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Title: Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0312858787 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.36
Rating: 4
Summary: Good stuff, especially for a debut
Comment: This is Lethem's debut novel and it's a pretty impressive beginning. He's obviously well-versed in the nuts and bolts of both hard-boiled mysteries and futuristic noir because he pulls off a mean blend of the two here.
The patter between characters is good and he's got a particular knack of ending chapters with a stick-in-your-craw line that manages to both gently tease and pay homage to Hammett and Chandler and the rest at the same time.
It is a first novel, though, and seems a bit underpopulated. Thin isn't quite the right word, because his characters have teeth, but this isn't a teeming world. It's superior to most everything else on the market, however, so we'll just leave it at that and say it's a great start to what's been an excellent and varied career so far. Now if they'd just stop hiding the book in the sci-fi section, I'd be even happier.
Rating: 5
Summary: First rate book from a first rate author--brilliant!!!!
Comment: One of the most bizarre, creative books I've read in a long time. This is basically a 1940's variety hard-boiled PI mystery set in a distant, science fiction future, Orwellianesque Oakland.
In the future, both animals and infants routinely speak and behave like adults thanks to "evolution therapy". Conrad Metcalf is a jaded private investigator whose latest case pits him against both the police and local gangsters when his most recent client, a wealthy urologist, is found murdered. After the prime suspect, already condemned and scheduled for long term hibernation for another cime, convinces Metcalf he's not his man, the case gives Conrad's gumshoe instincts a workout. He's led down a meandering trail upon which he meets the victim's widow and an evolved baby who may--or may not--be hers, and discovers a sinister blueprint for a backroom barracks designed to house other evolved babies for nefarious purposes.
This novel is a sparking pastiche of Chandleresque detective fiction, Orwellian political fiction, and Gibsonian science fiction displaced to an almost comical yet chilling postmodern landscape. Amid its smartly delivered first-person narration and crackling dialog, even a tough-talking kangaroo hit-man that intermittently tangles with Metcalf seems plausible.
Truly fascinating!
Rating: 5
Summary: Lethem nails the hardboiled voice
Comment: I'm reading this one right now, and I think I'm going to just love it. It's a witty sci-fi/mystery. Lethem's books are always interesting and usually funny, and I seem to be able to "hear" them as I'm reading because he captures the narrator's voice so well. In this book, the narrator is a Private Inquisitor named Conrad Metcalf. Metcalf sounds exactly like a Raymond Chandler PI. Chandler's style is often imitated, but Lethem really seems to nail it - enough to bring a huge grin to my face as I read. Here's an example:
She and Stanhunt had been freshly separated, and the electricity between them had still been going strong--back when Stanhunt was still capable of generating electricity. Now there was a blackout. I wondered if the lady behaved any differently in the dark. I wondered if maybe she was the one who cut the wires.
Now, if you watch "Between the Lions" at all, use your best "My name is Spud, Sam Spud..." voice to read that and you'll know just what I mean.
Lethem's got a heck of an imagination too. Metcalf's world has evolved animals in addition to the regular people, and Lethem really knows where to insert them. There's a kitten who gives Metcalf the opportunity to use the line: "Hello, little girl." There are rabbits in the dentist's office and an Irish Setter who delivers for the local deli. Good stuff.
This book is going to be so much fun to finish. I hope I can make it last more than a day or two!
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Title: Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0312862202 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: As She Climbed Across the Table (Vintage Contemporaries) by Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0375700129 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0375703918 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0375724834 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: This Shape We're In by Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0970335520 Publisher: McSweeney's Books Pub. Date: 05 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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