It’s been a long time since I’ve come across a book so unexpectedly startling as Nicholas Mosley’s Hopeful Monsters.
At the end of it, I find myself wordless and in awe, as if I’d experienced a flash of satori, wanting to but unable to say anything of the insight.
I can find surprisingly little written about the book.
It won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1990, in itself surprising, since the Whitbread was supposed to be (at least then) a more populist alternative to the Booker Prize.
I can hardly imagine a less populist book.
Mosley resigned from the Booker Prize judging panel in 1991, claiming that all his choices had been rejected, as they were novels of ideas, or novels in which characters were subservient to ideas… Explaining later, My point was that humans were beings who did have ideas, who were often influenced by ideas, to whom ideas were important. If they were not, then there was some lack in being human.
The description fits Hopeful Monsters perfectly, a novel of grand ideas.
After finishing, I found myself wondering if Mosley was related to Oswald Mosley, the British Fascist leader. It turns out he was his son, but became one of his harshest critics.
I can’t find the words to describe the book. I don’t think I can do more than hint that it’s fundamentally about the mystery of consciousness, and share the experience of awe.
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