The Wall Street Journal reviews the fascinating, but difficult, " The Quantum Thief" :
Conventional academic wisdom now holds that there are two kinds of book: difficult, "writerly" art-novels (for intellectuals) and simple "readerly" mass-market fiction (for the rest of us peasants). "The Quantum Thief" destroys that theory in three pages. It is mass-market entertainment but makes "Ulysses" look like a "Dick and Jane" reader. Mr. Rajaniemi sets a test of stamina, concentration and patience that not everyone will pass.
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8 comments:
Do you you agree? That would seem to be the implication. If so, own up.
Have to say, I find it hard to credit that a book that's as popular as this one (and a prize winner, right?) could really be THIS difficult. Hyperbole?
No.
Fortunately, there are wikipedia articles helping you track the linguistic borrowings and the references to earlier pulp and literary fiction. I was helped by just having read the Penguin Classic Arsene Lupin collection, but many will not be so fortunate.
Deftly side-stepping the key question: Worth the effort?
Guy compares it to Snow Crash, an HG favorite. If true, I'm there.
High praise here -- and in the comments:
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5444732465111056560&postID=770194393482925785
It was your birthday gift to me, though you may not remember, and I found it to be quite good. Though I too was aided by having read the Arsene Lupin collection.
And I heard about from Tulk before that. I was responding to this as if he was just now getting around to reading it.
What I think is most remarkable is that this book has been reviewed by the WSJ, Financial Times, and The Guardian.
What's next? The New Yorker or New York Review of Books?
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