Lobster Moth

Niall Duthie’s triumphant third novel: a pillow book (designed to be read in ten-minute stretches before bed) about the nature of perception in the twentieth century

Lobster Moth is two stories: that of a lepidopterist, Robert Gilmerton, a Scottish soldier recovering from his wounds in a convalescent home in1916; and David Orr, an actor/filmproducer at the end of the century, who is about to make a film of Gilmerton’s life. The two parts of this extraordinary novel, a work of something approaching genius, develop into an extended dialogue about metamorphosis, acting (both the discipline and the presentation of the inner self to the outside world), mimicry, that moment when impression becomes interpretation. Sprinkled with thrilling philosophical asides – about myth, Shakespeare, the nature of cinema and biography, biology, war – Lobster Moth is an absorbing and moving story of a lepidopterist, a man who studies moths, ‘the simplest creatures available’, getting himself well enough to return to the front where he will inevitably be killed.