‘C’ is for Caul, Chute, Crash and Call, the titles of the four sections of Tom McCarthy’s new novel; for Serge Carrefax, its protagonist; and for, among other things, coordinates, communication technology, crypts, cryptography, Ceres, carbon, cocaine and Cartesian space, motifs that trellis this book.
‘C’ is for Caul, Chute, Crash and Call, the titles of the four sections of Tom McCarthy’s new novel; for Serge Carrefax, its protagonist; and for, among other things, coordinates, communication technology, crypts, cryptography, Ceres, carbon, cocaine and Cartesian space, motifs that trellis this book.
Serge is born at the end of the 19th century on a comfortable country estate to a mother who manufactures silk and a father who runs a deaf school and devotes his remaining hours to the budding science of tele- graphy (the etymological origin of ‘Serge’ means ‘silk’, besides the more obvious pun on ‘surge’).
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