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Katherine Carlyle
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Katherine Carlyle is Rupert Thomson’s breakthrough novel. Written in the beautifully spare, lucid, and cinematic prose Thomson is known for, and powered by his natural gift for storytelling, it uses the modern techniques of IVF to throw new light on the myth of origins. It is a profound and moving novel about identity, the search for personal meaning, and how we are loved.
Unmoored by her mother’s death and feeling her father to be an increasingly distant figure, Katherine Carlyle abandons the set course of her life and starts out on a mysterious journey to the ends of the world. Instead of going to college, she disappears, telling no one where she has gone. What begins as an attempt to punish her father for his absence gradually becomes a testing ground of his love for her, a coming-to-terms with the death of her mother, and finally the mise-en-scène for a courageous leap to true empowerment.
Katherine Carlyle is Rupert Thomson’s breakthrough novel. Written in the beautifully spare, lucid, and cinematic prose Thomson is known for, and powered by his natural gift for storytelling, it uses the modern techniques of IVF to throw new light on the myth of origins. It is a profound and moving novel about identity, the search for personal meaning, and how we are loved.
Unmoored by her mother’s death and feeling her father to be an increasingly distant figure, Katherine Carlyle abandons the set course of her life and starts out on a mysterious journey to the ends of the world. Instead of going to college, she disappears, telling no one where she has gone. What begins as an attempt to punish her father for his absence gradually becomes a testing ground of his love for her, a coming-to-terms with the death of her mother, and finally the mise-en-scène for a courageous leap to true empowerment.
342 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2015
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About the author
Rupert Thomson
34 books315 followersRupert Thomson, (born November 5, 1955) is an English writer. He is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels and an award-winning memoir. He has lived in many cities around the world, including Athens, Berlin, New York, Sydney, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Rome. In 2010, after several years in Barcelona, he moved back to London. He has contributed to the Financial Times, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Granta, and the Independent.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 117 reviews
November 24, 2015
It pains me to give Rupert Thomson a bad review, but Katherine Carlyle genuinely disappointed me - even more so than his last novel, Secrecy.
Katherine Carlyle is narrated in the first person by the eponymous protagonist, also known as Kit - a 19 year old English girl. At the beginning, Kit is living in Rome - largely by herself; her father, a CNN correspondent, is rarely around, and her mother has died several years previously. Kit has been conceived via IVF - she begins her story by telling how her embryo was frozen for eight years before being implanted into her mother's womb, which made her felt as if she was born twice, and had two ages: 27 and 19. Kit thinks that her father is secretly blaming the IVF for her mother's disease and death, wishing that she died instead of her; she sees signs in ordinary things and events, secret messages meant just for her. One day Kit overhears a random conversation, in which an elderly couple is discussing their son who lives in Berlin; Kit immediately knows that this is where she is meant to go.
Kit leaves Rome to go to Berlin, but it will turn out that Berlin is just the beginning of a long journey of self discovery, which will lead her to increasingly colder and more desolate places, as if she was attempting to re-experience the frozen state of a lonely embryo. Throughout the road, Kit meets many men - who mostly wants to sleep with her. Kit doesn't really know what she wants - except to punish her father somehow. Kit travels under a false name, deliberately leaving no trail behind her; she constantly imagines her father worrying and trying to find her. Can you say "daddy issues"?
Kit's interaction with others are rather uninsightful: men mostly want to sleep with her, while women are there only to provide opportunities for her to move ahead on her way. I found Kit herself to be very unsympathetic - especially with regards towards her father; she decides to not go to college and abandons her comfortable life in Rome - which he provides for her - because he can't be there for her as much as she wishes him to be and love her the way she wants him to, despite admitting that he always calls her from wherever he is. There is just not much to admire or even find interesting in Kit, except maybe for her unusual origin - which she focuses on precisely because she has no other qualities which would differentiate her from other people. Kit desperately lacks personality, and the story of the embryo becomes nothing else than a simple trivia attempt at distinguishing her from masses of rich, spoiled millennials. Kit is very ungrateful and unfair towards her father but does not realize it until the very end, and behaves seemingly without reason and certainly without direction in this plotless novel. It is largely a chore to keep up with her; even though she visits a number of interesting locations nothing of interest ever happens, and the ending is forced (literally) and very disappointing.
I have no idea why Philip Pullman called it "a masterpiece" - his Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass) is a small masterpiece, but this book really is not - it's one of the more disappointing and forgettable books that I read this year, especially because I was looking forward to reading it. I am a fan of the author since reading The Insult, which I consider to be his best book and one of my favorite novels in general, and would recommend it over this one any day of the week.
Katherine Carlyle is narrated in the first person by the eponymous protagonist, also known as Kit - a 19 year old English girl. At the beginning, Kit is living in Rome - largely by herself; her father, a CNN correspondent, is rarely around, and her mother has died several years previously. Kit has been conceived via IVF - she begins her story by telling how her embryo was frozen for eight years before being implanted into her mother's womb, which made her felt as if she was born twice, and had two ages: 27 and 19. Kit thinks that her father is secretly blaming the IVF for her mother's disease and death, wishing that she died instead of her; she sees signs in ordinary things and events, secret messages meant just for her. One day Kit overhears a random conversation, in which an elderly couple is discussing their son who lives in Berlin; Kit immediately knows that this is where she is meant to go.
Kit leaves Rome to go to Berlin, but it will turn out that Berlin is just the beginning of a long journey of self discovery, which will lead her to increasingly colder and more desolate places, as if she was attempting to re-experience the frozen state of a lonely embryo. Throughout the road, Kit meets many men - who mostly wants to sleep with her. Kit doesn't really know what she wants - except to punish her father somehow. Kit travels under a false name, deliberately leaving no trail behind her; she constantly imagines her father worrying and trying to find her. Can you say "daddy issues"?
Kit's interaction with others are rather uninsightful: men mostly want to sleep with her, while women are there only to provide opportunities for her to move ahead on her way. I found Kit herself to be very unsympathetic - especially with regards towards her father; she decides to not go to college and abandons her comfortable life in Rome - which he provides for her - because he can't be there for her as much as she wishes him to be and love her the way she wants him to, despite admitting that he always calls her from wherever he is. There is just not much to admire or even find interesting in Kit, except maybe for her unusual origin - which she focuses on precisely because she has no other qualities which would differentiate her from other people. Kit desperately lacks personality, and the story of the embryo becomes nothing else than a simple trivia attempt at distinguishing her from masses of rich, spoiled millennials. Kit is very ungrateful and unfair towards her father but does not realize it until the very end, and behaves seemingly without reason and certainly without direction in this plotless novel. It is largely a chore to keep up with her; even though she visits a number of interesting locations nothing of interest ever happens, and the ending is forced (literally) and very disappointing.
I have no idea why Philip Pullman called it "a masterpiece" - his Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass) is a small masterpiece, but this book really is not - it's one of the more disappointing and forgettable books that I read this year, especially because I was looking forward to reading it. I am a fan of the author since reading The Insult, which I consider to be his best book and one of my favorite novels in general, and would recommend it over this one any day of the week.
January 20, 2016
I have lost my tolerance for old white men writing about their reckless, magical, sexy teenage girls.
September 30, 2015
This novel has the spine-tingling atmosphere of an episode of Netflix’s original series Sense8. Chance, coincidence, gambles, even miracles figure into the actions of a young woman seeking to make sense of her life and her mother’s death. The distinct sense of foreboding that pervades the pages comes partly from us: we are involved, judging the character’s choices against our own. The main character cannot be sure how this will play out, either. "I feel new. I’m a blank slate. A gamble…" This is a teenaged alienation story that does not run to drugs, alcohol, nor sexual perversion.
Katherine (Kit) Carlyle was an IVF baby who had been kept as a frozen embryo for eight years before she was implanted in her mother’s uterus with two other embryos. She was the one who survived, and from her years waiting in limbo, we know her conception and birth was a kind of gamble. Kit is nineteen and living in Rome when we meet her. Somehow Kit claims a kind of DNA memory of that pre-time of frozen suspension, and finds herself going in search of those origins when she feels abandoned by her parents--her mother to death, and her father to a peripatetic career.
Kit is a woman who doesn’t always have the motivations we associate with a woman of her wealth, beauty, and intellect. She is young but her naïveté is paired with a world consciousness that few people over thirty can claim. She also has waist-length hair. When I pointed out to friends that this seemed a male fantasy, one man said “not so fast: women with very long hair tend to obsess over it.” It turns out that hair is like a talisman in this novel, a touchstone upon which feelings, actions, and behaviors turn.
Author Rupert Thomson has published nine other novels, one described by critic Jonathan Miles writing for Salon.com as "disquieting" for the horrific scenes of sexual abuse depicted. Thomson, now sixty years old, has been praised for his sentence craft and is often in the running for major literary prizes. One suspects it is his unusual sense of story rather than his writing talent that advances other authors over him to win prizes. In this novel, for instance, the palpable sense of doom and danger does not often play out: we readers are bloodied but whole. There is a rape scene late in the novel, but it is not graphic and is only implied.
More disturbing are the dreams and fantasies of the young woman, who likes to imagine her father searching for her, trying to find her. She writes letters to him, and despite accusing him of not loving her enough, she dreams that he will feel anxious moments trying to locate her with the few clues she has left behind. The author adds to our sense of unease by italicizing a sentence that could only be said by an older person to a younger one: "Even negative experiences contribute to the sum of who you are." There is a sense of inevitability about pain and exposure, though Thomson does not do his worst, to Kit nor to us, in this novel.
Thomson’s work may simply be too uncomfortable to win the prizes, but this novel stands as an entry in the new literature being written that gives us a sense of being untethered in time and space. Thomson’s characters appear to acknowledge and accept the many mysteries that come with interactions with new people. It remains an open question whether his reading public wants that, too.
Katherine (Kit) Carlyle was an IVF baby who had been kept as a frozen embryo for eight years before she was implanted in her mother’s uterus with two other embryos. She was the one who survived, and from her years waiting in limbo, we know her conception and birth was a kind of gamble. Kit is nineteen and living in Rome when we meet her. Somehow Kit claims a kind of DNA memory of that pre-time of frozen suspension, and finds herself going in search of those origins when she feels abandoned by her parents--her mother to death, and her father to a peripatetic career.
Kit is a woman who doesn’t always have the motivations we associate with a woman of her wealth, beauty, and intellect. She is young but her naïveté is paired with a world consciousness that few people over thirty can claim. She also has waist-length hair. When I pointed out to friends that this seemed a male fantasy, one man said “not so fast: women with very long hair tend to obsess over it.” It turns out that hair is like a talisman in this novel, a touchstone upon which feelings, actions, and behaviors turn.
Author Rupert Thomson has published nine other novels, one described by critic Jonathan Miles writing for Salon.com as "disquieting" for the horrific scenes of sexual abuse depicted. Thomson, now sixty years old, has been praised for his sentence craft and is often in the running for major literary prizes. One suspects it is his unusual sense of story rather than his writing talent that advances other authors over him to win prizes. In this novel, for instance, the palpable sense of doom and danger does not often play out: we readers are bloodied but whole. There is a rape scene late in the novel, but it is not graphic and is only implied.
More disturbing are the dreams and fantasies of the young woman, who likes to imagine her father searching for her, trying to find her. She writes letters to him, and despite accusing him of not loving her enough, she dreams that he will feel anxious moments trying to locate her with the few clues she has left behind. The author adds to our sense of unease by italicizing a sentence that could only be said by an older person to a younger one: "Even negative experiences contribute to the sum of who you are." There is a sense of inevitability about pain and exposure, though Thomson does not do his worst, to Kit nor to us, in this novel.
Thomson’s work may simply be too uncomfortable to win the prizes, but this novel stands as an entry in the new literature being written that gives us a sense of being untethered in time and space. Thomson’s characters appear to acknowledge and accept the many mysteries that come with interactions with new people. It remains an open question whether his reading public wants that, too.
October 19, 2015
This was an odd but intriguing book, with a quirky and interesting protagonist.
When a book begins with the narrator recounting how she was frozen for eight years as an embryo awaiting IVF implantation into her mother, and she recalls how it felt as she was thawed and readied for implantation, you know you've stumbled upon something unusual. And while the whole book doesn't stay at that level of uniqueness, it's clear that this experience affects Katherine in many ways.
Katherine is 19 years old and struggling. She's still reeling from the death of her mother to cancer (for which she blames herself) and she resents her father, a television reporter, for his continued absences. She's preparing to leave Rome to go to college in England, when she suddenly decides to change the course of her life, to begin "experimenting with coincidence." Overhearing a couple in a movie theater talking about a friend in Berlin with a fantastic apartment, who was recently jilted by his girlfriend, Katherine decides to abandon her plans, cut off contact with everyone she knows, and head to Berlin.
"If I'm to pay proper attention, if this is to work, there's no option but to disconnect, to simplify. From now on, life will register directly, like a tap on the shoulder or a kiss on the lips. It will be felt."
The book follows Katherine on her journey toward self-discovery. In Berlin she makes interesting connections, with friends, potential boyfriends if she was willing to settle down, even a surrogate father figure. At times her adventures are simple and enjoyable, at times they have the potential to be dangerous. She is not willing to alight too long in one place; she keeps looking for the next spot on her journey, and all the while she is wondering how her father will react to her disappearance, and mourning the loss of her mother.
Katherine's voyage takes her to Russia, and then to a remote village on the Arctic Circle. By that time she has invented a new persona for herself, and pursued a new course for her life, but she is still haunted by her mother and lives in fear that someone will make the connection to her old life and alert her father or others looking for her to her whereabouts.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this book. Rupert Thomson has a very lyrical style to his writing, and his imagery is absolutely fantastic. Katherine starts out as a quirky, almost madcap character, and the book definitely gets much heavier as it unfolds. The more Katherine starts wondering about her father's reaction to her disappearance, the more the book veers into imagined sequences and I had to re-read more than a few to be sure I was clear about whether what I was reading was real or a dream.
This is a very interesting read and Katherine is a very unique character. There is emotion and intrigue, but in the end, I didn't quite connect with the book the way I would have liked.
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
When a book begins with the narrator recounting how she was frozen for eight years as an embryo awaiting IVF implantation into her mother, and she recalls how it felt as she was thawed and readied for implantation, you know you've stumbled upon something unusual. And while the whole book doesn't stay at that level of uniqueness, it's clear that this experience affects Katherine in many ways.
Katherine is 19 years old and struggling. She's still reeling from the death of her mother to cancer (for which she blames herself) and she resents her father, a television reporter, for his continued absences. She's preparing to leave Rome to go to college in England, when she suddenly decides to change the course of her life, to begin "experimenting with coincidence." Overhearing a couple in a movie theater talking about a friend in Berlin with a fantastic apartment, who was recently jilted by his girlfriend, Katherine decides to abandon her plans, cut off contact with everyone she knows, and head to Berlin.
"If I'm to pay proper attention, if this is to work, there's no option but to disconnect, to simplify. From now on, life will register directly, like a tap on the shoulder or a kiss on the lips. It will be felt."
The book follows Katherine on her journey toward self-discovery. In Berlin she makes interesting connections, with friends, potential boyfriends if she was willing to settle down, even a surrogate father figure. At times her adventures are simple and enjoyable, at times they have the potential to be dangerous. She is not willing to alight too long in one place; she keeps looking for the next spot on her journey, and all the while she is wondering how her father will react to her disappearance, and mourning the loss of her mother.
Katherine's voyage takes her to Russia, and then to a remote village on the Arctic Circle. By that time she has invented a new persona for herself, and pursued a new course for her life, but she is still haunted by her mother and lives in fear that someone will make the connection to her old life and alert her father or others looking for her to her whereabouts.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this book. Rupert Thomson has a very lyrical style to his writing, and his imagery is absolutely fantastic. Katherine starts out as a quirky, almost madcap character, and the book definitely gets much heavier as it unfolds. The more Katherine starts wondering about her father's reaction to her disappearance, the more the book veers into imagined sequences and I had to re-read more than a few to be sure I was clear about whether what I was reading was real or a dream.
This is a very interesting read and Katherine is a very unique character. There is emotion and intrigue, but in the end, I didn't quite connect with the book the way I would have liked.
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
February 3, 2018
Experimenting with Coincidence
A narrator who opens her story by telling how she was deep frozen for eight years as an IVF embryo awaiting implantation into her mother is certainly not going to give you the same old same old. And when Kit Carlyle, now nineteen, wanders around Rome feeling that odd objects found in the street are secret messages addressed to her by fate, you either conclude that so crazy a character is not for you, or stick with her and see where she takes you. Fortunately, I chose the latter, watching as she picks up a stranger in the Stazione Termini like an assignation between spies, goes with him to an hotel, then shrugs him off with equal ease. Before long, a chance conversation overheard in a movie theater causes her to take out all her money, drown her cell phone, erase her traces, and move to Berlin. And thence to Arkhangel'sk. And thence to Svalbard above the Arctic Circle.
At each stage, she bumps into people in bizarre coincidental ways. And in each case, she goes with the flow for a while and then moves on. She calls it "experimenting with coincidence." Somewhere in all of this, there is a path that she is meant to take, a final destination that will lead her to herself, revealing who she really is. We see her as liberated, bright, and resourceful, but essentially alone. Her mother died a few years earlier of cancer. Her father is a celebrated television reporter, rarely at home. Her moving into the unknown is both a punishment for him and a test to see if he cares enough to find her. The further away she gets, the more she indulges in imagining him following her trail, a scenario she fills out in such detail that it has almost more reality than her own life in these remote places. Imperceptibly, the madcap adventure of the first half changes in the second to something sadder yet more genuine. You start reading for her sheer audacity; you finish because you care.
Kit Carlyle herself is not going to admit to any pain; her standard reply to people who try to help is No thank you, I'm okay. But we know she has a heart because the author has a heart. I marked one page in particular describing Kit's mother in Rome, following the temporary success of her chemotherapy, in which Thomson gets it so absolutely, heartbreakingly right. Here is a small excerpt, as proof that you are in the hands of an author you can trust, and that the bizarre events of the opening will not at all be the whole story:
A narrator who opens her story by telling how she was deep frozen for eight years as an IVF embryo awaiting implantation into her mother is certainly not going to give you the same old same old. And when Kit Carlyle, now nineteen, wanders around Rome feeling that odd objects found in the street are secret messages addressed to her by fate, you either conclude that so crazy a character is not for you, or stick with her and see where she takes you. Fortunately, I chose the latter, watching as she picks up a stranger in the Stazione Termini like an assignation between spies, goes with him to an hotel, then shrugs him off with equal ease. Before long, a chance conversation overheard in a movie theater causes her to take out all her money, drown her cell phone, erase her traces, and move to Berlin. And thence to Arkhangel'sk. And thence to Svalbard above the Arctic Circle.
At each stage, she bumps into people in bizarre coincidental ways. And in each case, she goes with the flow for a while and then moves on. She calls it "experimenting with coincidence." Somewhere in all of this, there is a path that she is meant to take, a final destination that will lead her to herself, revealing who she really is. We see her as liberated, bright, and resourceful, but essentially alone. Her mother died a few years earlier of cancer. Her father is a celebrated television reporter, rarely at home. Her moving into the unknown is both a punishment for him and a test to see if he cares enough to find her. The further away she gets, the more she indulges in imagining him following her trail, a scenario she fills out in such detail that it has almost more reality than her own life in these remote places. Imperceptibly, the madcap adventure of the first half changes in the second to something sadder yet more genuine. You start reading for her sheer audacity; you finish because you care.
Kit Carlyle herself is not going to admit to any pain; her standard reply to people who try to help is No thank you, I'm okay. But we know she has a heart because the author has a heart. I marked one page in particular describing Kit's mother in Rome, following the temporary success of her chemotherapy, in which Thomson gets it so absolutely, heartbreakingly right. Here is a small excerpt, as proof that you are in the hands of an author you can trust, and that the bizarre events of the opening will not at all be the whole story:
Somehow the present was no longer the present; it was already past. She loved Rome as you love a place you're about to leave. She walked the streets with her face tilted towards a sun she no longer took for granted. She sat on the rounded lips of fountains and dangled her bare feet in the cool green water. She touched every plant she saw, as if hoping to leave an imprint of herself, as if prompting them to remember her. Even the air she drew into her lungs was treated as a luxury.
February 25, 2016
What an extraordinary novel.
Wholly original, beautifully written, emotionally complex.
The sort of novel you want to read slowly to better savor, but at the same time you want to read it quickly to the end, so you can start it all over again.
Wholly original, beautifully written, emotionally complex.
The sort of novel you want to read slowly to better savor, but at the same time you want to read it quickly to the end, so you can start it all over again.
November 14, 2021
Katherine - Kit - is the narrator; she is 19, privileged, worldly, and though English, for years she and her parents have lived in Rome, but she's lost her mother recently to cancer, and her father, a war correspondent, is often away for long periods of time, and she has taken to noticing what she interprets as messages - finding money folded into a triangle at the Spanish Steps, keys, playing cards, coins. A random overheard conversation about a man in Berlin whose girlfriend has left him is the message she decides she's waiting for. With that, rather than heading to Oxford where she is to begin college, with her father away on assignment, she throws away her cellphone, leaves her laptop, and heads to Berlin. In the prologue, we learn that Kit was created as an IVF embryo, left frozen for eight years before being implanted into her mother - and that she remembers being created, the years when she was frozen, that those frozen years are what she is made of. Heading to Berlin is only the start of Kit's journey, that will take her to many places, ever colder and darker, until she reaches another fully frozen darkness, the Arctic Circle. Her pursuit of personal liberty and identity- a trajectory she thinks she is in charge of - is circumscribed by men - who consistently notice her along the way, all with some ulterior motive - to help, to threaten, etc., her self-determination hampered by her youth, sex, and self-imposed isolation. An elegant book with marvelous sentences, but I had an increasingly difficult time buying into Kit's utter knowingness, her certainty that she knows - and is mostly right - about how men think, what they want from her. No matter how worldly and privileged one may be, 19 is still 19, not enough life has been lived to have this level of knowingness. As a result, I found myself skipping forward, less interested in her views of things than to find out what happened. At its core, this novel is about a girl who wants more attention from her father.
December 26, 2015
4,25/5 Very solid, original, compelling. It glows and it's intruiging atmosphere will linger on...
July 28, 2021
I was not as taken with this novel as I was with the other two Thomson novels that I’ve read: Dreams of Leaving and The Book of Revelation. The writing is as good, the novel is as unique, but the first-person narrator’s voice and the story were not as compelling as in the other novels (although compelling enough for me to read to the end). I recommend reading Thomson, but I don't think this is a good place to start reading him.
December 4, 2025
I liked this book. It was dry (which I enjoy) with an adventurous plot at the same time. Kind of have to get past the thought that the author is a middle-aged man and it’s written from a teenage girl’s perspective, but hey, John Green has done that countless times. And if the book is good enough then does it really matter? I’ll be honest I almost cried at the end. It made me want to call my Dad and say hello.
November 8, 2015
posted review here at Entertainment Realm: http://entertainmentrealm.com/2015/11...
Didn’t know what was sometimes happening and why but wanted to keep reading because of the writing quality. Rather haunting and definitely unusual. Katherine Carlyle was born through IVF. This haunts her throughout her life [“I tell him about my conception in a London hospital. I was an IVF baby. Does he know what that means? He nods. I tell him I was frozen. I was stored for eight years before I was finally implanted in my mother. I was put together– formed– but then I had to wait in the cold, with no knowledge of how long that wait was likely to be, or whether it will ever end.”] and as a college freshman she decides she’s going to disappear in an attempt to come to terms with this. Katherine leaves Rome for Berlin as a stop point to her end point. She’s not merely going to disappear, she plans to travel to an intensely cold climate in an attempt to get close to her own frozen, isolated beginning. It’s tough to describe except to say it’s part mystery and part personal exploration. A strange story –in a good way– with gorgeous writing and an intriguing story-line.
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Other Press.
Didn’t know what was sometimes happening and why but wanted to keep reading because of the writing quality. Rather haunting and definitely unusual. Katherine Carlyle was born through IVF. This haunts her throughout her life [“I tell him about my conception in a London hospital. I was an IVF baby. Does he know what that means? He nods. I tell him I was frozen. I was stored for eight years before I was finally implanted in my mother. I was put together– formed– but then I had to wait in the cold, with no knowledge of how long that wait was likely to be, or whether it will ever end.”] and as a college freshman she decides she’s going to disappear in an attempt to come to terms with this. Katherine leaves Rome for Berlin as a stop point to her end point. She’s not merely going to disappear, she plans to travel to an intensely cold climate in an attempt to get close to her own frozen, isolated beginning. It’s tough to describe except to say it’s part mystery and part personal exploration. A strange story –in a good way– with gorgeous writing and an intriguing story-line.
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Other Press.
September 8, 2017
katherine carlisle, nata in provetta, dopo la morte della madre fugge da roma sulla scia di imperscrutabili coincidenze- alla ricerca del suo destino. un romanzo inizialmente ostico, in cui ho faticato a superare l'iniziale antipatia per la protagonista, ma che conquista pian piano; un romanzo sulla ricerca di sé, sull'elaborazione del dolore e la riscoperta dei legami familiari. molto commovente e inusuale l'ultima parte, nel buio gelido delle isole svalbard.
October 15, 2015
In this unusual, somber tale, the titular Katherine Carlyle is on the run from her melancholy life. She was an IVF baby that was frozen for eight years before being thawed and implanted in her now-dead mother. Her father, a big-shot TV news journalist, never seems to have time for her, and is always off to the Middle East or wherever there is a newsworthy war. Katherine, who moved from England to Rome with her parents when she was very young, often daydreams of the days that her mother was alive. In elegiac detail, she recalls these moments, which are woven intermittently throughout the novel.
Katherine’s memories of her family intimacy—mainly her mother's—are juxtaposed with her current lifestyle of hooking up with strangers. She is also distressed by that eight-year interval that she was frozen. Why eight years, she questions? The examination of her origins, and her pursuit of validity and love, are the keystone themes of this novel.
As the novel progresses, so does Katherine—toward colder climates. I saw it as an extended metaphor for her years as a frozen embryo. Of course, Katherine can’t know or remember her pre-historic life, but, in traveling to colder tundra, she is imagining it, playing out her embryonic life in her current one. She’s quite resourceful, also, for her nineteen years; she seems older in her ability to cannily out-pace others. No matter if someone is a friend or stranger, Katherine can outmaneuver older adults by baiting them to project certain fantasies onto her. She is utter control, externally, and playacts so skillfully and subtly, that she wears her masks as a second skin.
“Sometimes I suspect I haven’t thawed out yet, My emotions are still frozen, my nerve endings numb. Sometimes I imagine I have been carved out of ice, like a swan in a medieval banquet, and that my heart is visible inside, a gorgeous scarlet, but motionless, trapped, incapable of beating or feeling.” Whew! A chilly hood over a hot heart!
The author installs the reader wherever Katherine goes, and whatever she is thinking about. The movie, The Passenger, is woven throughout the novel, almost like a second plot, as Katherine remembers scenes that have an eerie but oblique parallel. His sense of place is superb. I felt right back on Via Giulia, for example, the most beautiful street in Rome. And the scenes in Berlin were so sharp, lucid. I was just there a few months ago, and it was as if I were stepping in her boot prints. I felt a quick tingle when she stopped at Bebelplatz, the site of one of the infamous Nazi book burning ceremonies, where “beneath the pane is a brightly lit white room, its walls lined with shelves that are pristine, empty.” In a sense, this could be an analogy to Katherine, an empty library filled with unlined shelves.
The pace is steady, punctuated by brief, isolated acts of violence. Katherine’s journey unfolds with a growing suspense, taut and tensile as the denouement closes in on the final pages. When I closed the book, I continued to ponder the protagonist; Katherine Carlyle had become implanted in my reader’s soul. Highly recommended for literature lovers looking for a deep, contemplative adventure story with rich prose, ethereal moments, and a complex character.
“After years in the storage tank I was finally lifted into blinding daylight, a foretaste of the birth that was to come. They moved me from one thawing solution to another…then put me in an incubator… This was the place where I divided. Cleaved… I experienced a gradual loss of control, a delicious incontinence. I was unfurling, expanding, taking shape. A sudden, hectic tumble into life.”
Katherine’s memories of her family intimacy—mainly her mother's—are juxtaposed with her current lifestyle of hooking up with strangers. She is also distressed by that eight-year interval that she was frozen. Why eight years, she questions? The examination of her origins, and her pursuit of validity and love, are the keystone themes of this novel.
As the novel progresses, so does Katherine—toward colder climates. I saw it as an extended metaphor for her years as a frozen embryo. Of course, Katherine can’t know or remember her pre-historic life, but, in traveling to colder tundra, she is imagining it, playing out her embryonic life in her current one. She’s quite resourceful, also, for her nineteen years; she seems older in her ability to cannily out-pace others. No matter if someone is a friend or stranger, Katherine can outmaneuver older adults by baiting them to project certain fantasies onto her. She is utter control, externally, and playacts so skillfully and subtly, that she wears her masks as a second skin.
“Sometimes I suspect I haven’t thawed out yet, My emotions are still frozen, my nerve endings numb. Sometimes I imagine I have been carved out of ice, like a swan in a medieval banquet, and that my heart is visible inside, a gorgeous scarlet, but motionless, trapped, incapable of beating or feeling.” Whew! A chilly hood over a hot heart!
The author installs the reader wherever Katherine goes, and whatever she is thinking about. The movie, The Passenger, is woven throughout the novel, almost like a second plot, as Katherine remembers scenes that have an eerie but oblique parallel. His sense of place is superb. I felt right back on Via Giulia, for example, the most beautiful street in Rome. And the scenes in Berlin were so sharp, lucid. I was just there a few months ago, and it was as if I were stepping in her boot prints. I felt a quick tingle when she stopped at Bebelplatz, the site of one of the infamous Nazi book burning ceremonies, where “beneath the pane is a brightly lit white room, its walls lined with shelves that are pristine, empty.” In a sense, this could be an analogy to Katherine, an empty library filled with unlined shelves.
The pace is steady, punctuated by brief, isolated acts of violence. Katherine’s journey unfolds with a growing suspense, taut and tensile as the denouement closes in on the final pages. When I closed the book, I continued to ponder the protagonist; Katherine Carlyle had become implanted in my reader’s soul. Highly recommended for literature lovers looking for a deep, contemplative adventure story with rich prose, ethereal moments, and a complex character.
“After years in the storage tank I was finally lifted into blinding daylight, a foretaste of the birth that was to come. They moved me from one thawing solution to another…then put me in an incubator… This was the place where I divided. Cleaved… I experienced a gradual loss of control, a delicious incontinence. I was unfurling, expanding, taking shape. A sudden, hectic tumble into life.”
October 6, 2015
There are many “searching for self” novels but none that I can recall that begin in vitro. Katherine (Kit) Carlyle is n IVF baby who retains misty memories of a life as an IVF embryo. In her words, “I was put together – formed – but then had to wait in the cold, with no knowledge of how long that wait was likely to be, or whether it would ever end.”
The wait, to be specific, was eight years. At that point, she was implanted and became the daughter of Stephanie, who, we learn early on, dies of cancer and David, an absent and self-absorbed CNN reporter. Father and daughter have a challenging relationship, which is heightened by Kit’s belief that her father blames the IVF procedure for her mother’s premature death.
The bulk of this book is Kit’s search for memory and identity; she becomes who she is, ironically, by vanishing. Every occasion—every moment – trembles with a sense of opportunity as Kit looks to strangers to figure out what they are trying to impart. Her vanishing act takes her first to Berlin (a believer in coincidence, she goes there for the flimsiest of reasons: she overhears movie-goers talking about a jilted friend and determines to meet up with him). Even Berlin is not far enough; she journeys to a remote and dismal northern Russian settlement. Her thoughts: “Though I have met new people and visited new places, those aspects of the journey never had much relevance. What has interested me right from the beginning – what has preoccupied me above all – is the prospect of arrival.”
As Kit loses herself – even taking on the portentous new name of “Misty” – potential fantasies of her father’s desperate need to find her crowd her thoughts. This is, perhaps, the one weakness of the book: the “daddy issues” compete with the main theme, the self-search. Still, the book is wonderfully written and every locale is rendered with authenticity. This is an original novel that asks a provocative questions: how far does one go to find oneself?
The wait, to be specific, was eight years. At that point, she was implanted and became the daughter of Stephanie, who, we learn early on, dies of cancer and David, an absent and self-absorbed CNN reporter. Father and daughter have a challenging relationship, which is heightened by Kit’s belief that her father blames the IVF procedure for her mother’s premature death.
The bulk of this book is Kit’s search for memory and identity; she becomes who she is, ironically, by vanishing. Every occasion—every moment – trembles with a sense of opportunity as Kit looks to strangers to figure out what they are trying to impart. Her vanishing act takes her first to Berlin (a believer in coincidence, she goes there for the flimsiest of reasons: she overhears movie-goers talking about a jilted friend and determines to meet up with him). Even Berlin is not far enough; she journeys to a remote and dismal northern Russian settlement. Her thoughts: “Though I have met new people and visited new places, those aspects of the journey never had much relevance. What has interested me right from the beginning – what has preoccupied me above all – is the prospect of arrival.”
As Kit loses herself – even taking on the portentous new name of “Misty” – potential fantasies of her father’s desperate need to find her crowd her thoughts. This is, perhaps, the one weakness of the book: the “daddy issues” compete with the main theme, the self-search. Still, the book is wonderfully written and every locale is rendered with authenticity. This is an original novel that asks a provocative questions: how far does one go to find oneself?
October 24, 2015
I need to read more Rupert Thomson.
This book has a very unreliable narrator, the title's Katherine Carlyle. The beginning of the book took me longer than usual to get with its groove. I had no idea where the book was taking me, but perhaps, that's part of my enjoyment of it. It was the very last sentence before everything made sense. (WARNING for those of you who rush to the end of the book and then start to read.)
Katherine Carlyle is a nineteen year old whose mother just died and feels neglected by her journalist father. These characters and the author are Brits which allowed me an education with some of the author's phrasing. (They got "take away" when they didn't want to prepare a meal at home.)
I did enjoy the book and Thomson's writing style. I will seek him out again.
This book has a very unreliable narrator, the title's Katherine Carlyle. The beginning of the book took me longer than usual to get with its groove. I had no idea where the book was taking me, but perhaps, that's part of my enjoyment of it. It was the very last sentence before everything made sense. (WARNING for those of you who rush to the end of the book and then start to read.)
Katherine Carlyle is a nineteen year old whose mother just died and feels neglected by her journalist father. These characters and the author are Brits which allowed me an education with some of the author's phrasing. (They got "take away" when they didn't want to prepare a meal at home.)
I did enjoy the book and Thomson's writing style. I will seek him out again.
October 28, 2015
This is the first Rupert Thomson novel that has actively annoyed me. To the point where I can't read it anymore.
Maybe it's not what I want to be reading right now. Or maybe it's that I can't be having with the utter idiocy of this unfathomable girl who wafts around getting picked up by men who want to have sex with her. I am so tempted to skip right to the end of the novel but I can't even do that.
For fuck's sake.
Maybe it's not what I want to be reading right now. Or maybe it's that I can't be having with the utter idiocy of this unfathomable girl who wafts around getting picked up by men who want to have sex with her. I am so tempted to skip right to the end of the novel but I can't even do that.
For fuck's sake.
September 19, 2016
Fresco fresco di stampa!
Letto anzi divorato in due giorni.
Il libro narra le vicende di una ragazza concepita in provetta e del suo tormentato rapporto col padre.
In fuga dal proprio dolore e dai propri fantasmi Kit approda in un luogo isolato e solitario al termine di una lunga fuga in giro per l'Europa.
Un romanzo sui generis con una prosa scorrevole e piacevole.
Surreali a tratti le vicende, inserite in un setting invece molto reale e ben descritto
Letto anzi divorato in due giorni.
Il libro narra le vicende di una ragazza concepita in provetta e del suo tormentato rapporto col padre.
In fuga dal proprio dolore e dai propri fantasmi Kit approda in un luogo isolato e solitario al termine di una lunga fuga in giro per l'Europa.
Un romanzo sui generis con una prosa scorrevole e piacevole.
Surreali a tratti le vicende, inserite in un setting invece molto reale e ben descritto
March 7, 2018
This book has a dynamism in the way it draws you through all the arteries, branches and veins of a decision making tree- what chooses a character? Well, the lucky egg. And when does she get to be on stage? When she's selected from the dark. And what marks her? She's alone, when her mother dies. So how does she decide to act ? Like all of us, in response to signals blown on the wind, the approach of other, the draw of the elements.
There is something of a Cloud Atlas epic return to the start going on here I think. The main character, a frozen IVF embryo for 8 years ,Kit, is obliged to travel through a kind of circle, to recreate her start, get cold, see how others fail, be subjected to sex and choose to live. ( I think there is some plot rationale for the rape - it's not enough that she's gone somewhere cold, the sex that created her was forced on her - in as much as none of us have a choice about life- and this rape forces her to make a choice about living).
It's an odd choice, this book- there's no denying. It is beautifully written- the pull of the language through a dozen bizarre relationships, inexplicable relationships with others and their sadnesses, random encounters, the European, Russian scenery flashing by, the
Polar bear. And why not- write about what happens if you let everything go, the phone, the job, the reason for living, if you said YES to things, what would happen? Would you end up begging on the streets? Or travel far away from where you started?
Kits imagined possible future alternatives, flights of fancy are key to the dynamic of this book- how people will react- what might they do? How will they step forward into the decision making space created by my having acted in ThIS way ? Her imaginings are well done- a few moments showing how the written narrative could be undone, change course, what do we know? She could have been other, it might yet be different. A frozen baby is potential, how do you release the potential? When does it exercise its self?
I did like this novel for its thought provoking ness, and covering so much ground in only 300 pages- but I am really plagued by a review on here that says how fed up the reviewer is by old white men writing books about magical girls that involve them coming to a bad end. I want to say that this book is more than that.
But is it? Kit is a not a well defined female character In any regard, she is female because it helps the plot, makes it poignant and possible. She makes many decisions without hesitation for her personal safety- which is actually remote from how women function. It's possible that I too need a break from how old white men drive their magic girls into crises- and I would have argued vigorously that R. Thompson was Not one such. Funny how things turn out.
There is something of a Cloud Atlas epic return to the start going on here I think. The main character, a frozen IVF embryo for 8 years ,Kit, is obliged to travel through a kind of circle, to recreate her start, get cold, see how others fail, be subjected to sex and choose to live. ( I think there is some plot rationale for the rape - it's not enough that she's gone somewhere cold, the sex that created her was forced on her - in as much as none of us have a choice about life- and this rape forces her to make a choice about living).
It's an odd choice, this book- there's no denying. It is beautifully written- the pull of the language through a dozen bizarre relationships, inexplicable relationships with others and their sadnesses, random encounters, the European, Russian scenery flashing by, the
Polar bear. And why not- write about what happens if you let everything go, the phone, the job, the reason for living, if you said YES to things, what would happen? Would you end up begging on the streets? Or travel far away from where you started?
Kits imagined possible future alternatives, flights of fancy are key to the dynamic of this book- how people will react- what might they do? How will they step forward into the decision making space created by my having acted in ThIS way ? Her imaginings are well done- a few moments showing how the written narrative could be undone, change course, what do we know? She could have been other, it might yet be different. A frozen baby is potential, how do you release the potential? When does it exercise its self?
I did like this novel for its thought provoking ness, and covering so much ground in only 300 pages- but I am really plagued by a review on here that says how fed up the reviewer is by old white men writing books about magical girls that involve them coming to a bad end. I want to say that this book is more than that.
But is it? Kit is a not a well defined female character In any regard, she is female because it helps the plot, makes it poignant and possible. She makes many decisions without hesitation for her personal safety- which is actually remote from how women function. It's possible that I too need a break from how old white men drive their magic girls into crises- and I would have argued vigorously that R. Thompson was Not one such. Funny how things turn out.
November 17, 2017
Rupert Thomson seems to be a kind of non-genre Adam Roberts: producing way more original books with way better writing than most of his peers, winning some prizes, presumably doing OK, but never having those bookshop tables stacked high. This is a strange and vivid book, feeling at first like an arthouse movie but one that eventually makes sense, and with incredible cinematography, by virtue of the simple but effective trick of giving everything a distinct colour. So good.
November 9, 2018
I hadn't read this author before but I really enjoyed the quality of the writing and the way he structured the story. I was captivated by the main character and her looking for signs of what direction she was meant to be taking with her life..It reminded me of "The Dice Man". The story compulsively carried me along right till the end. A good read.
July 16, 2018
Beautiful, sad and also hopeful
A wonderful story of finding yourself and deciding who you are in the world. I felt like I grewcwith her and whilst it is sometime uncomfortable reading his writing is mesmerising
A wonderful story of finding yourself and deciding who you are in the world. I felt like I grewcwith her and whilst it is sometime uncomfortable reading his writing is mesmerising
August 28, 2021
Rupert Thomson is a writer that I always have time for. He should be better known. This novel is no different from all if his others in terms of sheer quality and readability. On this occasion his protagonist is a teenage girl adrift from society and in the middle of an existential crisis. I don't know what teenage girls think or feel particularly being an older man myself. However, if one were to have a stab at creating such a character going through this kind of crisis then this author surely takes the prize. A fabulous creation with moments of exquisite tension build up and almost panic attack inducing. The character is believable and well rounded and there is nothing gratuitous about the narrative.
May 30, 2017
Perplexing, heartbreaking, and hopeful.
Read
January 13, 2025Cannot recommend
November 9, 2015
I absolutely loved this book for the first 11% and then she wandered off! Kathryn (Kit) Carlyle is harbouring lots of resentment - about her father, her mother's death and her "imprisonment" as an embryo before she was implanted in her mother... so abandons her new home in Rome for adventure (and to teach her father a lesson?!)
Whilst the premise of the story was good, and there was some touching prose, I found her an unrealistic and odd character. I didn't really warm to her once the initial premise was revealed and each new destination/chapter/person in her life was a little more unpleasant, a little more unsavoury.
Bizarre and odd, yet somehow strangely compelling. After an initial breather (around 11%, I gave up and read another book before returning to Kit) I raced through. But still leaves an unsettled feeling, like an unfathomable aftertaste... Perhaps this was the author's point - to get to the bottom of who we really are and where the journey to find out will take us....
An interesting book. 3* for me. I
Whilst the premise of the story was good, and there was some touching prose, I found her an unrealistic and odd character. I didn't really warm to her once the initial premise was revealed and each new destination/chapter/person in her life was a little more unpleasant, a little more unsavoury.
Bizarre and odd, yet somehow strangely compelling. After an initial breather (around 11%, I gave up and read another book before returning to Kit) I raced through. But still leaves an unsettled feeling, like an unfathomable aftertaste... Perhaps this was the author's point - to get to the bottom of who we really are and where the journey to find out will take us....
An interesting book. 3* for me. I
October 14, 2015
Haunt her memories three-dimensional...
A clue in the Russian snow to melt her hand around...
Missives to Dad are wasted entreaties...
If not signed, sealed and delivered...
In blood, mostly blood...
Hardcore independent young ladies don't write...
They do the Joan of Arc, chopping heads off in battle...
Joan didn't were pink, she wore entrails...
A prayer for time wayfarers under the Pantheon's Dome...
Death is not eternity...
Slowly dying in a state of consciousness is...
Nobody mourns the mourner...
The sight of the characters in this novel...
Bring me one after the other to the gallows...
A Chris Roberts Review
A clue in the Russian snow to melt her hand around...
Missives to Dad are wasted entreaties...
If not signed, sealed and delivered...
In blood, mostly blood...
Hardcore independent young ladies don't write...
They do the Joan of Arc, chopping heads off in battle...
Joan didn't were pink, she wore entrails...
A prayer for time wayfarers under the Pantheon's Dome...
Death is not eternity...
Slowly dying in a state of consciousness is...
Nobody mourns the mourner...
The sight of the characters in this novel...
Bring me one after the other to the gallows...
A Chris Roberts Review
November 15, 2015
It’s not uncommon, from time to time, to feel as though everything about your life is being orchestrated in some way. You meet someone’s eye on a train, and it’s significant; everything from the music in your headphones to the advert on the walls confirms it. Your whole life, somehow, has been building to this. It’s not about falling in love. It’s about the sense of arriving at a destination, even if you don’t quite understand what the destination is, or why you’re meant to be there.
Katherine Carlyle—Kit—knows exactly how you feel.
Read the rest of the review here: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2015...
Katherine Carlyle—Kit—knows exactly how you feel.
Read the rest of the review here: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2015...
November 27, 2015
Strange, dreamlike. Someone described this as literary David Lynch and that feels about right. A nineteen year old girl who was an IVF baby goes on a spiritual quest after her Mother dies of cancer. Thomson creates a weird, compelling, foreboding narrative, but I started to give up on dear Kate three quarters of the way through because she quickly became as cold as the cryogenic tank she'd been taken from.
January 14, 2016
The book has a nice cadence but lacks in depth and substance. Kit, the story's protagonist, is cold and uninspiring. Reeling from her mother's death and testing her emotionally absent father's love, she abandons her privileged life to set off on a journey where she wishes to leave no trace. Along the way, she uses people, viewing them as mere pawns in her precious plan. The author fails to develop her character into someone sympathetic, leaving a rather bland feeling about the end.
November 30, 2015
Not a terrible read, but there was no plot and no exploration of the existential IVF questions that the blurb made such a big deal of. The whole novel felt pretty pointless.
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