Mirror's Fathom

Mirror's Fathom is the story of Tycho Wilhelm Lund: anarchist, pirate, and thief of a legendary mirror. Tycho is also a great-nephew of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and is, when the novel begins, a mild-mannered antiques dealer who is asked to assess the value of some furniture belonging to Regine Schlegel, Kierkegaard's famously jilted former love. When he arrives at Regine's home, Tychowho has no interest in philosophyfinds himself at a meeting of the Kierkegaard Circle, a group faithfully reading aloud Kierkegaard's works. There he meets, and falls for, Countess Juliana Sophie, herself a passionate follower of Kierkegaard's thinking and self-appointed mistress of the 'School for Selves.' Juliana Sophie's father, Count Viggo, approves of their marriage, with one condition: Tycho must first lend him his expertise in antique hunting, and go to London to retrieve a family heirloom, a six-foot tall silver-framed mirror. The novel moves back and forth between the 19th and 21st centuries: the action begins in Malta in 2009, where we find a depressed Maltese housewife, Rowena, desperately exercising in front of the Count's mirror. Mysteries emerge: how did the mirror get to Malta in the first place, and why is Tycho remembered there as the fearsome 'Brigand Tycho'? Tycho's and Rowena's fates are tangled in a curious way, and the novel follows their stories between the two centuries, each chapter happening in the same setting (111 years apart). It is a love story, a mystery, and an exploration of Kierkegaard's philosophical claims about how a human self is forged, and why it is that 'temporality, finitude is what it is all about.'