Omnia sunt communia. Q by Luther Blisset - a review.

Q as a whole is a sophisticated and intricate book of political intrigue, but this sophistication is not always matched by the style. It is at times staccato:

“The girl doesn’t take her eyes of my face.
Blue eyes. Blond curls dripping with rain.
The lofty indifference of a fairy.
Pure horror.
The instinct to crush her. To kill.
My heart beating like a drum.
They pass on.”

Or:

“Dawn. Pewter sky. Thoughts creep beneath sleep and pull away the covers.
Kathleen is asleep, an unbelievable spectacle of hair and mouth and warm breath.
Get up quietly lest I wake her.”

Descriptions often leave out verbs, reading more like stage directions: “A table hooked to the front wall, two chairs at the sides, a bench nailed to the floor”.

Dialogue can be admirably efficient: “They own a printing press. I’ve done a deal with them so that I can make use of it. I’ve promised them that they won’t have problems with the censors, we’ll have to be careful.” But sometimes it is too efficient: “My name’s Matthys, Jan Matthys, a baker from Haarlem”.

But the energy of the novel carries you over such faults (if indeed they are faults) and it is not all written in the same style. A fight in part three is described in full, correct sentences (elsewhere there is a tendency to drop verbs in descriptions of fights in a not unsuccessful attempt to convey the confusion and speed of the action). There are also more leisurely disquisitions, including that in part 3, chapter 16: “In this land that isn’t a land colours are forever assaulting the eye” as well as stirring speeches like Jan Matthys’s in Münster: “I am not the captain of this war. Not this mouth, these passion-ravaged bones. No. It is the Lord your God. The one they have always forced you to worship in churches, on altars, prone before statues”.

Of course it is not beyond the wit of a writer to vary his style throughout a 630 page novel, but it might be interesting to bear in mind that “Luther Blissett” is a flag of convenience or “multi-use pseudonym” for activists all over Europe. Q, though far from polyphony, seems to have been written by four people based in Bologna. Whoever wrote the book, he, she or they succeeded in producing a wild, exhilarating account of a turbulent age.

Sources:

Yves-Marie Bercé, trans. Joseph Bergin, Revolt and Revolution in Early Modern Europe: An Essay on the Political History of Violence.
G. R. Elton, Reformation Europe 1517-1559.
V. H. Galbraith, The Anonimalle Chronicle, in A. R. Myers, ed., English Historical Documents, vol IV, 1327-1485.
A.J. Grant, A History of Europe From 1494 to 1610.