Hari Kunzru’s novel Gods Without Men is a familiar type of work, one that is very prevalent these days. Spread across many characters and time periods, there is a linking element, a three spire pinnacle rock somewhere in the American desert southwest, which ties the work together. All sorts of people are drawn to these to rocks, miners, religious fanatics, UFO nuts, hippie communes, tweakers cooking meth, and day trippers.
Kunzru writes well, keeps the lines of his sprawling novel untangled, and winds up producing a solid novel. Despite its complexity, its premise is rather simple: does life have some kind of organized, rational meaning, or is it random, chaotic, and only intelligible through flashes of intuition. In this novel (as in life) we never find out.
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