It seems out of all this somehow that my gift for numbers grew. From the beginning, I suppose, I was obsessed with the mystery of the unit, and everything else followed. Even yet I cannot see a one and a zero juxtaposed without feeling deep within me the vibration of a dark, answering note. Before I could talk I had been able to count, laying out my building blocks in ranked squares, screaming if anyone dared to disturb them...My party piece was to add up large numbers instantly in my head, frowning, a hand to my brow, my eyes downcast. It was not the manipulation of things that pleased me, the mere facility, but the sense of order I felt, of harmony, of symmetry and completeness.

Oh, I worked. Ashburn, Jack Kay, my mother, the black dog, the crash, all this, it was not like numbers, yet it too must have rules, order, some sort of pattern. Always I had thought of number falling on the chaos of things like frost falling on water, the seething particles tamed and sorted, the crystals locking, the frozen lattice spreading outwards in all directions. I could feel it in my mind, the crunch of things coming to a stop, the creaking stillness, the stunned white air. But marshal the factors how I might, they would not equate now.

-We're only asking, she said, the minister is only aksing, for some sort of statement of your precise aims in this programme? Everything you show us seems so...well, so hazy, so...uncertain?

At this the professor made a violent whooshing noise, like a breathless swimmer breaking the surface, and turned on her in a fury.

- There is no certainty! he cried. That is the result! Why don't you understand that, you you you ...! Ach, I am surrounded by fools and children. Where do you think you are living, eh? This is the world, look around you, look at it! You want certainty, order, all that? Then invent it.

...

- There! he said. Him [Swan]! He is the one you need, he thinks that numbers are exact, and rigourous, tell your minister about him!

: "Mathematics aside Banville creates a world within which the reader breathes a different air. It is the work that introduced me to Banvilles brilliance with words and his newest book Eclipse is no disappointment. For those of you of a more scientific bent than myself I recommend Banvilles Dr Copernicus. Cheers"

wonderful piece of literature!