A man swaps his comfortable existence for an affair in Thomson’s lyrical study of a midlife crisis
In Jean-Paul Sartre’s first novel, Nausea, the protagonist, Roquentin, suffers a strange “sweet sickness” that is the physical manifestation of a deep existential malaise. Phillip Notman, the hero of Rupert Thomson’s How to Make a Bomb, is, like Roquentin, an academic researching a biography of an obscure historical figure. Like Roquentin, he is struck by a sudden and paralysing nausea, one that threatens to capsize his apparently ordered existence. Like Roquentin, he seeks solace in a woman’s love. Thomson’s 14 novels are overwhelmingly disparate, sharing only a profound regard for style, an engagement with the European avant garde tradition, and an interest in the secret and occluded corners of life.
It is at a conference in Norway that Notman suffers his first bout of illness. He is on his way to the airport after an evening spent in the company of a Spanish academic, Inés. How to Make a Bomb is written in an unusual kind of free verse with line breaks replacing full stops, although, as with any successful stylistic effect, you stop noticing it after a page or two. On the tram to the airport, Notman feels as if:
