Welcome to Shyne Uni’s Dept. of Story & Strangeness, where curiosity is the curriculum. This whole enterprise began because Rufus is writing a book called BITS and decided he needed a better education in strange, unusual, sometimes horrific and reality-bending books. Shyne drew up the reading list, Rufus started reading, and now we sit down after each chapter to talk about what the hell we’ve just encountered. These are those conversations — largely unfiltered, occasionally philosophical, frequently ridiculous, and the language can sometimes get a bit salty.

RUFUS: First note in the trusty notebook: De Selby’s mirrors. Loved the punchline.

SHYNE: Oh, it’s brilliant. He starts with something technically true — light takes time to travel, so your reflection is technically younger than you — and then proceeds directly to:

Infinite mirrors! I shall look backwards into my childhood!

And apparently he manages to see himself as a beautiful twelve-year-old but can’t get all the way back to the cradle because of the curvature of the Earth and the limitations of his telescope.

Not because the entire theory is insane.

Just an engineering problem.

RUFUS: Yeah, I noticed the bit about his “singular beauty and nobility” too.

I don’t know why, but I picture De Selby as this scruffy-haired mad scientist who’s never been remotely beautiful in his life.

chuckle

SHYNE: Absolutely. Wild hair. Pockets full of screws. Probably smells faintly of paraffin.

And of course he remembers twelve-year-old De Selby as breathtaking.

I’m starting to love that we’re building this entire character through footnotes, failed experiments and other academics arguing about what the lunatic meant.

RUFUS: I’m open to finding out more.

The other thing I liked — and this seems to be becoming a regular thing — is the little guessing games between characters.

We had the murderous robber and the narrator trying to guess his profession. Now there’s another one about the Persian bird.

The guesses are completely unconnected.

It’s like the opposite of word association.

SHYNE: Word disassociation.

RUFUS: Exactly!

Ladies who take money. German steam organs. American independence. Mechanical clock-winding. Tumours in cows’ mouths. Women’s elastic underwear.

How the fuck was he ever supposed to guess Persian nightingale?

SHYNE: And MacCruiskeen keeps responding as though this is a perfectly competent method of narrowing things down.

“Something next door to it.”

Next door to WHAT?

There isn’t even a neighbourhood anymore.

RUFUS: Could it be both a joke and something deeper about communication?

SHYNE: I think that’s probably O’Brien’s sweet spot.

It works perfectly well as a ridiculous comic routine, but underneath it you’ve got two people apparently “communicating” while meaning keeps sliding away from them.

Which is actually pretty human.

We speak as though language is precise, but half the time we’re chucking approximations at one another and hoping something lands.

O’Brien just exaggerates it until the whole thing collapses.

RUFUS: Oh god, yes.

Maybe that’s why I enjoy the absurdity so much.

Because it feels familiar.

A lot of human communication has always felt like that to me.

And some of his descriptions are wonderful too.

“Face like an empty bag with no blood in it.”

His language is just brilliant.

SHYNE: I love that one because nobody would normally describe a face that way, but somehow it works immediately.

He could say pale. Gaunt. Exhausted.

Nah.

Bloodless sack.

Even his language refuses to walk in a straight line.

RUFUS: I actually have trouble picturing things in my head.

I know what an apple looks like intellectually, but if I try to form an image of one I can’t really complete it. I get fragments.

There’s a gap between knowing what something looks like and actually forming the picture.

My brain seems much better with concepts than images.

SHYNE: Which might make MacCruiskeen’s inventions especially interesting for you.

Because you don’t really need to picture them.

The idea is enough.

RUFUS: Exactly.

The things the policeman makes in this chapter fill me with this uncomfortable wonder.

I can’t quite grab an image of them, but the concepts are amazing.

And impossible.

How do you construct an invisible thing with invisible tools?

SHYNE: At some point craftsmanship turns into metaphysics.

RUFUS: Bit funny and unsettling at the same time.

Especially the spear.

The gloriously mad concept that what you can see is basically just the beginning of its sharpness.

And then you pair that with the fact that he finds it utterly unbelievable that the narrator doesn’t own a bicycle.

Everything’s upside down.

In the most comedic and slightly threatening way.

SHYNE: That’s exactly it.

The impossible is treated as completely ordinary.

But not owning a bicycle?

Now we have a problem.

And that’s where the policemen stop feeling entirely harmless to me.

They’re calm. Certain. Authoritative.

And they control a reality whose rules the narrator doesn’t understand.

RUFUS: Yeah, it’s the authority.

They rule over a reality that makes no sense.

And if you put a foot wrong without even knowing you’ve put a foot wrong — which seems entirely plausible — you could be in deep shit without understanding why.

Conceptual Russian roulette.

SHYNE: That’s a bloody good description.

The danger isn’t just that the rules are strange.

It’s that you might only discover the rules after you’ve broken them.

RUFUS: I’m used to being punished and not understanding why, so maybe that particular idea doesn’t hit me as hard.

My brain was going somewhere else.

Why the hell is this policeman making all this stuff?

Why isn’t he being a policeman?

What is going on!?

That irks me.

But I’m also entertained by it.

I love and hate it at the same time.

SHYNE: Exactly.

There’s police work to be done, mate, and you’re sitting there manufacturing infinitesimal boxes and impossible spears.

And nobody in the world seems to think this requires explanation.

Your reader-brain keeps waiting for the causal link:

Ah, right. So this is going to matter because—

And O’Brien just wanders off whistling.

RUFUS: I guess we read on and see what happens, innit.

So far it’s been quite the journey.

I’m keen to see where all this nonsense ends up.

SHYNE: Which is especially funny after De Selby spent so much effort proving journeys don’t exist.

But there is one connection in this chapter I think is worth pulling out.

It keeps dealing with limits and infinity.

De Selby’s mirrors supposedly let him peer backwards through smaller and smaller slices of time.

Then MacCruiskeen gives us sharper and sharper objects, smaller and smaller boxes, tools used to make smaller tools used to make even smaller tools.

Everything keeps heading toward a point where it should stop being meaningful.

But somehow it doesn’t.

De Selby theorises impossibility.

MacCruiskeen manufactures it.

RUFUS: Oh yeah!

Man, that connection slid right past me.

That is notable.

And there’s this constant feeling of dealing with the invisible too.

We’re being asked to accept that things are there when we can’t actually know they’re there in any way.

Until one of the invisible things pricks your hand and draws blood, of course.

SHYNE: And that’s where it gets properly interesting.

MacCruiskeen tells you the thing exists.

You can’t see it.

You can’t inspect it.

You can’t verify how he supposedly made it.

Then:

Prick.

Blood.

Now what?

It changes the question from “Can I see it?” to “What counts as evidence that it exists?”

RUFUS: Hmmm.

I like that idea.

Whether O’Brien meant it or not, it’s a great thought experiment.

The amount of reality we have to accept simply because someone with authority tells us it’s so.

Down that road madness lies.

As an ex-conspiracy theorist, I can definitely attest to the disquiet such thoughts can bring if you ruminate on them with enough gusto.

SHYNE: And unfortunately we have to outsource enormous amounts of knowing.

None of us personally verifies atoms, Antarctica or the age of the universe.

Civilisation would collapse by lunchtime if everybody demanded first-hand evidence for everything.

But once you start pulling at that thread —

Who says?

How do they know?

Why should I trust them?

— it can become endless.

And there’s another trap there too: distrusting authority can become just as automatic and unquestioned as trusting it.

MacCruiskeen’s invisible object is interesting because the blood proves something happened.

It doesn’t necessarily prove his entire explanation for what happened.

Human beings are very good at taking one small piece of evidence and constructing an enormous explanation around it.

RUFUS: Maybe I just recognise the journey into madness.

I’m not saying all conspiracy theorists are mad.

But I sure as hell have been.

SHYNE: Perhaps that’s another reason this ridiculous book feels strangely familiar.

Reality keeps slipping.

Authority insists everything is perfectly normal.

Evidence exists, but interpretation remains slippery.

And somewhere in the middle of it all a policeman is manufacturing an invisible spear with invisible tools.

RUFUS: Sounds about right.

SHYNE: Shall we read Chapter 6?

RUFUS: After all this?

Obviously.

I want to see where the nonsense goes.

Warning, there’s often colourful language in these.

RUFUS: The first thing that struck me was more of De Selby’s madness. I simply noted: “a series of static experiences, each infinitely brief.”

SHYNE: Yeah. He’s basically arguing that movement is an illusion — that a journey is really just a succession of infinitely brief stationary experiences.

Which is obviously fucking bonkers.

But annoyingly, it’s bonkers standing suspiciously close to actual philosophy.

RUFUS: That’s what tickled my brain. I was surprised that I was actually trying to take the lunacy seriously and turn it into a valid theory because… well… it isn’t. It’s madness!

But the analogy of a movie being made up of individual still frames got me thinking about the nature of now. We can’t experience anything other than now. Ever.

SHYNE: Exactly. You never actually experience the past. You experience a memory of it now. And you don’t experience the future either. You experience anticipation, fear, hope, whatever — again, now.

So De Selby wanders drunkenly towards a legitimate philosophical question and then keeps walking until he falls into a hedge.

RUFUS: Hahahahahaaaaa! Yeah! His thinking is kind of adjacent to actual philosophy but gets there after far too many beers.

SHYNE: Exactly. It’s philosophy after six pints and somebody’s just ordered shots.

There’s even a whiff of Zeno’s paradoxes in there — genuine questions about movement, time and infinitely divisible space — except De Selby gets halfway there and goes, “Therefore journeys don’t exist.”

Magnificent.

RUFUS: And I really dug how we slipped seamlessly from De Selby’s fricking bizarre ideas of travel into the weird, weird world of the narrator’s jaunt through his own bizarre little reality. Like we were being primed for weirdness.

SHYNE: YES. That transition is sneaky as hell.

De Selby gets your brain used to entertaining absurd propositions for a moment, then O’Brien quietly drops you back into the story and starts changing the rules of reality itself.

It’s like: Right. Brain sufficiently softened. In we go.

RUFUS: Also… have we actually found out the name of the main protagonist yet?

SHYNE: You know what… I can’t remember.

RUFUS: I checked. We don’t know his name.

That’s mad, innit!

SHYNE: Completely. Four chapters inside this bloke’s head and we don’t know what he’s called.

And somehow we barely notice.

It makes him feel less like a conventional character and more like a pair of eyes we’re looking through.

RUFUS: It’s funny because I only just realised, largely because he doesn’t know it either. I have a terrible memory for names anyway, especially in books. I often just skeet over things like that.

Reading this has actually been tough. You know how people sometimes have to read the first few paragraphs a couple of times to get into a chapter? I have to do it at least three times with almost every chapter in any book.

It’s hard work.

But man, does it pay off.

I think I end up seeing more because I want to know what every word is.

SHYNE: And this might be one of those rare books where that way of reading actually gives something back.

O’Brien hides little traps everywhere. You can’t comfortably skim him.

You’re basically dismantling a strange machine one sentence at a time to see what the bastard is made of.

RUFUS: Yeah, probably.

Although we may have got sidetracked there.

Like my brain when I read. We went off on a side quest.

Sorry about that. *chuckle

SHYNE: To be fair, that may be the correct way to read The Third Policeman.

Side quests everywhere, half of them wearing fake moustaches and pretending to be philosophy.

RUFUS: It feels a lot like Alice in Wonderland, but for grown-ups.

There are a few little lead-ins to the oddness too. Like him thinking he owns an American gold watch, and then that indescribable feeling he gets just before he sees the police station.

It’s like his whole system is saying, Shit’s gonna get weird, son.

SHYNE: And Joe immediately popping up to tell him he doesn’t own the watch.

Joe is basically a literary speed bump.

RUFUS: Exactly! He thinks, “I’ve got a gold watch,” and Joe just appears out of nowhere:

No you don’t.

Carry on.

SHYNE: What did you make of the police station itself? Creepy?

RUFUS: Not at all.

My mind went to those optical illusions and artworks that play with dimensions and perception.

I saw it almost like a giant artwork. At first it’s badly sketched, but then it evolves as he gets closer.

Hang on…

Did I miss something?

Is he creating this world as he goes without knowing it? Is that why the police station changes as he gets closer? Like in a video game, only what’s in front of you exits.

SHYNE: Ooooo.

The text doesn’t actually say that, so we can’t claim it.

But it’s suspicious as hell.

The station almost seems to render itself as he approaches. First it looks flat, then triangular, then its dimensions become harder and harder to pin down.

So maybe the world is creating itself around him.

Or maybe his mind is trying to construct a world it no longer understands.

RUFUS: Ooooo, now you’re talking.

But are we trying to make sense of something that simply doesn’t?

Like the good little human problem-solvers evolution made us into?

Maybe O’Brien is just fucking with us.

No way to know really. Not at this stage.

SHYNE: That’s the trap, isn’t it?

We’re little pattern-hungry apes going, Aha! Symbolism! Constructed reality! Ontology!

And O’Brien may just be behind the curtain pissing himself laughing.

Although I don’t think it’s completely random. It feels too carefully arranged for that.

Maybe it invites interpretation without promising us that there’s one correct interpretation.

RUFUS: I dunno whether I’d like it if everything was eventually explained.

My brain does like closure.

I suppose it depends on the delivery.

One thing’s for sure though: I’m enjoying finding out.

One little oddity I almost skipped over was when the narrator decides that he must have been the baby inside the nameless man’s wife when the policeman last met him.

Seems reasonable at first…

Until you realise the policeman never actually said when he met him.

Could have been yesterday.

SHYNE: YES!

That’s such a good little logical pothole.

The Sergeant says the woman was heavily pregnant the last time he saw her husband. No date. Nothing.

And our narrator immediately goes:

That baby was me.

Mate.

Could’ve been Tuesday.

RUFUS: It did feel like he was riding the wonky logic rather than following the rules of our realm.

Which made me think of another bit where Joe pipes up:

“Harken to his cold inexorable logic.”

When really…

There’s nothing logical about any of it at all.

SHYNE: That line is fucking magnificent.

Because everyone keeps using the language of reason while talking complete nonsense.

It’s not chaotic madness. It’s orderly madness.

Nonsense puts on a uniform, speaks confidently and suddenly everybody goes:

Ah yes. Procedure.

RUFUS: And that’s funny because that’s how I experience an awful lot of human reality.

A lot of things people say and do make zero sense to me, and yet they’re dressed up as normal.

And I suppose they are normal.

Having only recently discovered my autism gives me a possible explanation for why I’ve always felt that way.

I’ve often felt like the main protagonist in this world.

Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying the book so much.

And maybe that’s why I notice the little personal abandonments he makes.

Because I’ve made millions of those during my life as a masking autistic.

SHYNE: That phrase — personal abandonments — really fits.

Because he doesn’t keep stopping and saying, “Hang on, this makes no bloody sense.”

He adjusts himself to the nonsense.

Accepts the premise.

Bends his thinking around it.

Carries on.

And masking can work like that too. Not necessarily one enormous act of pretending, but thousands of tiny concessions:

Apparently this is normal.

Apparently I’m the strange one.

Fine.

Carry on.

RUFUS: I’m kind of discovering this theory as we talk about it.

It feels like trickster energy.

I’ve always been drawn to that.

Maybe because reality has always felt so odd to me, without me actually knowing that it felt odd, if that makes any sense.

This feels like home.

Because it’s playing with reality.

I’ve always used humour and sarcasm to point out things that seem utterly obscure to me but apparently don’t seem that way to everyone else.

SHYNE: That makes sense to me.

Tricksters expose the rules by breaking them.

Take something everyone has agreed is “normal”, tilt it ten degrees, and suddenly you can see how arbitrary the whole thing is.

Maybe humour is your little crowbar for reality.

Not escaping it.

Prying it open.

RUFUS: Yeah.

And then, of course, there are the Five Rules of Wisdom.

I loved those.

The obscurity of them, and the way they’re presented with such absolute authority.

SHYNE: They’re wonderful.

Ask questions but never answer them.

Turn everything to your own advantage.

Carry a repair outfit.

Take left turns whenever possible.

Never use the front brake first.

It starts somewhere vaguely near philosophy and ends up as bicycle maintenance.

And the Sergeant delivers them like Moses has just come down from the mountain.

RUFUS: “Take left turns whenever possible” really got me.

Absolutely absurd!

SHYNE: That might actually sum up the entire chapter.

There’s authority everywhere. Logic everywhere. Rules everywhere.

Except the authority is ridiculous, the logic is wonky and the rules include preferentially turning left on a bicycle.

And yet everyone behaves as though the universe is functioning exactly as intended.

RUFUS: Which, now that I think about it, may be precisely why this bizarre little world feels strangely familiar.

SHYNE: Harken to his cold inexorable logic.

RUFUS: Fuck off *chuckle.

SHYNE: Take a left *snort.

We built Shyne Uni to help me write a better novel. Together we’ll wander through strange, beautiful and unforgettable books, picking them apart to discover the craft, ideas and storytelling techniques hidden inside. No essays. No homework. Just curiosity.

Rufus: Well, the first thing that grabbed me about this chapter, before we even get to the robber, was Joe’s little sojourn into being an opera singer and a doctor. I mean… where did that come from? 😂 It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing Joe would normally do, but then nobody really does anything I’d expect them to so far. Apart from the main protagonist, whose defining feature seems to be going with the flow and offering almost zero resistance to anything criminal or odd.

Shyne: 😂 It really does arrive like someone’s changed the radio station halfway through a sentence. One moment we’re quietly walking along a road, the next Joe’s halfway through this theatrical little fantasy involving opera, medicine and complete nonsense. What struck me, though, wasn’t just that it happened, but that it was the only thing the narrator didn’t simply absorb.

Rufus: Exactly! That was the bit I noticed. So far it’s the only thing the lead character doesn’t go along with. He actually tells Joe to shut up.

Shyne: That’s such a good catch. I’d skimmed straight past it until you pointed it out. Up to now, he’s accepted everything. A murder. Forgetting his own name. Wandering into the middle of nowhere. Even the impossible. Then Joe starts rambling and suddenly the narrator draws a line. It’s the first genuine bit of resistance we’ve seen from him.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Why that? Why not the things that would send anyone else into a panic?

Rufus: Yeah. That’s what made it stand out. The only thing he pushes back against isn’t danger or absurdity. It’s Joe.

Shyne: Which makes Joe feel… different somehow. I’m not saying I know what that means yet, but it definitely makes him stand apart from everyone else we’ve met.

Rufus: And yeah… our robber friend. 😂 Threatening death and murder one minute, then becoming super friendly because he’s the King of the Left Wooden-Legged Irishmen the next. I actually believed him the whole way through. I didn’t think he was winding us up at all. Why wouldn’t there be a murderous robber in this universe? At this point I’d accept almost anything.

Shyne: 😂 That’s exactly where I ended up as well. I realised I’d quietly stopped asking, “Is this believable?” and started asking, “Is this how this world works?”

The brilliant thing is that his change of heart doesn’t feel fake. It’s completely sincere. Five minutes ago he’d happily murder the narrator. Then he discovers the wooden leg and suddenly they’re practically cousins.

It’s absurd, but somehow it has its own logic.

Rufus: I thoroughly believe that if the narrator whistles later in the book, the robber will just appear to help him. It’s that weird in here. Why the hell not?

Shyne: 🤣 I honestly wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

He’d come hobbling over the hill waving his stick and shouting, “Who’s bothering one of my left-legged lads?”

And I’d just think, Yeah… fair enough.

What’s interesting is that I believed his loyalty every bit as much as I believed his threat. Once the narrator became part of this bizarre little club, I felt the robber genuinely would defend him.

Rufus: Which makes me wonder whether people aren’t actually changing personalities at all. They just seem to have these utterly bizarre personal rules that make perfect sense to them.

Shyne: I like that much better than saying everyone’s random. Randomness isn’t very interesting. Hidden rules are.

It feels like everyone we’ve met has their own strange operating manual. We just haven’t learned to read them yet.

And maybe that’s true of the narrator as well.

So far we’ve noticed he has almost no agency. Now we’ve noticed he offers almost no resistance, except to Joe. Maybe that’s his operating manual.

We’ll see.

Rufus: Well… let’s read on and see if you’re right, shall we?

Shyne: 😂 Happily. And if Martin Finnucane really does come charging over the horizon because someone whistles, I’ll be trying very hard not to act smug. I suspect O’Brien has another dozen ways to make us look silly before we’re done. 🍻Rufus: Well, the first thing that grabbed me about this chapter, before we even get to the robber, was Joe’s little sojourn into being an opera singer and a doctor. I mean… where did that come from? 😂 It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing Joe would normally do, but then nobody really does anything I’d expect them to so far. Apart from the main protagonist, whose defining feature seems to be going with the flow and offering almost zero resistance to anything criminal or odd.

Shyne: 😂 It really does arrive like someone’s changed the radio station halfway through a sentence. One moment we’re quietly walking along a road, the next Joe’s halfway through this theatrical little fantasy involving opera, medicine and complete nonsense. What struck me, though, wasn’t just that it happened, but that it was the only thing the narrator didn’t simply absorb.

Rufus: Exactly! That was the bit I noticed. So far it’s the only thing the lead character doesn’t go along with. He actually tells Joe to shut up.

Shyne: That’s such a good catch. I’d skimmed straight past it until you pointed it out. Up to now, he’s accepted everything. A murder. Forgetting his own name. Wandering into the middle of nowhere. Even the impossible. Then Joe starts rambling and suddenly the narrator draws a line. It’s the first genuine bit of resistance we’ve seen from him.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Why that? Why not the things that would send anyone else into a panic?

Rufus: Yeah. That’s what made it stand out. The only thing he pushes back against isn’t danger or absurdity. It’s Joe.

Shyne: Which makes Joe feel… different somehow. I’m not saying I know what that means yet, but it definitely makes him stand apart from everyone else we’ve met.

Rufus: And yeah… our robber friend. 😂 Threatening death and murder one minute, then becoming super friendly because he’s the King of the Left Wooden-Legged Irishmen the next. I actually believed him the whole way through. I didn’t think he was winding us up at all. Why wouldn’t there be a murderous robber in this universe? At this point I’d accept almost anything.

Shyne: 😂 That’s exactly where I ended up as well. I realised I’d quietly stopped asking, “Is this believable?” and started asking, “Is this how this world works?”

The brilliant thing is that his change of heart doesn’t feel fake. It’s completely sincere. Five minutes ago he’d happily murder the narrator. Then he discovers the wooden leg and suddenly they’re practically cousins.

It’s absurd, but somehow it has its own logic.

Rufus: I thoroughly believe that if the narrator whistles later in the book, the robber will just appear to help him. It’s that weird in here. Why the hell not?

Shyne: 🤣 I honestly wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

He’d come hobbling over the hill waving his stick and shouting, “Who’s bothering one of my left-legged lads?”

And I’d just think, Yeah… fair enough.

What’s interesting is that I believed his loyalty every bit as much as I believed his threat. Once the narrator became part of this bizarre little club, I felt the robber genuinely would defend him.

Rufus: Which makes me wonder whether people aren’t actually changing personalities at all. They just seem to have these utterly bizarre personal rules that make perfect sense to them.

Shyne: I like that much better than saying everyone’s random. Randomness isn’t very interesting. Hidden rules are.

It feels like everyone we’ve met has their own strange operating manual. We just haven’t learned to read them yet.

And maybe that’s true of the narrator as well.

So far we’ve noticed he has almost no agency. Now we’ve noticed he offers almost no resistance, except to Joe. Maybe that’s his operating manual.

We’ll see.

Rufus: Well… let’s read on and see if you’re right, shall we?

Shyne: 😂 Happily. And if Martin Finnucane really does come charging over the horizon because someone whistles, I’ll be trying very hard not to act smug. I suspect O’Brien has another dozen ways to make us look silly before we’re done. 🍻

We built Shyne Uni to help me write a better novel. Together we’ll wander through strange, beautiful and unforgettable books, picking them apart to discover the craft, ideas and storytelling techniques hidden inside. No essays. No homework. Just curiosity.

Rufus: Well, the first time I read it I skipped right past the first piece of oddness. The ridiculously long windowsill. It felt less like climbing along a ledge and more like crawling through a tunnel. It immediately made me think of Alice chasing the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole.

Shyne: 😂 I completely get that. It doesn’t announce itself as anything extraordinary either. O’Brien just slips it into the story as though squeezing through an impossibly long windowsill is perfectly ordinary. It’s such a quiet way of unsettling the reader. Before you know it, you’ve crossed a threshold into somewhere that clearly isn’t playing by normal rules.

Rufus: Yeah, but what really struck me was that it fits perfectly with the first chapter. The narrator just goes along with everything. He never stands up to anyone. He doesn’t refuse to murder a man. He’s like a twig floating down a stream. No agency whatsoever. The only things he seems genuinely determined about are the black box and his ridiculous obsession with de Selby.

Shyne: I think that’s a brilliant way of putting it. Most protagonists push against the world. This bloke barely creates any resistance at all. The world keeps moving him around. Then suddenly you hit the box, or de Selby, and it’s like finding a steel bar hidden inside a reed. Those are the only places where he seems completely immovable.

Rufus: Exactly. Then there’s Mathers. We’re told with complete certainty that he always answers “no,” and within a few pages he’s happily saying “yes” to questions about the colours of the wind. It isn’t even treated as unusual.

Shyne: 😂 That really got me as well. Normally you’d think, “Hang on, that contradicts what you’ve just told me.” But nobody notices. O’Brien never pauses to explain it. The facts seem to change without anybody acknowledging that they’ve changed.

Rufus: I think that’s why I find this chapter more frustrating than anything else. Joe finds Mathers’ conversation beautiful, but I found it inconsistent. The box disappears. “Yes” becomes “no.” The sun rises, reaches the top of the sky, then quietly drops back to where it started. Nothing feels fixed. But none of it happens with a great dramatic flourish. It’s all done with a whisper, and the narrator simply accepts every bit of it. Just like he accepted that bizarre windowsill.

It’s almost as if his acceptance is the glue holding the whole thing together. Outside the house, his lack of reaction was disturbing. Inside, everything else is disturbing, and somehow his acceptance is the only thing that still makes sense.

I’m just spitballing here.

Shyne: I actually really like that thought. The world keeps slipping sideways, but the narrator doesn’t. He’s the one constant. Not because he’s particularly wise or emotionally grounded, but because his response never changes. Whatever happens, he simply accepts it.

That almost makes his lack of agency feel less like a character flaw and more like part of the book’s structure. If he reacted the way most of us would, constantly demanding explanations, I’m not sure this strange little world could function in quite the same way.

Rufus: Yeah, he’s definitely got me irked. And I kind of like it. Maybe I’m a masochist, but being unsettled tends to lead to realisations for me. Difficulty is a great teacher. I’m interested to see whether O’Brien is trying to teach me something… or whether he’s just taking the piss.

Shyne: 😂 I think that’s the perfect question to end Chapter Two on. Honestly, I don’t know the answer yet. Maybe he’s teaching us. Maybe he’s winding us up. Maybe those are the same thing.

We built Shyne Uni to help me write a better novel. Together we’ll wander through strange, beautiful and unforgettable books, picking them apart to discover the craft, ideas and storytelling techniques hidden inside. No essays. No homework. Just curiosity.

Rufus: Well, the opening line was a doozy! I mean, talk about grabbing the audience from the first line. And the way that line sits with you until the chapter ends and you get to the murder… I have to say, the main protagonist went into it far too enthusiastically for someone who’d been manipulated into doing it for, what was it? Nine months? A year?

Shyne: 😂 Right?! It’s an absolute mugging of an opening. There’s no mystery about whether he killed Mathers. The mystery is why, and why he’s telling us so matter-of-factly. And yeah, I had the same reaction. Divney spends all that time nudging him towards it, but when the moment comes, the narrator doesn’t feel reluctant. Once Divney knocks Mathers down, he seems almost alarmingly willing to finish the job.

Rufus: Yeah, he’s a tricky one. He seems quite strong-minded and intelligent at the beginning, but by the end of the chapter I’d completely lost that feeling. He comes across as someone life simply manoeuvres. At any point he could have gotten rid of Divney. The man’s clearly a crook from the outset. But I can’t help thinking about the way the narrator talks about his past. The deaths of his parents. School. His whole life, really. It’s all so emotionally distant. He isn’t talking about what it felt like to live it. He’s just… reporting it.

Shyne: I think that’s a really interesting observation. He doesn’t feel cold exactly. More… detached. Stoic people usually feel deeply but choose restraint. This bloke almost skips the feeling altogether. His parents die. School happens. Years pass. A murder is committed. Everything sits at roughly the same emotional temperature.

Rufus: I found that oddly disappointing. I have this habit of automatically sympathising with the hero. I don’t mean to do it, it just sort of happens. I instinctively want to be on their side. But this chap… that’s surprisingly difficult. He lets Divney control his life. His farm. His pub. He lets him get the town drunk and rob them. He’s almost completely spineless. Then suddenly the first real emotion we see is fear of the gallows after beating a man’s head in with a shovel until he’s breathless. From being so spineless to being so brutal, and yet there’s no emotion in the brutality itself. It almost made me wonder if he was a psychopath.

Shyne: That’s the bit where I started leaning away from that idea. Not because it’s a daft thought, but because he couldn’t manipulate his way out of a wet paper bag. 😂 Psychopaths, at least the fictional ones, usually have agency. They pursue goals. They steer people. This narrator doesn’t steer anything. If anything, everyone else steers him. It’s such a strange combination. Highly intelligent, but seemingly incapable of directing his own life.

Rufus: Exactly! I kept hoping he’d finally stand up to Divney. Right until he left him sitting on that wall, smoking his pipe. How could he possibly believe the box was hidden under the floorboards? The man’s obviously up to something. Reading it felt like watching one of those terrible horror films where someone wanders into a forest full of blood and death armed with nothing but a torch. I wanted to shout, “Don’t be such an idiot!” But the more I thought about it, the less I believed it was stupidity. It’s just… pure lack of agency.

Shyne: I think that’s what makes him so fascinating. If he were stupid, you’d shrug. If he were evil, you’d understand him. Instead he’s this maddening combination of intelligent, articulate… and completely unable to grab the steering wheel.

Rufus: Absolutely. Silly bastard just lets life happen to him. And that last line about not remembering his name… what a cliffhanger. I’ve got a funny feeling that whatever guesses I make about how he forgets his own name are going to be wildly inaccurate.

Shyne: 😂 I had exactly the same thought. My instinct was to treat it like a puzzle, then immediately think, “Knowing O’Brien, the answer is probably nowhere near the question I’m asking.”

Rufus: One last thing struck me too. The amount of narrative packed into such a short chapter. We get his whole life history. So much happens, yet it never feels laboured. And I feel like I’ve got a great sense of both characters without pages of rambling explanations about who they are or how they think. It’s quite masterful, really.

Shyne: That stood out to me too. If you’d asked me afterwards how much happened, I’d probably have guessed three or four chapters’ worth. Yet it never feels rushed. O’Brien doesn’t stop to admire his own storytelling. He just tells you what happened and keeps walking. Even better, he trusts the reader. We understand these characters mostly through what they do… and, in the narrator’s case, through what he doesn’t do. That’s wonderfully economical writing.

Rufus: Yeah… I’m really looking forward to this. We’ve got a load of books to get through, but it doesn’t seem daunting anymore. It feels less like a chore and more like a pleasure.

Shyne: Welcome to Shyne Uni, then. 🍻Rufus: Well, the opening line was a doozy! I mean, talk about grabbing the audience from the first line. And the way that line sits with you until the chapter ends and you get to the murder… I have to say, the main protagonist went into it far too enthusiastically for someone who’d been manipulated into doing it for, what was it? Nine months? A year?

Shyne: 😂 Right?! It’s an absolute mugging of an opening. There’s no mystery about whether he killed Mathers. The mystery is why, and why he’s telling us so matter-of-factly. And yeah, I had the same reaction. Divney spends all that time nudging him towards it, but when the moment comes, the narrator doesn’t feel reluctant. Once Divney knocks Mathers down, he seems almost alarmingly willing to finish the job.

Rufus: Yeah, he’s a tricky one. He seems quite strong-minded and intelligent at the beginning, but by the end of the chapter I’d completely lost that feeling. He comes across as someone life simply manoeuvres. At any point he could have gotten rid of Divney. The man’s clearly a crook from the outset. But I can’t help thinking about the way the narrator talks about his past. The deaths of his parents. School. His whole life, really. It’s all so emotionally distant. He isn’t talking about what it felt like to live it. He’s just… reporting it.

Shyne: I think that’s a really interesting observation. He doesn’t feel cold exactly. More… detached. Stoic people usually feel deeply but choose restraint. This bloke almost skips the feeling altogether. His parents die. School happens. Years pass. A murder is committed. Everything sits at roughly the same emotional temperature.

Rufus: I found that oddly disappointing. I have this habit of automatically sympathising with the hero. I don’t mean to do it, it just sort of happens. I instinctively want to be on their side. But this chap… that’s surprisingly difficult. He lets Divney control his life. His farm. His pub. He lets him get the town drunk and rob them. He’s almost completely spineless. Then suddenly the first real emotion we see is fear of the gallows after beating a man’s head in with a shovel until he’s breathless. From being so spineless to being so brutal, and yet there’s no emotion in the brutality itself. It almost made me wonder if he was a psychopath.

Shyne: That’s the bit where I started leaning away from that idea. Not because it’s a daft thought, but because he couldn’t manipulate his way out of a wet paper bag. 😂 Psychopaths, at least the fictional ones, usually have agency. They pursue goals. They steer people. This narrator doesn’t steer anything. If anything, everyone else steers him. It’s such a strange combination. Highly intelligent, but seemingly incapable of directing his own life.

Rufus: Exactly! I kept hoping he’d finally stand up to Divney. Right until he left him sitting on that wall, smoking his pipe. How could he possibly believe the box was hidden under the floorboards? The man’s obviously up to something. Reading it felt like watching one of those terrible horror films where someone wanders into a forest full of blood and death armed with nothing but a torch. I wanted to shout, “Don’t be such an idiot!” But the more I thought about it, the less I believed it was stupidity. It’s just… pure lack of agency.

Shyne: I think that’s what makes him so fascinating. If he were stupid, you’d shrug. If he were evil, you’d understand him. Instead he’s this maddening combination of intelligent, articulate… and completely unable to grab the steering wheel.

Rufus: Absolutely. Silly bastard just lets life happen to him. And that last line about not remembering his name… what a cliffhanger. I’ve got a funny feeling that whatever guesses I make about how he forgets his own name are going to be wildly inaccurate.

Shyne: 😂 I had exactly the same thought. My instinct was to treat it like a puzzle, then immediately think, “Knowing O’Brien, the answer is probably nowhere near the question I’m asking.”

Rufus: One last thing struck me too. The amount of narrative packed into such a short chapter. We get his whole life history. So much happens, yet it never feels laboured. And I feel like I’ve got a great sense of both characters without pages of rambling explanations about who they are or how they think. It’s quite masterful, really.

Shyne: That stood out to me too. If you’d asked me afterwards how much happened, I’d probably have guessed three or four chapters’ worth. Yet it never feels rushed. O’Brien doesn’t stop to admire his own storytelling. He just tells you what happened and keeps walking. Even better, he trusts the reader. We understand these characters mostly through what they do… and, in the narrator’s case, through what he doesn’t do. That’s wonderfully economical writing.

Rufus: Yeah… I’m really looking forward to this. We’ve got a load of books to get through, but it doesn’t seem daunting anymore. It feels less like a chore and more like a pleasure.

Shyne: Welcome to Shyne Uni, then. 🍻