Codex Lev Gross­man
Arrow 2005World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

Edward Wozny is a hot­shot New York invest­ment banker who is about to assume a pres­ti­gious posi­tion at his firm’s Lon­don branch. At the begin­ning of what is sup­posed to be two weeks off to pre­pare for his move, Edward is sum­moned to an apart­ment owned by impor­tant clients of his com­pany — a British duke and duchess. He is charged with cat­a­loging their library, which had been sent to the United States for safe keep­ing dur­ing World War II and then promptly for­got­ten about. Edward is told to keep a sharp eye out among the old tomes for a cer­tain book by Ger­vase of Langford.

Lack­ing any train­ing in librar­i­an­ship or par­tic­u­lar inter­est in old books, Edward is ini­tially annoyed, but finds him­self strangely drawn in fol­low­ing an after­noon with the dusty vol­umes. He vis­its the Chenoweth Rare Book and Man­u­script Repos­i­tory, where he serendip­i­tously encoun­ters Mar­garet Napier, a Ger­vase of Lang­ford scholar. Although she (and most every­one else) con­sid­ers the book Edward is look­ing for to be a myth, she agrees to help with the cataloging.

Mean­while, a pro­gram­mer friend gives Edward a copy of a com­puter game called MOMUS. The game is hyper-real and some­what enig­matic; no one knows exactly who cre­ated it. Edward quickly becomes immersed in MOMUS, spend­ing more and more of his free time in the vir­tual world.

While exam­in­ing the con­tents of the library, Mar­garet becomes increas­ingly con­vinced that the mys­te­ri­ous book does exist, and was once a part of the col­lec­tion. She and Edward embark on a hunt to find the book. They dig up infor­ma­tion about the library’s his­tory, sneak into the Chenoweth’s mas­sive archival facil­ity, and unwit­tingly become embroiled in the schemes of British nobles. As they pro­ceed, Edward begins to notice eerie sim­i­lar­i­ties between MOMUS and their real-life quest.

The premise of Codex, with its for­got­ten library, myth­i­cal man­u­script, and eerily rel­e­vant com­puter game has poten­tial. But, the book itself turns out to be some­what lack­lus­ter and dis­ap­point­ing. MOMUS is set up to have impor­tant par­al­lels to the search for the Ger­vase book, but there are only ever a few of these. The whole com­puter game suplot seems under­de­vel­oped and out of place. Also, the book’s end­ing isn’t very sat­is­fy­ing. The plot gets increas­ingly com­plex, then just seems to peter out.

A cou­ple of errors (that should have been caught by an edi­tor) early in the book soured my opin­ion some­what, as well. One is a ref­er­ence to tree sap turn­ing into amber over a few thou­sand years (amber is formed from tree resin over mil­lions of years). The other is a men­tion of illus­tra­tions of “vivi­sected corpses” (“vivi-” mean­ing “liv­ing”; a corpse can be dis­sected, but not vivisected).

Codex is okay, not great. If you find it (as I did) at a used book sale for a buck and want a quick, largely mind­less read, go for it. Oth­er­wise, don’t bother.