
In a plot that strains the limits of credulity, an elderly failed composer takes up DNA splicing as a super-fun hobby and ends up wanted by federal authorities on charges of bioterrorism, following a most unlikely incident involving his dog. Credulity snaps altogether when, after the feds first pay him a visit, he then goes online to research biological warfare techniques, just out of interest. Despite having a daughter who works in data mining and has taught him to speak basic internet paranoia.
So now our septuagenarian’s on the run from the law, and his efforts to evade a capture that he frankly deserves for his criminally dangerous stupidity are interspersed with flashbacks to his lifetime of bad decisions and loved ones sacrificed in pursuit of sublimity, which he aimed to achieve through the composition of chaotic atonal noise, occasionally choreographed by his only friend, who he obviously hated. The biographical sections have long descriptive passages about music, which I confess to having skimmed because they were intolerably dull. The fact that the whole mess was, in the end, well-written was the only reason I managed to keep reading. Still, the net result was that I oscillated between stress and boredom, which I know from watching Homeland is a for-realsies CIA enhanced interrogation technique.
Long-listed for the Booker Prize, because this is what happens when we open our clubhouse doors to people who think that Webster’s is a proper dictionary.