious intelligence whose free-flying imagination resists being educated into normal, standard behaviours. Because of her unconventional approach, the woman amazes the academic world with her intersections of mathematics and poetry, while the dying older man is/was her master and mental sparring partner as she nurses him in his final days. The loving interation between them is as detailed as might be expected: the touch of lips on someone's neck - for instance.
Adrian Duncan is beautiful to read in a way I haven't see anywhere else other than (slightly) in the group of French novelists that formed around Raymond Queneau, by which I mean the deliberate imposition of formal constraints and systematic procedures on writing and the exhaustive description of everything. But that's only my idea. Probably wrong. Whatever it is that Adrian Duncan is doing, it's fascinating. Him and his verbing.
To "verb". Hmm. As a description of the obsessiveness of a golfer working on a putt, or possibly of a man writing a novel about himself writing a novel (navel?) Adrian Duncan's admirable scientific prose is put to work here in a somewhat more elaborate way as compared to his earlier work. Here we have a structured interplay between a woman (herself obsessively mathematical) and a man (himself not at all well and much given to performing little experiments with the components of things like kites - for no reason other than the doing of itself). His death is imminent and the novel slowly works its way towards an imagined conflagration of the house he had built with his own hands, intending to be burned in it himself.
The imminence of death, swathed in the usual pathos, is my only complaint about this novel. It seems we Irish are never happy unless we are desperately sad. This longing for death is everywhere in the contemporary Irish novel (the master of it being probably the great John McGahern) and I suppose I might have hoped Adrian D would have managed to keep away from it.
That aside, the excerpt I have provided of his intriguing prose style (carefully and no doubt, gently edited by Colm Tóibín, as AD explains in his afternotes) is a guide to what the reader should expect: absorption and delight. Adrian Duncan is interested in how things form, coalesce, and then diffuse again, like murmurations of starlings and with the same inexplicable science.
The book is structured as a succession of very short chapters (which makes them easy to read in these short-attention-span days) that bounce between the two characters, and also bounce across time to early years of them as children of prodigious intelligence whose free-flying imagination resists being educated into normal, standard behaviours. Because of her unconventional approach, the woman amazes the academic world with her intersections of mathematics and poetry, while the dying older man is/was her master and mental sparring partner as she nurses him in his final days. The loving interation between them is as detailed as might be expected: the touch of lips on someone's neck - for instance.
Adrian Duncan is beautiful to read in a way I haven't see anywhere else other than (slightly) in the group of French novelists that formed around Raymond Queneau, by which I mean the deliberate imposition of formal constraints and systematic procedures on writing and the exhaustive description of everything. But that's only my idea. Probably wrong. Whatever it is that Adrian Duncan is doing, it's fascinating. Him and his verbing.
August 31, 2026
The writing was good, the morals: not so much
September 18, 2026
amazing as always! i love the mathematical imagery and the two-parts-of-a-whole formatting; duncan has a very unique way of conveying emotion and feeling. the eventual realisation of the title was so perfect, i got goosebumps!
October 18, 2026
I found this book in Paris at Shakespeare and Co., on a table alongside some pretty popular and well loved books. That being said, I assumed it was a super popular book. I looked inside, saw that it was by an Irish author, had shorter chapters, and switched POVs, and I was intrigued. Halfway through reading, I looked the book up to add it to my Goodreads and noticed that it had just five written reviews!! So, kind of a random pickup, but one that I don't regret.
This book follows two timelines, both showing different perspectives of loving someone who doesn't reciprocate those feelings. It explores how these characters feel like their lives would be better if they were with or living for someone else. We see them make specific changes in their lives for the things and people they want, yet we also see them run out of time before they can find out whether their persistence could have gotten them the results they wanted. As readers looking from the outside, we can see how their persistence most likely wouldn't have changed the outcome or the other person's feelings. However, we also see that if their time hadn't been cut short, these characters, just like most humans, would have continued trying for "love."
This persistence in pursuing emotion and love is also shown in contrast to a woman, Catherine, who lived her entire life differently and was more advanced than those around her, specifically in the world of mathematics. Throughout both timelines, we see her begin to make sense of numbers and equations, yet despite her efforts, no equation could solve her current emotional relationship. The novel really highlights the difference between understanding the world intellectually and experiencing it emotionally.
Although I am writing a lot about love, the book mostly explores mathematics and philosophy, which honestly sometimes went over my head and had me thinking halfway through, "Is there a specific point to this book?" And I still don't know if I fully understand the point. However, I did enjoy the writing, which made me want to know more about these characters. This novel was definitely out of my comfort zone, since it was more focused on ideas and character development than actual action, but the writing style made me enjoy the little moments between Aloise and Catherine more than I thought I would. Often, Aloise and Catherine would sit in silence, and as Catherine said, 'the comfortable silence is what she would probably miss the most', which I feel describes how I feel about the book.
It's definitely a harder book to get into if you aren't prepared for a lot of philosophy and mathematics talk, but it kept me interested enough that I wanted to know more about how Catherine and the other characters in the book fared long after it was finished.
This book follows two timelines, both showing different perspectives of loving someone who doesn't reciprocate those feelings. It explores how these characters feel like their lives would be better if they were with or living for someone else. We see them make specific changes in their lives for the things and people they want, yet we also see them run out of time before they can find out whether their persistence could have gotten them the results they wanted. As readers looking from the outside, we can see how their persistence most likely wouldn't have changed the outcome or the other person's feelings. However, we also see that if their time hadn't been cut short, these characters, just like most humans, would have continued trying for "love."
This persistence in pursuing emotion and love is also shown in contrast to a woman, Catherine, who lived her entire life differently and was more advanced than those around her, specifically in the world of mathematics. Throughout both timelines, we see her begin to make sense of numbers and equations, yet despite her efforts, no equation could solve her current emotional relationship. The novel really highlights the difference between understanding the world intellectually and experiencing it emotionally.
Although I am writing a lot about love, the book mostly explores mathematics and philosophy, which honestly sometimes went over my head and had me thinking halfway through, "Is there a specific point to this book?" And I still don't know if I fully understand the point. However, I did enjoy the writing, which made me want to know more about these characters. This novel was definitely out of my comfort zone, since it was more focused on ideas and character development than actual action, but the writing style made me enjoy the little moments between Aloise and Catherine more than I thought I would. Often, Aloise and Catherine would sit in silence, and as Catherine said, 'the comfortable silence is what she would probably miss the most', which I feel describes how I feel about the book.
It's definitely a harder book to get into if you aren't prepared for a lot of philosophy and mathematics talk, but it kept me interested enough that I wanted to know more about how Catherine and the other characters in the book fared long after it was finished.
October 9, 2026
I was fascinated by the writing, with the obsessive description of everything from afar... At times it reminded me of the sort of distance typical of the play-by-play commentary during a football match (someone has passed the ball sideways to someone who passes it back to the goalkeeper, who then picks it up, etc.). I'm not sure that the mathematical genius of Catherine really shines through, other than via the oddness with which she approaches things, and Alois does little to convey the depth of Wittgenstein's musing on language. Both of them are an incredible contrast to the ordinary characters that fall in and out of love in the background, dream of golf courses and work the exchange markets with varying success.
I enjoyed the book despite my comments, because of the very special writing!
I enjoyed the book despite my comments, because of the very special writing!
September 24, 2026
The life of a maths prodigy and her university mentor, and the lives that shaped her. Interesting, deftly defined characters, artfully interleaved narratives across time, maths, logic, frameworks of thought, landscape and architecture.
A heart rending novel of ideas.
https://minorliteratures.com/2026/09/...
A heart rending novel of ideas.
https://minorliteratures.com/2026/09/...
August 16, 2026
more maths - not on purpose!! - v v much enjoyed, fav of his so far
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August 17, 2026pretty humbled to be the second review on here...dope book
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews