Murmur

Starred review from March 1, 2019
A challenging literary experiment about the shifting nature of human consciousness, inspired by English computer scientist Alan Turing, who was persecuted for being gay.British novelist and poet Eaves (The Absent Therapist, 2014, etc.) tells the story of Alec Pryor, an English mathematician modeled after Turing, in three sections. Part of a top-secret effort to decrypt coded German communications during World War II, Pryor is a prominent member of scientific and government circles after the war. He is also, however, a gay man at a time when homosexuality is a punishable offense under British law. Searching for intimacy under these conditions, he wanders a fairground and meets a man named Cyril, with whom he strikes up a sexual relationship. This is his downfall: A friend of Cyril's breaks into Pryor's apartment, and when he reports the crime, he's taken in for suspicion of homosexual acts. Soon, he finds himself under the control of Dr. Stallbrook, an analyst who oversees the chemical castration to which he's been sentenced. Stallbrook encourages Pryor to write, and these "notes to pass the time" become the hallucinatory dreamscapes of the book's second and third parts. As the synthetic estrogen does its work, Pryor's consciousness ranges back and forth in time, from Britain's hunter-gatherer past to a future in which machines replace human consciousness. Watching himself as if from afar, he comes to terms with the loss of control he suffers as his body changes. All the while, he is haunted by the memory of a figure from his schoolboy days, Christopher Molyneaux, a fellow student Pryor loved but whose friendship gradually faded. "I think he was told no good could come of our friendship, because of what I am, or rather, because of what, then, it was suggested I would become." In careful prose, Eaves prods at the limits of human consciousness as Pryor comes to grips with the changes wracking his body. All the while Eaves asks important questions about our ability to communicate our innermost thoughts to those we love. "What would a conversation be with instant, mutual apprehension of its themes?" Pryor wonders. Eaves has delivered a gripping narrative experiment that gives us a sense of what such an intimacy would be like.A wildly inventive and moving exploration of the human mind under conditions of duress.

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Starred review from May 13, 2019
Eaves (The Oversight) delivers an exquisite novel inspired by Alan Turing’s brilliant mind and troubled life. Alec Pryor, a gifted genius during WWII, has been found guilty of homosexuality, and he must endure chemical castration along with uncertainties as to his place in society. These circumstances do not inhibit his scientific mind, but rather expand it to explorations of consciousness, time, dreams, and existence. Through letters, a journal, thought, and interactions, Alec questions everything with a thinker’s perspective, including family, his past love with Christopher Molyneaux, conversations with his therapist Dr. Stallbrook, and a marriage proposal to June, a fellow mathematician and close friend. Alec tries to tolerate the pain and misery of his fate as a brilliant man who is a “sexual menace,” and he continues his sensitive work on solving the Enigma code, but it’s difficult for him to fit in. All that’s left to him is to reflect; as June writes in a letter to him, “the thinking is the work, and the trick is to catch it on the wing.” This novel will submerge readers in contemplation and dazzling prose as it captures the essence of mind and matter.