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Deep Time
Zoologist Dr Brendan Merlie has wasted his best years in futile pursuit of imaginary creatures. He’s now leading a survey of an ecological hotspot in a forgotten corner of central Africa. Guided by the enigmatic Salome Boann, a woman strangely at ease in the rainforest with her own reasons for being there, the team discover a ‘refugium’ of prehistoric plant-life. Among the forest people they hear rumours of animals, too, unknown to science. Driven by civil war, and their own competing desires, Brendan and his companions enter a shifting world in which they must come to terms with the wildness within as well as the wildness around them. The deeper they travel, the more is revealed, beyond Brendan’s wildest dreams.
712 pages, Paperback
First published May 9, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 11, 2016
excellent book, a bit overlong but worth the time; will have a review when time allows as I read it in my recent plane trip to Madrid (about half when going and half when coming back 10 days later as it is a 700+ page novel) and it kept me absorbed till the end; will be a top 10 of the year for sure
sadly only a short review: - very powerful first person narrative, panoramic trip through the zoological history of Earth (including dinosaurs, but much more), excellent characters (here Salome and Curtis are the best, while the narrator, Brendan, is a bit wimpy on occasion), language that's more explicit on occasion than in sff but comparable with current mainstream fiction, so nothing to be worked out about unless one's reading is strictly YA pg 13, good ending though predictable, on occasion going a little too long and wordy but keeping one turning the pages till the end for sure
overall, excellent stuff and highly recommended and a top 10 novel of 2015 as well as a top 10 read for 2016
sadly only a short review: - very powerful first person narrative, panoramic trip through the zoological history of Earth (including dinosaurs, but much more), excellent characters (here Salome and Curtis are the best, while the narrator, Brendan, is a bit wimpy on occasion), language that's more explicit on occasion than in sff but comparable with current mainstream fiction, so nothing to be worked out about unless one's reading is strictly YA pg 13, good ending though predictable, on occasion going a little too long and wordy but keeping one turning the pages till the end for sure
overall, excellent stuff and highly recommended and a top 10 novel of 2015 as well as a top 10 read for 2016
June 15, 2016
From all the books that I've read this year, Deep Time remained with me the most after I've finished it. It is extremely rare for a book to make me feel now as I've felt when I was reading as a child. Deep Time has all the qualities of A Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle or The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but none of its problems related to race or the treatment of women. Deep time took me on a incredible journey through the heart and soul of time, of nature and of the human being. I'm certainly I will not read a more powerful book this year. My mind was blown away it.
July 1, 2015
Truly epic adventure with a gripping plot that keeps moving. Challenging, heartbreaking in places, beautifully written and highly engaging. It's not suitable for younger readers (there is sex and violence) but for anyone who wants wild, speculative fiction with compelling characters and a lot of action woven together with elegant writing and big ideas, this is a must read.
June 25, 2015
‘I was lost in the heart of the forest. It’s a long story.’ So Dr Brendan Merlie, time-torn zoologist, summarizes somewhat euphemistically the epic journey into the heart of Africa and the origins of life described by this 700 page novel by storyteller Anthony Nanson.
This project has been a long time in gestation, from the initial inspiration in the mid-80s, to the protracted process of research and writing a novel of over 300 thousand words in length. The bulk of the labour of drafting has been done over an entire decade, and for the sheer effort (and sustained skill) of that endeavour Nanson’s tome deserves respect. It is no light holiday read in either sense. In its scope and seriousness of intentions it runs counter to much mainstream commercial fiction, and to the general consensual dumbing down in popular culture.
Essentially the novel is a quest narrative, but one in the tradition of the classics of Travel Literature, the accounts of early explorers, Marco Polo, Livingstone, Nansen (whom the author has portrayed in a storytelling performance). Yet it is perhaps closest to Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle in its zoological and evolutionary concerns. In its exhaustive quest for the origins of life and even the source of time, the novel provides an arena for what have been called ‘God Games’ (Clute; Grant, 1995). The team assembled by Merlie to conduct an ecological survey of a zone threatened by civil war (the ponderous, bookish Portia; the vulnerable, good Christian Vince, the rapacious Alpha-male Curtis, and the sublime, mysterious Salome) slowly get whittled down by the travails of their journey and the perils they face, until an archetypal struggle is enacted by the survivors, one which seems to play out the dynamic of the Garden of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Serpent. It will not be giving too much away to reveal that the team stumble upon a refugium of ‘deep time’ (the various epochs of evolutionary cycles stretching over hundreds of millions of years, referred to as ‘palaeomes’.) As they transect these, they encounter increasingly primitive (or sophisticated in some senses) forms of life, until inevitably they find themselves walking with dinosaurs.
As a primer in palaeontology the ‘novel’ could be very useful; and it is a rattling yarn in the manner of classic adventure stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard and the like. If one embraces this apparent oppositional duality then the novel straddles the creative-critical divide in an interesting way, a K-T boundary which the reader must be bold enough to cross back and forth.
With the author being an experienced storyteller, a sense of orality informs the prose, giving it often a toothsome suppleness, most palpably in the action sequences, which are vivid and visceral. This storytelling quality emerges in different ways: on a macro level, the very name of the viewpoint character, Brendan, alludes to the immrama tradition, the wonder voyages of Celtic saints which this is a sophisticated riff on. On a micro level, this manifests in a sequence around a tribal campfire (a scene which Nanson performed from memory at the launch in Stroud, thus returning it, in effect, to the oral tradition); in the indigenous folklore; and in the Campbell-esque ‘Road Back’, when the surviving member of the expedition uses the knowledge acquired to ease their passage. As in countless tales, the return is a way of reminding the audience of key scenes and motifs, culmination combined with acceleration – that which first was struggled through is whizzed through in ‘fast-forward’, creating a sense of euphoric relief. The effortful becomes effortless. With the map of life in hand the soul can flourish. Hard-won wisdom becomes graceful skill. The protagonists are changed fundamentally by their experiences, and so, hopefully is the reader – Nanson returns us to the world with a cleansed perception and an imperative to save the planet’s remaining resources.
Within these pages there is a profound, life-affirming humanity and a deep sensuality – not only the exotic but the natural is eroticised. Nanson channels elements of DH Lawrence in his protracted descriptions of the physical – an ‘earthiness’ in both senses – and he captures the crackle of sexual current between the sexes well. The novel’s structure is multi-climactic – in epiphanic waves of sensation it appropriately ends on the shores of the primordial ocean, and the female, as the source of life, is honoured and emancipated from any prescriptive role man might give her. Similarly the tricky depiction of indigenous cultures is handled with sensitivity and skill, circumventing the quicksand of Colonialist rhetoric often embedded in Portal-quest (Mendlesohn, 2008) narratives.
Ultimately, the novel’s gaze of longing is turned towards the ineffable, as veiled by the fastness of the rainforest and the vastness of time. Nanson’s protagonists walk into its mystery, taking up from where JG Ballard’s The Drowned World ends – with man stepping into the depthless jungle, relinquishing control and all trappings of civilisation to its green mind. Deep Time is a paean to Creation and to whatever sung it into being (the nature of which the author wisely leaves to the reader to decide). Its huge ambition is admirable, and it should be regarded as an important work of eco-literature from a masterful storyteller, a novelist I hope to see more from – a voice in the wilderness, but a vital one nevertheless.
Kevan Manwaring 28.05.2015
This project has been a long time in gestation, from the initial inspiration in the mid-80s, to the protracted process of research and writing a novel of over 300 thousand words in length. The bulk of the labour of drafting has been done over an entire decade, and for the sheer effort (and sustained skill) of that endeavour Nanson’s tome deserves respect. It is no light holiday read in either sense. In its scope and seriousness of intentions it runs counter to much mainstream commercial fiction, and to the general consensual dumbing down in popular culture.
Essentially the novel is a quest narrative, but one in the tradition of the classics of Travel Literature, the accounts of early explorers, Marco Polo, Livingstone, Nansen (whom the author has portrayed in a storytelling performance). Yet it is perhaps closest to Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle in its zoological and evolutionary concerns. In its exhaustive quest for the origins of life and even the source of time, the novel provides an arena for what have been called ‘God Games’ (Clute; Grant, 1995). The team assembled by Merlie to conduct an ecological survey of a zone threatened by civil war (the ponderous, bookish Portia; the vulnerable, good Christian Vince, the rapacious Alpha-male Curtis, and the sublime, mysterious Salome) slowly get whittled down by the travails of their journey and the perils they face, until an archetypal struggle is enacted by the survivors, one which seems to play out the dynamic of the Garden of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Serpent. It will not be giving too much away to reveal that the team stumble upon a refugium of ‘deep time’ (the various epochs of evolutionary cycles stretching over hundreds of millions of years, referred to as ‘palaeomes’.) As they transect these, they encounter increasingly primitive (or sophisticated in some senses) forms of life, until inevitably they find themselves walking with dinosaurs.
As a primer in palaeontology the ‘novel’ could be very useful; and it is a rattling yarn in the manner of classic adventure stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard and the like. If one embraces this apparent oppositional duality then the novel straddles the creative-critical divide in an interesting way, a K-T boundary which the reader must be bold enough to cross back and forth.
With the author being an experienced storyteller, a sense of orality informs the prose, giving it often a toothsome suppleness, most palpably in the action sequences, which are vivid and visceral. This storytelling quality emerges in different ways: on a macro level, the very name of the viewpoint character, Brendan, alludes to the immrama tradition, the wonder voyages of Celtic saints which this is a sophisticated riff on. On a micro level, this manifests in a sequence around a tribal campfire (a scene which Nanson performed from memory at the launch in Stroud, thus returning it, in effect, to the oral tradition); in the indigenous folklore; and in the Campbell-esque ‘Road Back’, when the surviving member of the expedition uses the knowledge acquired to ease their passage. As in countless tales, the return is a way of reminding the audience of key scenes and motifs, culmination combined with acceleration – that which first was struggled through is whizzed through in ‘fast-forward’, creating a sense of euphoric relief. The effortful becomes effortless. With the map of life in hand the soul can flourish. Hard-won wisdom becomes graceful skill. The protagonists are changed fundamentally by their experiences, and so, hopefully is the reader – Nanson returns us to the world with a cleansed perception and an imperative to save the planet’s remaining resources.
Within these pages there is a profound, life-affirming humanity and a deep sensuality – not only the exotic but the natural is eroticised. Nanson channels elements of DH Lawrence in his protracted descriptions of the physical – an ‘earthiness’ in both senses – and he captures the crackle of sexual current between the sexes well. The novel’s structure is multi-climactic – in epiphanic waves of sensation it appropriately ends on the shores of the primordial ocean, and the female, as the source of life, is honoured and emancipated from any prescriptive role man might give her. Similarly the tricky depiction of indigenous cultures is handled with sensitivity and skill, circumventing the quicksand of Colonialist rhetoric often embedded in Portal-quest (Mendlesohn, 2008) narratives.
Ultimately, the novel’s gaze of longing is turned towards the ineffable, as veiled by the fastness of the rainforest and the vastness of time. Nanson’s protagonists walk into its mystery, taking up from where JG Ballard’s The Drowned World ends – with man stepping into the depthless jungle, relinquishing control and all trappings of civilisation to its green mind. Deep Time is a paean to Creation and to whatever sung it into being (the nature of which the author wisely leaves to the reader to decide). Its huge ambition is admirable, and it should be regarded as an important work of eco-literature from a masterful storyteller, a novelist I hope to see more from – a voice in the wilderness, but a vital one nevertheless.
Kevan Manwaring 28.05.2015
February 7, 2018
This is very possibly the worst-written book I've ever come across. And that's a pity, because the premise (in the hands of someone willing to hire an editor) might have had some potential.
If you want a book that's been touched by an editor, this is not for you.
If you want a book that's been touched by an editor, this is not for you.
November 3, 2015
Deep time and the wilderness Most of the wilderness fiction I’ve read is historical. Last of the Mohicans, Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe, assorted American transcendentalists, – books whose authors who had the advantage of writing about places and environments that were largely unknown, unpredictable and clearly dangerous. While people still go off on adventures, exploring less known places, mobile phones and GPS make that a very different game. The places untouched by humans are far scarcer than they were two hundred years ago. And yet we have this collective attraction to the unknown, the untouched. For the greater part, fiction has replaced the wilderness with fantasy worlds, and the science fiction bid to seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly split infinitives where no one has split them before.
Anthony Nanson’s “Deep Time” is a real stand out as a piece of modern wilderness writing. It is a speculative novel, but at the same time so rooted in observation and detail, that it is able to create a sense of adventure and mystery right on the edge of human experience. Where fantasy and science fiction can tend towards the escapist, Deep Time brings us back to ourselves, to the land, to the idea of wilderness as something precious that we ought to preserve. It also, by cunning means, encourages us to look at our own time and place with fresh eyes, seeing connections and possibilities we might otherwise have missed. It delivers all of this, and more, in a fast placed action adventure plot that does not let up for some 700 pages.
I’ve head genre fiction defined as ‘everything happens and no one thinks about it’ versus literature as ‘very little happens and everyone thinks about it a great deal.’ It frequently bothers me that modern publishing often defines ‘literary’ as something dull, worthy, tediously real and lacking in pace. Very little happens. Everyone thinks about it a lot. At the same time, more creative plots and unreal settings fall into the low brow pop culture bracket, and are not to be taken seriously. Shakespeare could write about faeries, Dickens could write about ghosts and be taken seriously, but they probably wouldn’t get away with it these days.
I know that it is possible to have books with pace, action, adventure and speculative elements that are also powerful literary pieces. The quality of writing, the kind of depth that can be woven into a plot, the way in which speculation can reflect the world back more meaningfully than representation can. The unfamiliar requires us to think, to test assumptions and the boundaries of our own reality, and you just can’t achieve that by giving people the wholly familiar. Anthony Nanson has entirely proved my point, creating an entirely modern novel, with great literary depth and the kind of narrative that would readily adapt into a summer blockbuster movie. We can have books that are exciting and profound. We can have meaning and enjoyment on the same pages. We can still have wilderness, it hasn’t all gone, and we can protect what remains and recognise what we’ve got.
Deep Time is not suitable for younger readers (I’d suggest 14 and up) and I heartily recommend it as a fantastic read.
More about Anthony here – http://www.anthonynanson.co.uk/
More about Deep Time here –http://www.anthonynanson.co.uk/Deep_T...
Anthony Nanson’s “Deep Time” is a real stand out as a piece of modern wilderness writing. It is a speculative novel, but at the same time so rooted in observation and detail, that it is able to create a sense of adventure and mystery right on the edge of human experience. Where fantasy and science fiction can tend towards the escapist, Deep Time brings us back to ourselves, to the land, to the idea of wilderness as something precious that we ought to preserve. It also, by cunning means, encourages us to look at our own time and place with fresh eyes, seeing connections and possibilities we might otherwise have missed. It delivers all of this, and more, in a fast placed action adventure plot that does not let up for some 700 pages.
I’ve head genre fiction defined as ‘everything happens and no one thinks about it’ versus literature as ‘very little happens and everyone thinks about it a great deal.’ It frequently bothers me that modern publishing often defines ‘literary’ as something dull, worthy, tediously real and lacking in pace. Very little happens. Everyone thinks about it a lot. At the same time, more creative plots and unreal settings fall into the low brow pop culture bracket, and are not to be taken seriously. Shakespeare could write about faeries, Dickens could write about ghosts and be taken seriously, but they probably wouldn’t get away with it these days.
I know that it is possible to have books with pace, action, adventure and speculative elements that are also powerful literary pieces. The quality of writing, the kind of depth that can be woven into a plot, the way in which speculation can reflect the world back more meaningfully than representation can. The unfamiliar requires us to think, to test assumptions and the boundaries of our own reality, and you just can’t achieve that by giving people the wholly familiar. Anthony Nanson has entirely proved my point, creating an entirely modern novel, with great literary depth and the kind of narrative that would readily adapt into a summer blockbuster movie. We can have books that are exciting and profound. We can have meaning and enjoyment on the same pages. We can still have wilderness, it hasn’t all gone, and we can protect what remains and recognise what we’ve got.
Deep Time is not suitable for younger readers (I’d suggest 14 and up) and I heartily recommend it as a fantastic read.
More about Anthony here – http://www.anthonynanson.co.uk/
More about Deep Time here –http://www.anthonynanson.co.uk/Deep_T...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews