Hammer by Joe Mungo Reed

Published by ‎ Simon & Schuster on March 22, 2022

Russian oligarchs are in the news, making this novel timely, at least in the limited sense that the most significant character is a Russian oligarch. Oleg Gorelov took advantage of the chaos caused by the breakup of the Soviet Union and Russia’s transition to capitalism by starting and growing a business, then by purchasing and closing factories after selling their manufacturing machinery to China, then by buying a mine and making an investment deal with the KGB. Now he conducts his businesses from London, where he devotes a tenth of his income to acquiring art. Some suspect that he has engaged in ruthless acts to obtain some of the works. His apparent lack of concern when he learns that another Russian expat died might suggest a naïveté about the deal he believes he struck with Putin’s people about his ability to transact business in London.

Martin works in an auction house. Martin’s roommate James is a piano player. When Martin and James were in college, James was dating a woman named Marina. Marina’s parents were party members in the USSR before they moved to England. In London, they tried to raise her to be “a completely different person from themselves.” Her father disappeared when she was 21. He might have drowned or been murdered. He might have abandoned his family. The uncertain fate of Russians who take their wealth out of Russia is one of the novel’s themes.

Marina now works in financial services. She is married to Oleg. Martin becomes reacquainted with Marina in 2013 when Oleg brings her to an art auction. As Martin begins to spend time with Marina, he becomes acutely aware that Oleg is a dangerous man. Just how dangerous he might be weighs on Martin's mind.

Initially, Hammer’s focus is on Martin. The focus shifts to Oleg when Oleg travels to Moscow to witness his mother’s lingering death. Oleg responds to a cousin’s letter by visiting her in an eastern region of Russia. The visit is a revelation that opens his eyes to the way ordinary Russians live, as if he has never seen them before. He is also disturbed that Putin has started a war to annex a portion of Ukraine (as I said, the story is timely, although the 2014 war was fought for control of the Crimean Peninsula). Oleg feels compelled to run for office against Putin. This is before it became clear that Putin would be president for life, but it is still a remarkably dangerous thing to do. Oleg is told of the risk that Navalny was taking to oppose Putin, and that was before Putin threw Navalny in prison after trying to have him killed.

Relationships change rapidly during the two years in which the story unfolds. None change is for the better. Marina has come to believe that Oleg doesn’t see her. “The first she knew him, she felt so closely seen, yet he was attending only to his own reflection in her eyes.” Martin’ friendships with James and Marina and his relationship with Oleg are all affected by decisions that impair trust.

Hammer doesn’t have the same impact or emotional complexity as We Begin Our Ascent, Joe Mungo Reed’s brilliant first novel, but the characters have a convincing degree of depth and the twin storylines are interesting. The story involving Martin’s role in the art industry (and the characters’ art commentary) will appeal to fans of the kind of art that shows up in galleries, but that story peters out when the focus shifts to Oleg.

Oleg's story has a feeling of inevitability that might deprive it of suspense, but the novel isn’t intended as a thriller. Reed certainly put me into the head of an oligarch in way that thriller writers and spy novelists haven’t managed.

Hammer has something to say about how money changes people and how people can change despite their money. Martin’s boss, for example, understands that acquiring wealth is only “the first part of being rich.” The art gallery helps the rich confirm “the actual materiality of being rich” by selling rich people things they do not need or necessarily appreciate but purchase because others cannot afford them. Martin has rejected his parents' hippy attitude toward money, an attitude they seem to abandon themselves when they have the opportunity to acquire modest wealth. Marina understands that wealthy people expect their children to "earn for themselves" because "further acquisition signals seriousness." Money changes people, Reed seems to say, even when its recipients deny that they have been altered.

More importantly, I think, the novel has something to say about how ordinary people with ordinary money relate to people who are swimming in wealth, and about the outsized importance that wealth has on the way people of ordinary means think and behave. If the novel is a bit uneven in its juxtaposition of Martin’s story with Oleg’s and with its attempt to bridge the two worlds with Marina, its strengths easily repay a reader’s investment of time.

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We Begin Our Ascent by Joe Mungo Reed

Published by Simon & Schuster on June 19, 2018

In part, We Begin Our Ascent is about wanting things we can’t have precisely because we can’t have them. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be the best, but the desire for the unattainable pushes good people to make bad choices.

We Begin Our Ascent is also about recognizing and celebrating the things that are more important than accomplishment. Being alive and in good health. Loving and being loved. Living with honor and acquiring wisdom.

To frame those themes, Joe Mungo Reed wrote We Begin Our Ascent as the Inside Baseball of bicycle racing. Without becoming a racing manual, the story integrates information about how racers prepare, how they work as a team, how they decide which performance enhancing drugs are best. The novel conveys an understanding that the sport of bicycle racing at the professional level is more than a game, that “the dedication, the logic and attention applied make it vivid, real and meaningful.”

Solomon is part of a bicycle racing team that is sponsored by a poultry company. His job is to help Fabrice, the strongest mountain rider, win. Sol’s job is not to win; he knows he cannot win. But the longer he can sustain the pace while riding in front of Fabrice, the more energy Fabrice will conserve, and the better will be Fabrice’s chance of powering up the mountain ahead of everyone else at the end of the toughest stretches in the race. The crowds cheer for each rider without realizing that most of them are not trying to win as individuals, but as a team.

Sol is happiest when he is part of the peloton, the mass of bicycles that race in a clump until the best riders pull out and compete for victory. Sol knows his place in the universe, and his place is in the peloton. At the same time, he learns that helping the team will require him to engage in the rampant doping that gives his competitors an edge.

Sol’s wife studies the genetics of zebra fish. She admires Sol’s dedication, while her mother wonders what kind of career can be made of riding a bicycle. They are balancing recent parenthood with their dedication to busy careers that keep them apart for much of the year.

Part of the novel’s drama comes from pressure to involve Sol’s wife in the transportation of performance enhancing drugs and the oxygen-rich blood that riders use to restore their vigor.

Of course, the race itself delivers the inherent drama of competition. Riding down mountains at speed is both exhilarating and dangerous. Joe Mungo Reed makes sure the reader is always conscious of the risk that a rider takes.

Both racing and doping carry risks, and those risks generate a surprising amount of suspense. The reader’s anticipation of the novel’s climax makes it even more powerful.

We Begin Our Ascent is a quiet and elegant novel. The story is interesting and entertaining until, like a bicycle racer who has found his rhythm, it shifts gears and reaches another level. The novel raises profound questions about balancing competition against our other drives, balancing winning against integrity, balancing success against loss. The novel spotlights the difficulty of making life-changing choices (not just deciding what is morally right, but what is right for our lives) and illustrates both the profound consequences of making the wrong choice and the randomness that might determine whether a choice is right or wrong.

In a climax that is deeply moving, We Begin Our Ascent reminds us that our lives are different from the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. Discovering what is at the root of our lives, the things that are truly important, is an even bigger struggle than peddling up a mountain. Few novels have made that argument as persuasively as We Begin Our Ascent.

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