The 16th Annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes : FICTION WINNER, WILLIAM BOYD : Ambitious Flights of Fancy : Excerpt from “The Blue Afternoon”

William Boyd’s last novel, “Brazzaville Beach,” explored everything from the complexities of calculus to the violence inherent in both chimpanzees and humans. His new novel, “The Blue Afternoon,” is equally eclectic and ambitious. Set in the early decades of this century, it ranges over the burgeoning disciplines and theories of architecture, surgery and aviation , and mixes political unrest with a murder mystery and, as illustrated by the passage below, a study of seduction and enchantment. The narrator, a young, up-and-coming architect living in 1930s Hollywood, has just been approached by Salvador Carriscant, an elderly man claiming to be her father and alluding to “all those years” of hardship.

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I did not press him, or ask him what “those years” were. There would be time enough later for interrogation, and besides, I thought he would tell me everything in his own good time, if he felt like it. I realized that this jaunt to the sea was just a means for him and me to become further acquainted--very much the father reestablishing his relationship with his long-lost daughter--and my silence, my reticence, encouraged this mood and that would please him, I knew.

And then I wondered why I should want to please him, why I was encouraging this--what?--this friendship. He knew my date of birth, but what did that prove? He knew what time of day I was born, but that could have been an inspired guess, a lucky shot. . . . But there was a quality of confidence about his dealings with me that seemed different, indicated a fundamental certainty of purpose that I felt no trickster or flimflam man could stimulate. It was not striven for, did not seek to impress. He appeared relaxed in my company--as if my company were all that he wanted--and that in turn relaxed me.

He looked up now from his meal and gave me a quick, strong smile, his broad face creasing momentarily. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps because Rudolf Fischer was so manifestly my father, and Hugh Paget possessed all the substantiality of myth, I was seizing too firmly on this new candidate, all attractive flesh-and-blood, all very much here and now? It was a form of temptation, I knew, a kind of seduction, and, I realized as I contemplated this sturdy, handsome old man, it was one I was not as well-equipped to resist as I had thought.

Illustrating what fiction judge Annette Smith has called this novel’s “exaltation of dreams,” the following passage, set in 1903, takes place shortly after Carriscant has just survived a plane crash that killed his friend, a pioneering aviator named Pantaleon.

The senior adjudicator, Mr. Gallo, thought the whole episode a great shame and hoped that Dr. Carriscant would continue with his colleague’s pioneering work. He invited him to form the first committee of the Aero-Club of Manila. Carriscant agreed at once, nodding dully. Pantaleon’s death and his extraordinary achievement left him feeling both hugely upset and humbled, visited at the same time by an acute sense of loss and awestruck admiration.

After giving his statement to the Sampaloc constabulary and seeing Pantaleon’s blanket-shrouded body being carried into the police station, he returned to the nipa barn, where he found the place deserted, the crowd quite dispersed. He wondered how many of them were aware that the Aero-Mobilist himself had perished in his attempt to win the Amberway-Richault Prize.

Carriscant walked morosely up and down the wooden roadway, trying to come to terms with what had happened, trying to sort and understand those endless seconds of terror and alarm. At least “Panta” had felt that exhilaration he so craved surge through his body. He remembered his manic shrieks and yelps of triumph as they really flew for the first time, recalled his sobs of helpless gratitude as they hurtled toward the trees on the San Roque estero .

At least Pantaleon had died happy, full in the knowledge that he had achieved something monumental and triumphant. There were worse ends than that, he reflected, worse ways to die, and he sensed some of his sadness wane, and grew aware that, simultaneously, there was a new emotion blooming inside him, a feeling building of an irrepressible and transforming jubilation.

That his own life had been spared now appeared to him the most astonishing miracle and, while he knew that he would still shed a few tears for his lost friend, a voice inside him was whispering delightedly, “You’re alive, alive, ALIVE!” Whether it was blind chance or divine intervention, he was taking it as a clear sign. Carriscant’s luck. . . . Carriscant’s luck was holding. Salvador Carriscant and Delphine Blythe Sieverance were destined to be together. Everything that was due to happen in the next few days was going according to plan. He knew, with a fierce, passionate certainty, that now all was going to be well.