287 pages
English language
Published April 18, 2011 by Unbridled Books.
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 …
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.
I thought the title would be more relevant to the story. The blurb is also a little misleading. Not her best work, obviously. But Mandel's writing style is superb as usual.
The Singer's Gun isn't Mandel's best book, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
While I liked the way Mandel structured the story, the characters and the plot left me feeling detached and rather unmoved. The narrative structure is elegant, and the prose a delight.
What I especially like about all of Mandel's books is the way she focuses on ordinary (flawed) characters encountering extraordinary circumstances, and she does that with a surprising amount of care and love.
This is like Mandel's other novels in the lyricism of the writing and the unforgettable characters, but the overall feeling is notably tense, angrier. So far it is maybe my least favorite of her books, but it was still quite good and I'm still chewing on it.
I was a bit harsh in my last review, and here I've just finished another of her books just days later. Mandel's characters are flawed, but allthemore life-like for it. As readers, we still root for them, because they're human beings, and they deserve to get a happy ending. Except for Aria, of course.
