(NOTE: page numbers refer to the hardcover edition)
NOTE: This was written 20 years ago, before The Fire was published, and some of it is out of date. Someday I will revise it, based on information from The Fire.
Nim and Solarin are two of my favorite characters in The Eight,
for a number of reasons. They're intelligent and mysterious, and great
chess players--I'm not good at chess, but I really admire people who
are--and they both love Catherine (more of this later). Of course, the
fact that they're brothers, and descendants of Mireille, is one of the
best surprises in the book. In this article, I will discuss several
things that interest me about Nim and Solarin.
Nim was one of my favorite characters, from the very beginning. The
description of his house is one of my favorite parts of The Eight.
I especially like the enormous entrance hall and the kitchen, with the
huge ovens and stone fireplace. Then there's the fact that he's such a
great cook; it's interesting that Nim cooks for Catherine, while Catherine
doesn't seem to have any interest in cooking.
I also like Nim's elusiveness; only a few people even know his phone
number. One of my favorite scenes is the one where Catherine tries to
call him, and the number turns out to be that of a convent (p. 118). Of
course, this is also a little reminder of Mireille's story. Could it be a
clue that Nim is a descendant of Mireille? That's possible. Nim changes
his phone number all the time, too, and whenever Catherine tries to call
him, she speaks to someone who has never even heard of him, or pretends
not to have heard of him.
Also, Nim is a great chess player. After I read The Eight for
the first time, I forgot about this; it's easy to remember Solarin as the
great chess player in The Eight, with Nim, it's not emphasized
quite so much. But Nim had played chess with Bobby Fischer and, although
he lost, he still played well against Fischer (p. 117). In fact, the
reason why Catherine tries to find him at the beginning is that he knows
so much about chess: "He had committed to memory all of the world
championship games in history. He was a walking biographical encyclopedia
of the lives of the grand masters. He could regale you for hours with
stories of the history of chess..." (p. 117). Later on in The
Eight, you think of Nim more as Catherine's mentor, an expert on
computers and coded messages, and a scientist, but, like his brother
Solarin, he is also a chess master.
Although I liked Nim from the very beginning, I didn't know what to
think of Solarin at first. In fact, I even thought he might be an enemy;
Katherine Neville does a very good job of making the reader think this.
Why did I think that Solarin might be an enemy? First of all, for a very
stupid reason: because he's Russian. At the time this was taking place,
and even at the time The Eight was written (1988), the Russians
were always the villains in thrillers. Since I was only at the beginning
of the book, I didn't quite realize how different The Eight was
going to be from the typical thriller. And, as it turns out, the KGB man
in The Eight is evil.
Also, Lily takes an instant dislike to Solarin at the chess tournament:
"Bastard," Lily hissed. "He's trying to win Fiske's confidence, gain the
upper hand before the game even begins." (p. 81). And, a little later, "I
see what you mean when you said [Solarin was] icy." (p. 81).
Interestingly, Solarin plays White at the chess tournament; this might
have been an indication that he was on the White team in the Game.
Solarin was the last person to see his opponent, Fiske, alive, and so
Catherine thinks that he murdered Fiske. Then, after the chess
tournament, someone shoots at Lily's car; Catherine and Lily think that it
was Solarin (p. 91), and so do we, at this point. It is not until later
that we find out it was Hermanold, the chess tournament director.
In the scene at the UN, we find out that Solarin is the mysterious "man
on a bicycle" that Catherine has been painting; for some reason, we are
led to believe that the "man on a bicycle" is evil, when in fact he is
not. Then, of course, comes the discovery of the chauffeur's body at the
UN. Before Catherine finds the body, she sees Solarin, who comes to warn
her of danger; she notices that he is carrying a gun. Later on, we find
out that this was only for protection, but we, and Catherine, did not know
this at the time. Also, Catherine assumes, correctly, that Solarin killed
the chauffeur. What we don't know is that the chauffeur is evil, and
Solarin killed him in self-defense. We think at first that the chauffeur
is good, and that Solarin murdered him.
We do not really find out that Solarin is good until he and Catherine
get to Algeria and take a walk along the beach; this is when he tells her
what really happened with Fiske and the chauffeur (p. 236-239). After the
scene on the beach, Solarin became one of my favorite characters. I
especially like his adventurous spirit, and his intelligence; like Nim, he
is a physicist and an expert at mathematical puzzles. And, of course, he
is the greatest chess player in the world.
Yes, I think he does, but Catherine doesn't realize it. Catherine
loves Solarin, obviously, but even before she met Solarin, I don't think
Catherine loved Nim. She likes him and admires him very much, as her
friend and former mentor, but she does not love him, at least not in the
same way she loves Solarin. In the scene in Nim's house, you can see the
attraction on Nim's part; he plays with her hair and calls her "my dear".
But Catherine does not seem attracted to Nim, except as a friend.
At the end of the book, after Catherine and Solarin have fallen in
love, Solarin tells Catherine, "My brother's in love with you." (p. 529).
And now we know for certain that Catherine never even realized that Nim
loved her: "Don't be ridiculous," she says to Solarin (p. 529). We
think, at first, that the fact that they both love Catherine might cause
tension between the two brothers, but it doesn't; Nim realizes that
Catherine and Solarin love each other, and he accepts it.
Katherine Neville gives us several clues along the way, but I didn't
realize they were clues until I read The Eight for the second time
and knew what was going to happen. When I first read The Eight,
the fact that Nim and Solarin were brothers came as a complete surprise.
I think I guessed that they were descendants of Mireille, though; I knew
that someone in Catherine's story had to be a descendant of Mireille, and
Nim and Solarin were good guesses, since Nim has Mireille's red hair and
Solarin has her green eyes. But, of course, they could have been distant
cousins instead of brothers; that was probably what I thought at
first.
When I read The Eight for the second time, I looked for clues to
all the surprises, not just the fact that Nim and Solarin were brothers;
in my article on the confrontation between Mireille and Marat, I will
discuss the clues Katherine Neville gives that tell you Mireille is going
to kill Marat. One of the things I admire most about The Eight is
the way Katherine Neville gives you clues that you don't realize are
clues. Anyway, here are the clues that I found. If you can think of any
others, please let me know, so I can add them to the list.
I have already mentioned one possible clue that Nim is a descendant of
Mireille; his phone number is really that of a convent.
Then, as I've also mentioned, there is Nim's red hair and Solarin's
green eyes. Yes, a lot of people have red hair, and a lot of people have
green eyes, but I don't think Katherine Neville would have mentioned them
so many times if she did not mean it to be a clue that Nim and Solarin are
descendants of Mireille, who has both red hair and green eyes.
When Catherine first meets Solarin, she thinks, "There was something at
once familiar and strange about him." (p. 77). Something familiar: this
could mean that Catherine thought of Nim, without realizing it.
Shortly afterwards, Catherine thinks, "He'd reminded me of the
fortune-teller." (p. 78). After reading the whole book, we know that the
fortune-teller was really Mireille. If Solarin reminds Catherine of
Mireille, this is, of course, a clue that he's a descendant of Mireille.
But there is no way we would know this without reading the whole book;
this is a very good example of what I mean by a "clue that we don't
realize is a clue".
When Catherine first tells Nim that she knows Solarin, Nim's voice
"sounded remote, as if he were lost in thought" (p. 129). Nim also seems
to know a lot about Solarin; of course, this could be because they are
both chess masters, but now we know it's more than that.
Catherine thinks that the handwriting on the newspaper she gets in the
mail on her first day in Algiers is Nim's (p. 231), when it turns out to
be Solarin's. Of course, two brothers can have very different
handwriting, but I think it is a clue that there is some similarity
between Nim and Solarin, and that we should be paying attention to
this.
On the beach in Algiers, Solarin plays with Catherine's hair, and it
reminds her of the way Nim played with her hair (p. 239). Also, since we
know now that Nim and Solarin are descendants of Mireille and Talleyrand,
this reminds us of the way Talleyrand plays with Mireille's hair.
Nim and Solarin are both physicists, and chess masters. This could be
only a coincidence, but of course it isn't.
Although I guessed that Nim and Solarin were descendants of Mireille
before this, the thing that really told me they were her descendants was
the description of their mother (by this time, you know that they are
brothers, but you are not yet certain that they are descendants of
Mireille); she has "coppery hair" (p. 525); this sounds exactly like
Mireille.
I made a list of the things that Nim and Solarin have in common with
their ancestor, Mireille. If you can think of anything else, please let
me know.
Nim:
As you can see, Nim has a little more in common with Mireille than
Solarin does. Also, many of the things they have in common with Mireille
are also things they have in common with each other. But each has some
things in common with Mireille that the other doesn't have.
Mireille is more emotional than either Nim or Solarin. Of course, Nim
and Solarin can both be very emotional; we see this most of all when they
are reunited, and we also see it in their feelings for Catherine. But
they do not cry as much as Mireille does. Nim and Solarin are
scientifically-minded, while Mireille is not. (Although Mireille gets to
be more scientifically-minded later in the book; see my article on changes
in Mireille's character for more about this.)
Mireille is very religious; although she does not want to become a nun,
she keeps her faith in God throughout the book; she signs her letter to
Catherine, "Yours in God" (p. 547). Nim and Solarin (and Catherine, too,
I think) do not seem to be religious at all.
Nim and Solarin are both great chess players; Mireille does not play
chess, as far as we know.
Nim is a great cook, and I think Solarin is, too. Who did the cooking
when Catherine, Lily, and Solarin were on the boat? It doesn't really
tell you, but I think it must have been Solarin; Catherine and Lily are
not interested in cooking. Neither is Mireille, as far as we know.
After reading The Eight, I had many unanswered questions about
Nim and Solarin. I wonder if any of these questions were answered in the
1200-page manuscript of The Eight, or if they will be answered in a
future book.
Nim:
When he was a child, how did he manage to survive all alone in New
York, after his father died?
Where did he go to college? Where did he get his degree in
physics?
What kind of physics did he study? We know that Solarin's degree is in
acoustics, but we don't know about Nim's degree.
How did he make enough money to afford that wonderful house? It must
have been something to do with computers, but we don't know exactly
what.
How did he get to be such a great chess player? I think Nim and
Solarin both learned to play chess from their father, when they were
children. This probably explains why they were so great at chess, while
Mireille wasn't; it came from their father's side of the family; Mireille
was their ancestor on their mother's side. After Nim and his father left
for New York, Solarin went to a special school in Russia, where he became
a chess master. But we don't know about Nim. He obviously continued to
play chess as a child, after his father died. But with whom? And
where?
Since Nim and Solarin were both chess masters who played at
tournaments, why didn't they meet at a chess tournament, before their
reunion at the end of the book?
When Mordecai first met Nim, at a chess club, did he know that Nim had
such an important role in the Game?
Did Mordecai meet Nim first, and then Solarin, or was it the other way
around? That's not very clear.
How did Nim learn to cook so well?
Where did he get the birds in the aviary (especially the falcon)?
Where did he get his car (the green Morgan)? He said it had been in
his family for many years. Did it belong to another descendant of
Mireille? Or did it belong to someone on his father's side of the
family?
When he first met Catherine, three years before the book begins, did he
know she was the next Black Queen?
Who are the other two people besides Catherine who know Nim's phone
number? Catherine says, "I was one of only three people in the world who
had the honor of knowing" Nim's phone number (p. 118). Is the
200-year-old Mireille one of them? Or Mordecai? Those are my two
guesses, but I don't know. They could also be people who don't appear in
the book.
What happens next? How do Nim and Solarin find the board of the
Montglane Service? Does Nim ever get over his love for Catherine? Does
he eventually get married, or does he go on living alone in his enormous
house? Does he ever see the 200-year-old Mireille again?
Solarin:
How did the 200-year-old Mireille find the orphanage in which she put
Solarin when he was a child?
When Mordecai first met Solarin at a chess tournament when Solarin was
16, did Mordecai know what an important role Solarin had in the Game?
Where did Solarin get his degree in acoustics? (At a university in
Russia, of course, but which one?)
How did he and the 200-year-old Mireille stay in contact over the
years?
How did he get to know so much about boats?
How did he learn to speak English (and probably French and Arabic) so
well?
Had he been to Algiers before? He certainly knows where the
200-year-old Mireille lives.
Again, what happens next? Will Lily ever beat him at chess? (Somehow,
I doubt it.) What kind of adventures will he and Nim have in Russia,
looking for the board? I'm sure Solarin is in trouble with the KGB. When
do Solarin and Catherine get married? Will they live in New York or
somewhere else? Will they have children? If they do, will the children
be great at chess, like Solarin, or terrible at chess, like Catherine?
Will he ever see the 200-year old Mireille again? If there are children,
will they ever see Mireille? Will he and Catherine tell the children who
Mireille really is?
Copyright 1997 Vicki Kondelik.