The Separation by Christopher Priest

Some of my more avid readers may remember a certain movie review of mine. The film in question was titled The Prestige and I claimed it be one of the very best films I’ve ever seen. In the very same review I vowed that I would read a novel by Christopher Priest, the author of the book upon which the film is based. Priest has written quite a few novels in his time, but I decided upon looking up his newest work. The Separation came highly recommended to me from countless sources and, now, I add my voice to the praise chorus.

Trying to give a good plot summary of The Separation is like trying to come up with a conclusive argument that settles all further debate on subject of “Who came first? The hen or the egg?” In other words: it’s nearly impossible because everything I might tell you would be bordering ominously on devastating spoilers. I will, however, persevere to give you an insight into the story.

Stuart Gratton is a famous historical writer who has made his career on writing documentary novels on WWII. One day while he’s sitting in a book store  signing his newest book, a woman walks up to him and asks him to look over a manuscript written by her deceased father. Gratton is at first not very interested, but when she mentions that her father was named J.L Sawyer, things stand in a very different light. Gratton have for a long time been researching a mysterious memo by Winston Churchill, in which the Prime Minister mentions a Red Cross conscientious war objector employee named J.L Sawyer who also, rather curiously, flew a bomber in the RAF.

With this new information in hand, Gratton starts to unravel the mystery of Sawyer and his unknown hand in the outcome of the War. The reader is provided with a first hand in look into the manuscript, and we there learn that J.L Sawyer had a twin with identical initials. They were inseparable in their youth, but when the war approached the two of them became separated by their own desires for individuality, by love for the same woman and by different sets of ideology. Gratton manages to lay his hands on the diaries of both the brothers and tries desperately to find out what really happened to them, but Priest manages to keep us guessing all the way through.

This is an SF novel, and it qualifies to that title by the fact that it deploys a trick called Alternate History. The fates of the twins are very different and very similar in the same time. Their fates both changed the history of the war, and thus, how the world is today. Gratton lives in a world where America have dwindled from their former glory and become a poor, powerless police state. The manuscript Gratton received from the daughter of Sawyer, however, tells of a world like our own. Priest manages to keep the reader enthralled by writing a book that’s so frustratingly hard to wrap your mind around that you simply have to finish it to solve the mystery.

In the end I thought it was one of the very best books I’ve ever read. Priest’s themes of identity and duality, of the hopelessness war and how every faith may change the course of history were thoroughly engrossing. The ending leaves much up to the reader in terms of how he should perceive what really happened. Some may find such an open ending very hard to contemplate and argue that the book suffers from it. I, however, thought it was nothing less than brilliant and will enjoy thinking about the Sawyer mystery for a long, long time. The book even taught me a great many things about sides of WWII that I’ve never considered.

If you want a book thats hard to read, beautifully written and with a story which will keep you guessing everything you read, try The Separation. I count it among the very best novels I’ve ever read, granting it a 9 /10.