Dry Bones by Richard Beard

Running out of time in a city of clocks

Switzerland has been a rich source of inspiration for novelists from Mary Shelley to Graham Greene, Anita Brookner to Kim Stanley Robinson, whose masterful story "Zürich" may be the last word on Swiss order and cleanliness. In the Geneva-set Dry Bones, Richard Beard's narrator, Jay Mason, discovers that if you're feeling oppressed by the passage of time, there's nowhere you can escape the city's clocks. There are even clocks in the parks, constructed of flowers. Jay later notes that his hands on the steering wheel are in the "ten to two" position.

Jay also discovers that Switzerland accommodates more than its share of celebrities who have failed to beat the clock. Its cemeteries are bursting with film stars, psychoanalysts, religious zealots, royalty, writers and the inventor of Esperanto. You sense Beard's mind working: there's got to be a story in this; a novel, even.

There's a novel in just about anything, students on our proliferating creative-writing courses are encouraged to think. The cracks, however, are beginning to show. Beard did the granddaddy of them all, the MA at East Anglia. But that was 10 years ago, before his spell in Geneva. Dry Bones is his fourth and perhaps most conventional novel, though he has by no means abandoned the experimental spirit of the French "Oulipo" movement that presided over X20, Damascus and The Cartoonist.

Deep in a crisis of faith, Anglican deacon Jay Mason is in Geneva, "graveyard of good intentions", looking after the church of All Saints before it passes to its new owner, the disreputable Joseph Moholy. Jay finds himself sucked into Moholy's unwholesome relics-trading business. His first task is to obtain the bones of James Joyce. He settles for Richard Burton. Moholy is not happy. Jay, meanwhile, has taken on many of the characteristics of the Welsh actor, to the consternation of his pregnant girlfriend, Helena. The contents page gives some indication of what to expect, with chapter titles including "Jung's Knee", "Calvin's Hip" and "Chaplin's Shoulder".

It's a comic novel, but not that funny; high-concept, but ultimately low-brow. Clearly, it's all in somewhat questionable taste but, as Jay and Helena enjoy a picnic on Audrey Hepburn's grave, it's not obvious whether this is offensive or inoffensive. Nor is it easy to say which would be preferable. The playfulness and humour suggest a desire to inherit the mantle of Anthony Burgess, while the narrator's close encounter with Borges is mere hubris.

The dovetailing of Jay's story with the real setting of Geneva at the time of the anti-globalisation protests is well handled, offering another angle on the big issues of personal accountability and civic responsibility. The author recently took up a post at the University of Tokyo. It will be interesting to see how he responds to the curious complexity of Japanese society in, perhaps, his next novel.

The reviewer's next novel, 'Antwerp', will be published in June