The Absolute Book

Elizabeth Knox

Victoria University Press

Otago Daily Times, October 19th 2019

For the sake of transparency, I am a long-time Knox fan and thus a far from impartial reviewer. However, this also means that I approach each new novel with great expectations, and I am delighted to report that The Absolute Book more lives up to them.

The story starts in a relatively conventional manner, with the murder of 18-year-old Bea Cornick. Although occupying a scant few pages, this single act of violence changes the course of her sister Taryn’s life forever and, with it, the fate of the world. Angry and grief-stricken by Bea’s death, Taryn is determined to impose a harsher penalty than the six years to which her killer, Timothy Webber, is sentenced and tacitly commissions an itinerant hunter to exact her revenge. When Webber drowns under suspicious circumstances shortly after his release, Taryn is interviewed by police, but there is nothing to tie her to his death, and the case is dropped. It is not until years later, when the publication of Taryn’s first book, an examination of threats to libraries past and present, brings her to public attention that the past catches up with her.

First, there are phone calls: wordless exchanges more eloquent than any verbal threat, which lead the authorities to reopen Webber’s case. Then Taryn and Jacob Berger, the detective assigned to tail her, are attacked by a demon and saved by the intervention of the half-human Swift, who sweeps them – and the story – into the realm of the Sidhe, the fairy folk of Celtic legend.

Although Swift is frustratingly reticent with information, Taryn slowly pieces together a picture of the broader events that have led her to this place, discovering that she and Jacob are caught up in a conflict that stretches across worlds and time and that her involvement stretches back to childhood. Among her realisations is that rather than punish her for her sins, the demons are hunting a manuscript known as the Firestarter (a name acquired because it has survived the conflagration of at least six libraries), last seen in her grandfather’s possession and belief she knows where it is to be found. Swift, who wants the Firestarter for reasons of his own, enlists Taryn and Jacob’s help to find it before Hell does, and Taryn finds herself on a quest through to purgatory and back in search of a hidden treasure that will determine the fate of multiple worlds.

From its adoption and re-gendering of classic mythological narrative to its exploration of how language and memory shape and reshape the world, The Absolute Book contains far too much to cover in a brief review, and doing so would spoil the pleasure of their unveiling. Knox’s delightfully wicked sense of humour is also clearly evident – those condemned to Purgatory are trapped by bureaucratic red tape and spend an inordinate amount of time waiting for trains – and she peppers the story with cultural, literary and mythological teasers for those in the know, including one or two specifically for a Kiwi audience.

Although its physical and cultural roots are solidly European, the story includes enough of New Zealand to give a thrill of recognition to readers like me who still delight in seeing our country on the international stage. At a more mundane level, I was particularly struck by Knox’s ability to bring a physical setting to life. My inability to translate verbal descriptions into sensory images usually prevents my full immersion in the reading experience. Still, her vivid and exact descriptions (Taryn asking Shift not to point at anything because she doesn’t want the sand on his sleeve in her eyes, for example, or a kiss that tastes of blue borage honey and ozone) drew me entirely into her universe.

My one reservation about the novel is the unsettling abruptness of its final, epilogic chapter. However, this is as much because I wanted the story to continue as dissatisfaction at its convenient tidying up of ends. At a time when the world seems all too short on magic, I recommend The Absolute Book absolutely.