36 | New Scientist | 4 June 2022
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The Red Arrow
William Brewer
John MurrayDAYDREAMERS often love
train journeys. When it comes
to navigating a maze of fancy
and reflection while hurtling at
high speed from A to B, few do
it with such deft eloquence as
William Brewer’s introspective
protagonist in The Red Arrow.
The novel is named after the
train Frecciarossa, on which
the protagonist is travelling for
the whole course of the novel,
although most of the time his
mind is elsewhere. His mission
is to find the “Physicist” because
he owes him a story: he is
halfway through ghostwriting
the Physicist’s memoirs, a
commission that will relieve
him of a significant debt.
The nameless Physicist
bears many parallels with the
theorist Carlo Rovelli, who also
works on theories of quantum
gravity, one of the grand but vague
and hypothetical ideas that thestoryline hangs from. While
some passages are rich in physics
references – “the water around me
exploded in fractals, in quantized
sparkle” – the physics in the novel
is more of a relish, adding flavour
rather than substance. In terms
of detailed science, The Red Arrow
is more about mental health.
The protagonist has a history
of suicidal depression, which
Brewer relates vividly, investing
readers in his character’s plight
and running through a whole
gamut of emotional responses
to mental illness, from the greater
closeness he has with his partnerFor those with no vested
interest in theoretical physics
or mental health, the language
throughout The Red Arrow is a
delight. The protagonist didn’t just
chat about past experiences with
the woman of his dreams on their
first date, they “shuffled through
our decks of personal history”.
Brewer makes a craft of braiding
his storylines, which helps prevent
his many tangential musings – and
they are legion – from drifting into
tedium. Describing the landscape
on his honeymoon as “sepia”
at one point, the protagonist
digresses into a comparison with
“the burnished hue that lights the
opening scene of The Godfather:
Part II”, from which point he starts
recalling the Christmas when he
first watched it, then begins to
reflect on the views his father
voiced on the film and what they
meant for their relationship.
With a pacier plot, such
detours might be more annoying,
but for all its crescendo to a big
reveal at the end, The Red Arrow
is mostly about the side alleys on
the way. Despite meandering at a
profoundly pedestrian pace, it is
a surprisingly compelling read. ❚after he confides in her, to
“snap out of it” and “buck up”.
For all it is a close-up look
at depression, The Red Arrow
isn’t a cheerless read, and the
protagonist does find a treatment
that helps him. The narrator finds
salvation in taking the psychedelic
chemical psilocybin, a drug that
is currently attracting a lot of
research as a potential treatment
for a range of mental health
issues (see page 46).On the right track
The physics in this meandering but compelling novel adds flavour rather than
substance, with the focus more on mental health, finds Anna DemmingThe Red Arrow takes
place on a train – with the
odd metaphysical detourMeet the dinosaurs of south London
Book
The Art and Science of the
Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
Mark Witton and Ellinor Michel
The Crowood PressTHE Great Exhibition of 1851 was a
huge success – so huge that in 1852
the iron and glass structure that
had contained it was reassembled
on parkland in Penge in south
London, forming the nucleus of
a permanent complex of gardens,fountains and unusual attractions.
The Geological Court, arguably
its most beguiling exhibit, still
enchants and inspires today.
Cleverly designed to evoke
lost landscapes and peppered
with sculptures of long-extinct
creatures, this naturalistic
celebration of geology and
palaeontology opened in 1854.
Teams of experts were involved,
led by natural history artist
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins,
geologist David Thomas Ansted
and mining engineer JamesCampbell. Theirs was the world’s
first attempt to depict prehistory
at scale in sculptural form.
Today, enormous sloths,
dainty pterosaurs and mighty
marine reptiles still eye each other
warily across the banks of artificial
islands. Delicate and weathered,
they are also oddly modern. The
whole concept of a dinosaur was
just over a decade old when the
court opened, and visitors were
startled to discover that these
creatures weren’t the appalling
dragons imagined by artists onlya few years before. “It seems
a very model of innocence
and contentment,” wrote one
journalist about the iguanodon.
In The Art and Science of
the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs,
palaeoartist Mark Witton and
evolutionary biologist Ellinor
Michel have assembled an
indispensable work of scholarship
that is also a rich visual resource.
Given the fragility of the site,
a record this detailed – and
so charming – is long overdue. ❚
Simon Ings