It's a got a groovy beat and I can totally dance to it, I'd give it a 92
It's got a groove, but it kinda slides into noise towards the end, I'd give it an 83
This is how I imagine myself rating this book to a Dick Clark who's younger than he was at my birth on a show I've only seen in reruns
This is my first Stross novel, and it's good. And, there is a lot going on. It's set in the future for starters, a really convincingly constructed future if I do say so myself. And it revolves around virtual reality games. I haven't played a video game since Atari, and other than a very hung over Saturday in 2002 when I laid on the couch and watched two friends play Grand Theft Auto for 5 hours waiting for the pain to go away I haven't seen one either (I don't get out of my box much). I can imagine if I knew more about the games in general the novel would have been even more impressive. Stross is amazingly convincing in his depiction of both the game and the future.
Stross gets a lot done with his setting alone. There is all kind of social and political commentary on our present just under the surface of his seemingly innocent references to the places in the story. The characters, at first, had me worried: pushy, loud, CEO; mousy, with potential, forensic accountant; schlubish super programmer guy; tough as nails police chick. However, Stross manages to give each one of those cut outs enough to make them human and compelling and impressively surprising in moments. There is on relationship that you know is coming but it emerges at a pace that seems suddenly rushed three quarters of the way, as if a nearing plot point required the relationship more than the characters.
I hate books that wrap up with neat little endings as a rule. And this one wraps up, but it's not necessarily neat and the information withheld until the final 20 pages doesn't drop out of nowhere, another thing I hate.
Overall I'm leaning more with side one of my brain as I finish this review, maybe it's not noise so much as just a single instrument out of key.
End of the World Blues - Jon Courtnay Grimwood
This is a fun read.
It's a whodunit disguised as a sci-fi. And, I hafta say, the sci-fi element is key. Not that it isn't a good whodunit, but the sci-fi part is just a good trippy distraction in the places where my brain would have gotten tired of trying to follow all the little leads. That might be my problem with whodunits, I bore of the procedure quickly - but not so much when someone is traversing time.
The main character is Kit, who starts out not entirely likeable and ends the same way, even though his character evolves through the novel. I respect that about this book. Kit isn't redeemed entirely, nor is he let off the hook. He is true to character and makes some better decisions later in the book than he did early. Totally respectable in that department. The fact that those decisions tie everything about the whodunit off so neatly a little less so.
Enter:
Nijie, a street urchin in Tokyo is the other significant character and the source of all things supernatural in the book. She takes on the identity of Lady Neku as a cos-play character and manages to save Kit's life twice in the opening 50 pages of the book. Her loose ends, not so tied off. She's from the distant future - a not very bright one - and she and Kit are tied together though an object. I've read that her future is existence is too underdeveloped in places and it is ambiguous, but by the time you get to the end it works. She's a kid. What we see of her future world reflects her childish understanding of it, her memory of it and her trauma in it. It sounds exactly a lot like what my nephew sounds like trying to describe something weird that you've never seen. It totally worked for me.
It's a whodunit disguised as a sci-fi. And, I hafta say, the sci-fi element is key. Not that it isn't a good whodunit, but the sci-fi part is just a good trippy distraction in the places where my brain would have gotten tired of trying to follow all the little leads. That might be my problem with whodunits, I bore of the procedure quickly - but not so much when someone is traversing time.
The main character is Kit, who starts out not entirely likeable and ends the same way, even though his character evolves through the novel. I respect that about this book. Kit isn't redeemed entirely, nor is he let off the hook. He is true to character and makes some better decisions later in the book than he did early. Totally respectable in that department. The fact that those decisions tie everything about the whodunit off so neatly a little less so.
Enter:
Nijie, a street urchin in Tokyo is the other significant character and the source of all things supernatural in the book. She takes on the identity of Lady Neku as a cos-play character and manages to save Kit's life twice in the opening 50 pages of the book. Her loose ends, not so tied off. She's from the distant future - a not very bright one - and she and Kit are tied together though an object. I've read that her future is existence is too underdeveloped in places and it is ambiguous, but by the time you get to the end it works. She's a kid. What we see of her future world reflects her childish understanding of it, her memory of it and her trauma in it. It sounds exactly a lot like what my nephew sounds like trying to describe something weird that you've never seen. It totally worked for me.
Exit Ghost - Philip Roth
Sometimes I read a book and regardless of whether it's any good or not, or I liked it or not, there is an image that stays with me. Sometimes for months. When the narrator describes his young son playing the in the sprinklers in Marilyn Robinson's Gilead, the tooth pulling scene delivered so matter-of-factly in Listening for Small Sounds, and Temple Drake's skin inching up her frame in Sanctuary come to mind. And for me, in this novel, I'm just going to want Jamie to have never spoken at all. If only. There is something about her voice that is so jarringly false - to the point of distraction - that for this reader it went a long way towards ruining a perfectly enjoyable read.
Exit Ghost is Nathan Zuckerman's swan song of sorts. A virtual recluse for the last 10 years, he returns to New York city to have a procedure done that is meant to control his post-prostate cancer incontinence - it's a return likened to Rip Van Winkle (I kid you not - this is Roth right?) In the city, Nathan, on a whim, answers an ad for a house trade for a year. Two young authors, one of whom is rattled in post 9/11 New York city, are looking to escape for a year. Nathan, feeling invigorated and hopeful answers the ad and meets the two young authors. Ridiculous, puppy-dog loyal David, and his ever-so-lovely, 30 year-old, more talented (although one publication 5 years prior is the only evidence of this) wife, Jamie.
Nathan becomes involved - more so imaginatively than really - with this couple, the "friend" of theirs who hopes to write a biography on a now-deceased friend of his, and a couple of one-time friends in the city. An author himself, Nathan imaginatively reconstructs many of his exchanges in NY in an effort to work on (most probably) his final novel. As the novel progresses, we learn that Nathan's facilities, mental as well as physical, are less and less reliable. With the introduction of the young seductress, Jamie, Nathan laments the loss of his youth anew.
There are moments where the story fires on all cylinders. There is a secret, a new look at the past, a possible untapped potential - elements that propel the story convincingly. Nathan is sympathetic and compelling. His interactions, while occasionally somewhat polemic, are nonetheless entertaining. At moments the dialogue is so good you feel like you're in the middle of the conversation. This is especially true with Nathan and Amy, or Nathan and Kliman. But then there is Jamie.
I don't know if the author fell in love with the character himself or what, but nothing about her rang true for this reader after the first introduction. She is so idealized that even the moments that are suppose to flush her out as a "regular" girl on some level fail miserably. By the middle of the novel, it felt as though there was a cardboard poster with "insert perfect fantasy woman here" filling the space from which we should have been able to hear Jamie's voice. It's reasonable that Zuckerman fell so in love with her, was blinded by need, want, desperation etc. and in his memory of her we understand that. However, in the real time exchanges, his POV can't account for "That's how we got so devoted so quickly - they provided us with delightful tales of horror and mirth" or "I told you: he is adventurous. He's drawn to daring ventures. What's wrong with that?" All I can think is, who talks like this. Really. Or rather, what tolerable person talks like this, let alone one who would inspire the cloying adoration of a husband, an ex and an old man who figured himself well past the point of being interested in much of anything at all?
Ultimately, the story kind of peters out at the end. I felt like there was more build up than delivery, but at the same time I did really enjoy parts of the novel. That must be what the problem is for me, I so enjoyed the parts I enjoyed that it made all of the Jamie business so damned disappointing. I actually groaned aloud driving home from the mountains when a particularly infuriating Jamie scene followed a phenomenally strong one with Amy. I wanted to punch her out, just so she'd shut the fuck up.
Exit Ghost is Nathan Zuckerman's swan song of sorts. A virtual recluse for the last 10 years, he returns to New York city to have a procedure done that is meant to control his post-prostate cancer incontinence - it's a return likened to Rip Van Winkle (I kid you not - this is Roth right?) In the city, Nathan, on a whim, answers an ad for a house trade for a year. Two young authors, one of whom is rattled in post 9/11 New York city, are looking to escape for a year. Nathan, feeling invigorated and hopeful answers the ad and meets the two young authors. Ridiculous, puppy-dog loyal David, and his ever-so-lovely, 30 year-old, more talented (although one publication 5 years prior is the only evidence of this) wife, Jamie.
Nathan becomes involved - more so imaginatively than really - with this couple, the "friend" of theirs who hopes to write a biography on a now-deceased friend of his, and a couple of one-time friends in the city. An author himself, Nathan imaginatively reconstructs many of his exchanges in NY in an effort to work on (most probably) his final novel. As the novel progresses, we learn that Nathan's facilities, mental as well as physical, are less and less reliable. With the introduction of the young seductress, Jamie, Nathan laments the loss of his youth anew.
There are moments where the story fires on all cylinders. There is a secret, a new look at the past, a possible untapped potential - elements that propel the story convincingly. Nathan is sympathetic and compelling. His interactions, while occasionally somewhat polemic, are nonetheless entertaining. At moments the dialogue is so good you feel like you're in the middle of the conversation. This is especially true with Nathan and Amy, or Nathan and Kliman. But then there is Jamie.
I don't know if the author fell in love with the character himself or what, but nothing about her rang true for this reader after the first introduction. She is so idealized that even the moments that are suppose to flush her out as a "regular" girl on some level fail miserably. By the middle of the novel, it felt as though there was a cardboard poster with "insert perfect fantasy woman here" filling the space from which we should have been able to hear Jamie's voice. It's reasonable that Zuckerman fell so in love with her, was blinded by need, want, desperation etc. and in his memory of her we understand that. However, in the real time exchanges, his POV can't account for "That's how we got so devoted so quickly - they provided us with delightful tales of horror and mirth" or "I told you: he is adventurous. He's drawn to daring ventures. What's wrong with that?" All I can think is, who talks like this. Really. Or rather, what tolerable person talks like this, let alone one who would inspire the cloying adoration of a husband, an ex and an old man who figured himself well past the point of being interested in much of anything at all?
Ultimately, the story kind of peters out at the end. I felt like there was more build up than delivery, but at the same time I did really enjoy parts of the novel. That must be what the problem is for me, I so enjoyed the parts I enjoyed that it made all of the Jamie business so damned disappointing. I actually groaned aloud driving home from the mountains when a particularly infuriating Jamie scene followed a phenomenally strong one with Amy. I wanted to punch her out, just so she'd shut the fuck up.
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