As this novel opens Jack Toland is the epitome of shabby, self-satisfied academic introspection; dug into a university post in Montreal, he's stuck on an apparently endless thesis about a 17th-century Irish philosopher (his namesake, John Toland), embroiled in a lackadaisical semi-affair with a colleague and drinking far too much. A summons from his estranged wife in Geneva changes all that; and what begins as a temporary babysitting job turns into a quest through histories real and imagined as he is forced to confront the ghost of his dead twin and the emptiness of his adult life. Walking at Sea Level is a self-consciously stylish book with a curious and, at times, unsettling combination of learned references and clever conceits with an unexpectedly robust narrative tone.
