It’s hard to put your finger on what makes Geoff Dyer’s writing so effective. It’s smart, elegant without being fussy, all that. But there’s an even subtler charm, a complex tone that’s at once restless and comfortable, melancholy and joyous, intense and relaxed. The combination of deep feeling and easiness helped make his book on jazz, But Beautiful, one of the truly great books you’ll find on that subject.
Dyer’s latest book, a novel called Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, should be really confusing, but we were hooked from the start. The first half is a satire on the 2002 Venice Biennale. The second part follows a London journalist to India, where he might or might not be having a nervous breakdown. It’s never clear how, exactly, these two parts fit together. Yet in Dyer’s hands, they weave together in quiet—then louder—ways. As the author told TONY, he wasn’t going for old-fashioned suspense, but for an “effect.” He delivers. This book grips you with its motifs and mysteries, even as—or rather, because—its two plotlines refuse to match up.
