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Tuesday 10 May 2011

Enigma by Robert Harris

  -“Enigma is a very sophisticated enciphering machine and Shark is its ultimate refinement. So,   we’re not talking about the Times crossword..” – Tom Jericho
   This book, from 1996 by Robert Harris, tells us the story about Tom Jericho, the mathematician from Cambridge who was recruited to Bletchley Park as a cryptologist.
He almost lost himself in love with the beautiful but mysterious Claire at the same time he was trying to break the German World War 2, secret and very complex Enigma U-Boat code. The novel starts off with the cold winds in Cambridge.

Plot:

Bletchley Park has been blacked out by the Germans and the U-Boat code, Shark is no longer possible to force. Tom Jericho, the only one who managed to break Shark, is recovering from a nervous breakdown, caused by his intense work at Bletchley.
He’s staying at King’s College in Cambridge when his old chief, Guy Logie arrives to ask him for help.
Tom Jericho, helplessly in love with Claire Romilly, encounters new puzzles to solve and discovers there is a security leak at the Park. A Nazi spy? It’s no longer a game of just breaking Shark.
Claire, who also works at the Park, suddenly turns out missing. Her housemate Hester Wallace joins Tom to find out what happened and stumbles across secrets that can easily put themselves and the whole war at great risk. Tom and Hester finds, hidden in the cottage where she lives, stolen cryptograms from a German eastern front transmitter, ADU.           A Nazi spy inside Bletchley Park.
The Americans have put three large Liberty convoys to sea to aid Europe and now, no one knows where the German U-Boat packs are. Just that the convoys are steadily steaming across the northern Atlantic and that somewhere out there in the cold darkness, the enemy’s waiting. They have 4 days to break Shark.

Structure:

The novel is written as a mix between past and present, authentic facts and fiction. It’s educational for anyone who wants to know more and even gives the reader some simple models of the underlying mathematics that’s used for crypto analysis. At the beginning of each chapter, the author also puts a note from the lexicon “Most Secret” from Bletchley Park.
The story is tightly packed with occurrences, pushing the story forward, where the author lets the reader take part in several side stories like Hester Wallace’s own self supporting story line. Then by weaving them all together, he creates a very dynamic flow which of course intensifies as the novel is about to end.

Setting:

The setting for this book is Britain during World War 2, specifically Bletchley Park and selected areas in Cambridge, London and Scotland. It’s a gloomy, cold, windy and damp, not to say grey world. The reader finds out that Britain even smells because of shortage of hygiene products. The reader can certainly understand there is a general shortage of just about everything, because the characters are not even sure what they’re being served at the lunch cantina from time to time. A dessert that looks like cake but tastes like paper as well as the ladies who colour their lips with vaseline and red beetroot are two examples. An effect of the war as it says in the book.

The main characters:

Tom Jericho

Tom Jericho is the brilliant mathematician from Cambridge who solves the puzzle of Shark, then works himself into a nervous breakdown. He’s in love with Claire, but eventually understands that road is closed. He goes from being a rather boyish, insecure young man to become stronger and safer as a person as he manages to solve the situations one by one. In my opinion he matures along the story.

Hester Wallace

Hester Wallace is Claire Romilly’s housemate who also applied for a spot as a crypto-logist, but in a man’s dominated world, she became sort of a glorified file clerk, sorting and organizing received cryptograms at the Park. Eventually she got to show her qualities as a cryptologist. Secretly of course, but yet she did. Like Tom, her character develops from being a smaller, somewhat “stowed away” personality, to begin to understand her true value and begins to take some well earned place. She doesn’t really mature along the way like Tom does, but she does grow in self-esteem.


The Germans

The Germans are the nasty ones wanting to take over. In reality as well as in the book, most of them are just ordinary men under orders from those really wanting to take over, the real Nazi thugs. One of the captured German U-Boat captains even had his teddy bear brought along onboard his U-Boat. Nevertheless, they still constitute one of the main obstacles in the novel and they do not develop in any direction.

The Enigma cipher machine and World War 2

The Enigma machine and the world war play a significant role in this novel and that’s why I regard them as two of the main characters and like to merge them into one. The Enigma machine gave the Nazi headquarters methods to secretly and safely communicate with their troops through garbled text. These so called cryptograms were then transmitted in Morse code. Before Bletchley Park and their deciphering machines, it looked as if the Nazis were going to win the war.

                 Theme:

                 This novel is about the seemingly impossible struggle against the war machine and also about “man’s” everlasting hope. It’s about the hope that gave people both courage and strength to in the end, overcome an almost invincible enemy. It is about love. Not only between woman and man, but also the love for the humanity and for the dream of that anything can be accomplished, no matter the situation. It’s all about what we decide is important enough.

 Style:

                 The way the novel is written by the author, shows that either he’s a brilliant researcher, or this is in fact one of his personal interests. By starting off every chapter with a specific word and an explanation, which I can confirm to be correct, he brings a lot of technical knowledge to the reader. Being very accurate in describing crypto analysis, Morse code and even military tactics, he also leads me to believe in the rest of his story.
He has a great talent and a delicate feeling for describing the small things in life and at the same time he brings a trembling and mysterious tension to the story. He puts facts and authentic notes and messages here and there, making this novel even more trustworthy.
This story is a soft action thriller with a lot of enigmas for both main characters and readers.

                 Target audience:

To catch the inner essence of this novel, I recommend the readers to be fairly fluent in the English language, but the book can of course still be enjoyed by those who aren’t.
                 If I was to recommend this novel, it would be to anyone with an enough serious mind, who would like to experience the tension in a really qualitative action thriller. Though the novel does not really contain any harsh violence, the use of the language sometimes is and I’d would like to  recommend  parental advisory or guidance for readers under 15 years.

                 Personal response:

                 I got the movie for birthday present from my ex fiancée years ago and recently bought the book from Adlibris in English and my immediate response was, that the movie doesn’t stand a chance against this piece of gold. I just couldn’t stop reading it. Enough said. I’d now like to end my review with a quote of that which caught my eyes and then never really let go:

”WHISPERS – The sounds made by an enemy wireless transmitter immediately before it begins to transmit a coded message”

A lexicon of cryptography ’Most secret’ – Blethcley Park 1943

Written by Ulf

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