This book was recommended to me by my friend Adam Sugerman. The story takes place in a freaky interpretation of the near future when everyone is taking government approved drugs, when genetic experiments have sprinkled the human population with evolved animals who walk on their hind legs and speak English and freaky 'baby heads' who have failed to grow physically but have grown mentally, and when the government dispenses the news primarily in musical form as opposed to spoken word.
The story centers around the murder of a prominent physician, the Office's (that's the name of the central bureaucracy) corrupt and ham-fisted solution to the case, and one hard boiled private investigator's search for the truth of the matter. The book is filled with unexpected twists and turns and even a deftly written love story sub-plot. I found the hard boiled writing style, a la Raymond Chandler, a little contrived and slightly annoying but it did not over power the quality of the rest of the book. I would highly recommend this book.
5 comments:
It's weird that Adam is so into this kind of science fiction these days. it sounds a lot like Philip K. Dick.
I quite liked 2 other books that Lethem wrote, Motherless Brooklyn (twist on hard-boiled genre) and The Fortress of Solitude (twist on superhero).
this looks like an earlier work. I'll have to check it out!
Oh! Duh, I completely didn't make that connection.
I read another of Lethem's books called Amnesia Moon that was supposedly identified as something of a post-apocalyptic take on the science fiction world. I found that he had a number of good idea but he put them together in a way that seemed to me to be trying too hard - too 'literary'. Not that that is bad but I think what happens is that the story suffers in the end because what he is doing is basically trying to write a book that is in his own voice albeit wrapped in the cloak of whatever subgenre he is trying to emulate. Sounds like you other commenters felt the same way.
your review makes me want to pick it up.
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