“Double Blind” is my first Edward St Aubyn and I admit to intense anticipation. I quickly latched onto the author’s consummate lyrical skill, both descriptively rich and wondrously constructed. And the novel’s storyline holds great promise, bringing together an ecologist, psychologists, a rewilding environmentalist, a project planner, a maniacal venture capitalist, and a schizophrenic. Like, say, Richard Powers, St Aubyn revels in informing and exploring deep subject, and here he fossicks around in epigenetics, psychoanalysis, neurology, ecology, and oncology. The plot tumbles hither and thither, delightfully at first, and the characters are explored succinctly. If Double Blind refuses to follow traditional plot closure rules as the reader ends the end of her journey, this too seems wisely intelligent. A beguiling, off-kilter read.
Book, album, and movie reviews
