A feast for geeks: The Making of Incarnation, by Tom McCarthy, reviewed

Since the publication of his debut, Remainder, Tom McCarthy has established himself as the Christopher Nolan of literary fiction: his novels play with conceptual themes such as time and motion and space. C and Satin Island were both shortlisted for the Booker. His latest, The Making of Incarnation, deals with, among other things, motion-capture technology. Even the title of the science fiction film at the heart of the novel — Incarnation — has a Nolanesque ring to it.

The story is knotty. As the narrator puts it: ‘Things are connected to other things, which are connected to other things.’ McCarthy fictionalises the life of the engineer and motion-studies pioneer Lillian Gilbreth, who did her key work in the interwar years. Here, she captures life through a collection of small boxes. One of these, Box 808, gets lost. Another thread features Mark Phocan, who works as an engineering consultant and motion-capture specialist in a company called Pantarey Motion Systems, and later goes on a trail to find the missing Box 808.