Friday 25 January 2008

What, *another* Voynich novel?

Another Voynich-inspired (I'm yet sure whether or not "Voynich-themed" might be putting it a bit strongly) novel to add to the ever-fattening Big Fat List. Australian writer Matt Rubinstein's novel was called "A Little Rain on Thursday" (the picture is from f75r) when it was published last June in Oz by Text Publishing: it appeared here last July (published by Quercus) under the title "Vellum". Amazon Marketplace has copies for £1.98 + £2.75 UK p&p: I've ordered one & will post a review here ASAP. It doesn't appear to have any evil Jesuit priests in it, which has to be A Very Good Thing Indeed.

What's sort of appealing (well - to me, at least) is the way he casually slips the words "marginalia" and "forensic" into the cover blurb. However, this may well be a weakness, given that to keep him fed and watered in writerland, his book has to sell to a large number of non-Voynicheros, to whom such things are usually fairly alien (even if they do watch CSI).

Oh, and the stuff in the story about the manuscript decipherer being obsessive may also have alienated him from passing VMs-ologists. We're not obsessive, I tell you: we count the number of stars on each section of each page for scientific reasons, damnit! Errrrrrrrrrm...

...maybe he's got a point. Oh well... :-((((

No comments: