And he does more than just carry us backward. The novel fairly cackles with glee at its capacity to summon excitement from all corners of time and space: Here’s your elaborate Miltonian magic; here’s the angel Raphael in the form of Doctor Manhattan; here’s a gloriously chilling monster that moves like an inflatable tube man. In an old country house with lewd wallpaper, we meet John Maynard Keynes. Our heroine, Iris, by night a sexual adventurer, by day a financial secretary with her eye on climbing the executive ladder, impresses him with her fiscal acumen.