"No one wants to read about some guy going around developing financial models," states the fictional author Paul in the real author Paul Murray's (Skippy Dies) third novel, The Mark and the Void--which is, in a nutshell, a novel about some guy going around developing financial models. What fictional author Paul fails to recognize, but real author Murray grasps fully, is that the story of the guy developing financial models is, in fact, an account of the reality that time reveals.
Set in Ireland in the years immediately following the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, The Mark and the Void follows Claude, a young French investment banker working in Dublin for a mindless corporation that chases profit no matter the human cost. Then one day, the aforementioned fictional author Paul approaches Claude to be the "everyman" subject of his new novel.
As Paul's subject, Claude finds his life under scrutiny for the first time. That scrutiny proves life-changing, blurring the lines between what is Paul's story and what is Claude's life: "I have the indescribable but irrefutable sense," thinks Claude at one point early in the relationship, "that I am back in the story again, or that life and story have somehow come together in one impossible fragile moment."
These moments are plentiful in The Mark and the Void, which proves to be an impressive, humorous and at times absurd story of humanity at both its best and worst, reminding readers that we are ultimately living in a story of our own creation. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm