Book Review: Ghostwalk

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott is a semi-supernatural semi-thriller about Isaac Newton and alchemy. One of the revelations of the novel is that Isaac Newton spent much of his life being an alchemist, not really being a scientist. I'm fascinated by this man so I was hoping this book could shed light on him. But it's not really about him. It's about a semi-historical argument that someone committed a set of 5 murders in Cambridge at the time Isaac Newton was there. Trying to be all Da Vinci - codish with real history. And it just doesn't fly.

The author's strategy is to try to recreate alchemy by doing what alchemists did in her writing: by juxtaposing things, allowing time and characters to bleed into each other, etc. It ends up doing what most alchemy did: it makes a big mess.

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The accuracy of the history is above par for this kind of novel, and the depiction of a 21st-century research scientist is passable, although I really doubt a bigshot research scientist would have the time to do what he does in this novel while keeping a lab running! Some passages actually work well in spots, and I found some insightful connections and vivid images.

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But the dialogue can be terrible. What's supposed to be a white-hot clandestine relationship just seems self-absorbed and pretentious to me. The historical mystery is solved not by deduction but by turning to a medium for connections to the spirit world. The point can be made that there are things outside the usual definition of science -- but it needs to be made better than this.

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Maybe part of the problem is that Newton's theology is downplayed. Sure, he wrote a lot about alchemy, but he wrote a lot about theology too. It's just as much of a distortion of his character and his history to downplay that as it is to downplay his alchemical interests.

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Is Newton just too big of a man for one person to describe? I don't think I've ever read a truly convincing description of his entire life. I just don't "get" Newton, and maybe we never will.

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James Gleick's book on Newton is better than this, as is Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle (I've only read the first book but it covers the same timeframe as this). Ultimately Ghostwalk is just a silly story with an unusual historical accuracy that ultimately doesn't change or illuminate anything.