Review of "Prophet" by Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché

I received an ARC of this book from Grove Atlantic in exchange for an honest review. This review will not contain any spoilers. 

My prior experience with Helen Macdonald was limited to her nature writing (I loved Vesper Flights) but when I saw she was co-writing a thriller with science-fiction elements, I thought it would be worth a look. Especially in its opening section, Prophet delivers several moments that recall Macdonald's careful attention to the natural world and gift for writing characters who are, via observation, trying to piece together a framework through which to understand it. Towards the end, several moments of near-horror recall her story "Deer in the Headlights," which uses that same precise prose to great effect in showing us a world that is subtly wrong in unsettling ways. At various points in the book, characters are able to spontaneously generate objects and scenes with nostalgic value--from teddy bears to 1950s diners to arcade games--and these are described with the same detail as the mountain landscapes and carefully spotted birds in Vesper Flights. As those objects change from curiosities to ominous portents to active threats, the prose shifts accordingly, always imbuing the scene with a strong sense of mood. In the middle, and then again at the very end, though, Prophet spends a little too much time on the thriller elements and less on its characters and the unreal aspects of its world. Perhaps it's because I'm not naturally a thriller reader (though I did enjoy plenty of Michael Crighton's work when I was younger), but I found this choice less appealing and thought it made the novel feel less unique. Still, Prophet does a great job of bridging genres and asking interesting questions about truth, a subject which is often at the center of spy thrillers but rarely placed in explicit focus as it is here. Rao and Rubinstein's conversations about what can and cannot be truth-tested are peppered with both philosophical digressions and personal history and were some of my favorite parts of the book to read. The extended discussions of nostalgia and how it links to the unique ways these two characters' memories work was also a highlight--the questions around whether Rao's eidetic memory prevents him from feeling nostalgia was perhaps my favorite passage, and features one especially striking line that I've found myself mulling over even at a few week's remove. It may not be squarely in line with the kind of books I usually read, but despite its weak points I found Prophet to be intense and visceral in much the same way as Macdonald's nature work. Sin Blaché is not a name on my radar, but after this work I'm curious to see what else they've written and to revisit Prophet with a better understanding of what each author brought to the table.

Four out of five stars. A strong beginning that ends up with a more conventional ending, but still full of sharp and thoughtful prose.