Gabriel’s Moon: a spy novel with historical roots

Despite several people being unwell and sadly missed, we had a good turnout for our Book Club meeting at Hanami on Wednesday 10 December.

Patrick introduced Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd. Boyd is a highly versatile author, having written screenplays, journalism and a wide range of novels; this was his first spy novel (apart from a commissioned Bond book). The story unfolds along two main strands. We first meet the protagonist, Gabriel Dax, at the age of six, when his home is destroyed by a fire in which his mother dies. One part of the novel follows Gabriel’s desperate adult quest to uncover the truth about what really happened that night.

The other, more dominant plotline sees travel writer Gabriel being reluctantly drawn into the shadowy world of espionage, personified by the enigmatic and elegant Faith Green. The increasingly surreal and mysterious events are powerfully described, and Boyd has said that one of the things he enjoys about writing spy fiction is the idea of people pretending to be someone completely different.

Boyd also likes to ground his plots in real historical events. In this case, the background is the 1961 kidnapping and subsequent assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first and democratically elected president of the newly independent Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Patrick very helpfully reminded us of the historical detail: Lumumba was idealistic and popular, but Western governments — particularly the USA at the end of Eisenhower’s presidency, along with the UK and Belgium — feared that he would align the Congo too closely with Soviet Russia and, worse, make the country’s vast uranium resources available to them. The killing was in fact masterminded by these governments.

Gabriel meets Lumumba at the beginning of the “spy” strand of the novel, and his records of that meeting later play a significant role in the nefarious activities of the British security services.

Most of us enjoyed the book and found it an easy and engaging read. Some felt that it was a little overcomplicated with too many elements crammed in, that there were too many improbabilities or that the period detail didn’t entirely convince. However, nobody regretted reading it, and several of us count ourselves as Boyd admirers.

Next meeting: The Soldier’s Return by Melvyn Bragg