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The Singer's Gun (2010)

de Emily St. John Mandel

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4744251,574 (3.79)60
Everyone Anton Waker grew up with is corrupt. His parents deal in stolen goods and his first career is a partnership venture with his cousin Aria selling forged passports and social security cards to illegal aliens. Anton longs for a less questionable way of living in the world and by his late twenties has reinvented himself as a successful middle manager. Then a routine security check suggests that things are not quite what they appear. And Aria begins blackmailing him to do one last job for her. But the seemingly simple job proves to have profound and unexpected repercussions. As Anton's carefully constructed life begins to disintegrate around him, he's forced to choose between loyalty to his family and his desires for a different kind of life. When everyone is willing to use someone else to escape the past, it is up to Anton, on the island of Ischia, to face the ghosts that travel close behind him.… (més)
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Es mostren 1-5 de 41 (següent | mostra-les totes)
Emily St. John Mandel is a clever writer. The plot builds slowly but steadily, with built in expectations along the way.

Each flashback comes at just the right place to show something the reader needs to know about a character. And every character, even the few minor ones, seems to be there for a reason.

I put this book on a to-read list, somehow thinking it was science fiction, but by the time I realized it wasn't I was into it and happily read to the end. ( )
  mykl-s | Mar 4, 2024 |
Once upon a time, in far more primitive days, people connected to the internet through 56k modems. Remember those? Waiting for a picture to download could try the patience of typical modern man. An ingenious approach to dealing with this problem was interlacing. Rather than downloading from top to bottom strictly sequentially, an interlaced image was divided up into strips 8 pixels high and downloaded onto your screen in passes. The first pass downloaded only the top line of each strip, the second pass downloaded another line, the next pass downloaded more lines, and the final pass downloaded the rest. In this way each section of the image was progressively made clearer and fully visible through multiple passes through it: a fuzzy whole made sharp while you waited for the complete image.

The Singer's Gun reminded me of watching one of these picture files download back in those days before broadband. It is a novel that does not progress from start to finish along a chronological line, each step along the timeline clearly presented before moving along. Instead we see a fuzzy outline of the whole, and take more passes back through sections of the story, making them gradually clearer, and in fact changing our perception of the image. It's a great alternative way to shape a novel, and it works terrifically well with this book.

Other than that, I'll note that in her second novel Mandel has again created a central character who finds himself living outside the bounds of the law, but forced there more or less unwillingly out of circumstance. As in her debut novel Last Night in Montreal, it's just that there were two options presented, and as it happened the only option really to be taken was the one that leads to being chased by an officer of the law. ( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
This was my first Mandel read. While reading, I felt very distanced from the characters; as a foggy veil between us. Some words that others used to describe this book: noir, suspense, and thriller. I think those words are too strong for this book. Words I might use: interesting, nebulous, cloudy. This is the story of Anton, whose parents buy and sell stolen plumbing and garden supplies and his niece, who smuggles people into the U.S. Anton is not the angel, he got a diploma from Harvard by posing as an ex- student (who had really died). All was going peachy for Anton until a background investigation of all employees at his place of employment discovered that Anton's diploma was not genuine. This discovery sets the course of the book. Mandel wrote chapters that were sometimes twice removed from the previous one in both time and person. This reader had to really focus to determine which person the chapter was focusing on and then determine if the time period was before or after the previous chapter or two. For a person who wants a more linear story, this could be confusing. I was only lost once! The ending of the book reminded me of Tartt's The Goldfinch. According to the reviews of others, I understand this was Mandel's second novel and much improvement has been made. 267 pages ( )
  Tess_W | Jul 27, 2023 |
Oh, that I could write good book reviews in order to do this book justice. I simply love her voice, the elements of melancholy and the understanding of how surrealism can fit into any life. ( )
  Kiramke | Jun 27, 2023 |
Anton grew up in a family that stole architectural salvage to make their living. His cousin Aria embraced the family business when her mother was deported to Ecuador and she was left behind. Anton spends time selling Social Security cards and passports to immigrants, but attempts to go “straight,” based on a fraudulent Harvard degree. While Aria descends into deeper levels of crime, Anton grasps at normal life but it slithers away. Not much action in this plot, but Aria’s double cross of Anton is an unexpected twist. ( )
  mojomomma | Oct 4, 2022 |
Es mostren 1-5 de 41 (següent | mostra-les totes)
And her book strikes a perfect balance between introspection and action.
 
The restraint shown in the action department (another indication of the old-fashioned) won’t satisfy those who demand more visceral thrills, but it supports the novel’s commitments to the quieter aspects of character over the pull of a gut-punching or sparklingly original plot.
 

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Nom de l'autorCàrrecTipus d'autorObra?Estat
Emily St. John Mandelautor primaritotes les edicionscalculat
Chergé, Gérard deTraductorautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
Vroege, MireilleTraductorautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
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Something about the tanks at London's Heathrow Airport changed my mind. Before they rolled into place, in the innocent days when security just meant men with submachine guns, a travel book could be fluffy, silly, familiar or carefullly manufactured, and it hardly mattered. Afterward, every destination acquired a sudden glow of hellfire, every trip an element of thoroughly unwanted suspense. Escape has becme a problem in itself. A travel book without danger--to the body, the soul or the future--is entirely out of time. ...We stand in need of something stronger now: the travel book you can read while making your way throught this new, alarming world. Michael Pye, The New York Times, June 1, 2003
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In an office on the bright sharp edge of New York, glass tower, Alexandra Broden ws listening to a telephone conversation.
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Everyone Anton Waker grew up with is corrupt. His parents deal in stolen goods and his first career is a partnership venture with his cousin Aria selling forged passports and social security cards to illegal aliens. Anton longs for a less questionable way of living in the world and by his late twenties has reinvented himself as a successful middle manager. Then a routine security check suggests that things are not quite what they appear. And Aria begins blackmailing him to do one last job for her. But the seemingly simple job proves to have profound and unexpected repercussions. As Anton's carefully constructed life begins to disintegrate around him, he's forced to choose between loyalty to his family and his desires for a different kind of life. When everyone is willing to use someone else to escape the past, it is up to Anton, on the island of Ischia, to face the ghosts that travel close behind him.

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Mitjana: (3.79)
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