An engrossing but sometimes baffling adventure set in an otherworldly city.
Mystified residents try to find answers in a surreal landscape in this dystopian novel.
A nude man is suddenly in a strange city with no memories of his past or how he got there. He eventually comes across clothes and some people who have deduced that they’re all somehow in a game. This man, who ultimately goes by the name Newcomer, has questions, but White City’s purpose, even as Players participate in the Main Game, is far from clear. Meanwhile, White City resident Mary Strong is studying for a Ph.D. in sociology. She has a vivid dream in which someone tells her to track down two individuals, providing only initials. One of those people is Portia Quant, whom Mary befriends and whose brother, Ian, is in need of rescue from captivity—or so Mary surmises from another dream. This only entangles her in the city’s copious mysteries. Some, for example, believe escape from White City is a near impossibility while others feel the metropolis and all of its citizens are in danger from an indefinable force called the Darkness. After two of Mary’s acquaintances—a fellow doctoral candidate and her supervising professor—turn up missing, she and Portia put together a rescue mission for Ian, who may be confined in the same place as an enigmatic device. Both Ian and the machine could shine a light on White City’s evasive “Truth” as well as Mary’s surprising connections to assorted residents, not the least of whom is the Newcomer.
As White City is effectively a giant puzzle, Exarchos’ three-part story is frequently obscure. Part II of the novel further complicates the tale, as it introduces various first-person narrators, a few of whom aren’t immediately identified. But Mary is a delightful constant; she provides a first-person narrative throughout the book. She’s recording a (presumably transcribed) vocal diary, which the author presents in witty, ever changing formats. Sometimes she’s conversing with Portia, and in one instance, she’s panting after goons chase her. Despite all of the tale’s perplexities, Part III is surprisingly illuminating, as it ties certain characters together. The ending is open to interpretation, but readers will have a better sense of what has been going on in White City. Some of what the players do in the city is akin to a fantasy video game: for example, aiming to complete a total of nine quests or hunting for three specific keys (iron, silver, and golden). Exarchos’ prose, though intermittently verbose, is colorful and occasionally humorous. At one point, the Newcomer spots a motorcyclist: “He took off his awkward helmet—I am tempted to say it looks like an empty, upside-down fish bowl; and, only to accentuate its weirdness even more, it has two antennae attached to its top—and he is holding it in his hands, while he is waiting for me to approach him.” Violent episodes and graphic sex are sparse considering the novel’s bulk (over 600 pages).
An engrossing but sometimes baffling adventure set in an otherworldly city. (dedication)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-69-866825-1
Page Count: 615
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The novel’s voice remains engaging, and its spirit resilient, against some staggeringly tough times.
Amid the dystopian collapse of the near future, a musician embarks on a quixotic voyage from the shore of Lake Superior.
There’s both a playfulness and a seriousness of purpose to the latest from the Minnesota novelist, a spirit of whimsy that keeps hope flickering even in times of darkest despair. Things have gone dangerously dark along the North Shore, and likely for the country as a whole. A comet is coming that augurs ill, a pandemic has wreaked havoc with the public health, an autocratic despot and raging populism have made books and booksellers all but treasonous. There are corpses floating in the lake from climate change, and there are numerous instances of people swallowing something that kills them; the dead are generally considered seekers of whatever comes next (which has to be better than this) rather than suicides. As narrator Rainy sets the scene, “The world was so old and exhausted that many now saw it as a dying great-grand on a surgical table, body decaying from use and neglect, mind fading down to a glow.” Rainy is a bass player in bar bands, a jack of a variety of trades, and devoted husband to Lark, a bibliophile who runs the local bookstore. Before the collapse of the publishing industry, a cult author had been set to publish a volume with the same title as this novel, and finding one of the few advance copies has been like a holy grail for Lark. Then a copy finds her, courtesy of a fugitive pursued by the powers that be, and whatever tranquility Lark and Rainy had achieved is shattered. Rainy takes to the lake to escape the fugitive’s pursuers and reunite with Lark. He experiences a variety of hardship, challenge, and adventure, yet somehow lives to tell the tale that is this novel.
The novel’s voice remains engaging, and its spirit resilient, against some staggeringly tough times.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780802162939
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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