Treasure hunt

Novelist Louis Bayard likes to build his fiction around real people (Edgar Allan Poe, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln), although in Mr. Timothy he imagines a famous fictional character, Tiny Tim, all grown up. In his 2010 effort, The School of Night, his focus rests on Thomas Harriot, a prominent 17th century English scientist who is little remembered today, although a recent biography may help.

Harriot knew William Shakespeare, at least according to the novel, and was a pal of Sir Walter Ralegh (the novel includes an interesting discussion of why this spelling is favored here over the more familiar Raleigh). Harriot, Ralegh and other prominent men of the day used to meet at night to discuss topics frowned upon when discussed during the day, such as atheism. This they called the School of Night, which surprisingly has relatively little to do with Bayard’s plot.

It seems that Harriot has left behind a treasure map so vague that it isn’t even clear if the treasure, whatever it might be, is in the United States (he had once visited the colonies) or England. People die, or in some cases appear to die, while scholars compete to find the prize.

Bayard shifts his story back and forth from 2009, where the treasure hunt takes place, to 1603, where we find Harriot discovering love with a servant girl almost as brilliant as he is.

My enthusiasm for Bayard’s novel seemed to rise and fall as the pages turned. Sometimes it seemed wonderfully clever and other times contrived.