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| Spook Country | 
 enlarge | Author: William Gibson
Publisher: Putnam
Category: Book
Buy Used: $24.86
Used (4) from $24.86
Avg. Customer Rating:  156 reviews
Sales Rank: 2991066
Media: Perfect Paperback
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0670914967
EAN: 9780670914968
ASIN: 0670914967
Publication Date: 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 151 more reviews...
 Intriguing, But Less Kinetic, Fictional Exploration Of Our Time From William Gibson August 14, 2007
59 out of 88 found this review helpful
There's probably no one else I can think of who can write so vividly, and inquisitively, about our contemporary techno-psychological landscape than William Gibson. His 2003 novel "Pattern Recognition" remains among the best - if not the best (of which I am certain) - fictional depiction of American media-obsessed culture in the aftermath of 9/11. It was also his best novel in years, a riveting techno-thriller about "cool hunter" Cayce Pollard's search for the mysterious internet "The Footage" which had acquired a most bizarre cult-like status amongst Internet lurkers. "Spook Country", Gibson's latest novel, is a sequel of sorts, introducing us once more to the enigmatic Belgian advertising mogul Hubertus Bigend, owner of Big Ant advertising firm. This time he sends another young woman, Hollis Henry, an investigative journalist for Node - a magazine which doesn't exist yet - on a rather mundane quest to find one Bobby Chombo, a "producer", whose day job involves checking out military navigation gear. We encounter her, early one morning, in a Los Angeles hotel room, on assignment for Node, collecting information on the local underground artistic movement of virtual reality-based "locative art" for an article in the nascent magazine's debut issue. In classic William Gibson literary mode, there are two other subplots which represent other, still larger, pieces of the puzzle that Henry is seeking to solve, involving Tito, a young Cuban Chinese New Yorker whose family has had intelligence ties to both the CIA and KGB, and the Russian-speaking junkie Milgrim, addicted to expensive prescription high-anxiety drugs, who finds himself quite literally, "joined to the hip" with his pharmaceutical benefactor, the mysterious Brown, someone who has some hidden ties to a military, most likely Russia's.
Looming over this entire fictional landscape is of course Hubertus Bigend himself, who doesn't appear until the end of the first third of "Spook Country". Here, more so than "Pattern Recognition", he comes across as some omniscient "Intelligent Designer", orchestrating the events as they unfold, with the other principal characters - especially Hollis, herself - acting as puppets in some vast marionette theater of his own uniquely Byzantine design. We will learn that Bigend has chosen Henry for his mission since she's a former member of the rock band The Curfew, which, apparently, has had ties to Bobby Chombo. There's a memorable chase scene that plays out along the sidewalks - and one restaurant - of New York City's Union Square (New York City finally makes its literary debut in a Gibson novel, and to his credit, Gibson does a splendid job depicting its unique urban rhythms.). Eventually, the three plot lines converge and intersect, in an ornate, yet tidy, resolution in Gibson's hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia (The Canadian seaport, like New York City, also makes its literary debut in a Gibson novel.). There are references of course to contemporary events, such as the American occupation of Iraq, but Gibson presents them as if they were the literary equivalent of a GOOGLE search, allowing the reader to decide their relevant significance to the novel's unfolding events in a decidedly neutral manner.
"Spook Country" is definitely not one of William Gibson's best novels, but an inferior novel from him is still far more fascinating than many best novels I have read from other, lesser novelists who lack his uncanny ability to depict in hallucinatory, lyrical prose, our Internet-dominated culture (It's an artistic trait I'd expect from the same writer who coined the term "cyberspace" years ago, before the Internet was created as the central, unifying information repository of our time.). It is still one of the best literary achievements in fiction published this year, and one that is artistically, if not stylistically, similar to the themes explored by Rick Moody in his recently published novella collection "Right Livelihoods". Along with "Right Livelihoods", "Spook Country" is the most compelling piece of newly published fiction I have read this summer. Without question, it is still a memorable novel from someone whom I regard as the most important writer of our time.
 Pattern Recognition this is not September 15, 2007
58 out of 71 found this review helpful
Gibson's Pattern Recognition is brilliant, Spook Country is not. While not a particularly awful book, it's just not a very good one. Gibson tries to tell 3 disconnected stories in parallel - a narrative device that never seems to really connect. When the 3 story lines of the novel do finally collide, the payoff is so weak and anticlimactic that it makes the arduous journey through this book feel even more worthless.
There are some interesting moments in Spook Country and some good characters, but just when you start to connect with them Gibson yanks them away. The problem here is focus, Gibson seems
to be trying to do too much in Spook Country and he isn't able to do all of it well. Had he picked one thread and developed it better he would have had a much better book.
I bought this book in Hardcover right when it was released with the expectations that it would be in the league of Patter Recognition. Unfortunately it isn't. I won't completely warn people off this book because there are so many books out there that are much worse. But I don't feel like I particularly got my moneys worth.
Taking it's time August 17, 2007
20 out of 36 found this review helpful
What I loved about William Gibson's earlier works was that they started like a gunshot and kept going until they made purchase with the ending. As Gibson has "matured" as a writer, his subject matter has become more thoughtful and personal than his run and gun pieces that made him first popular.
What I wonder is why he can't get the deeper stuff in a run and gun book. A story that doesn't take half the book to get to what should b the opening sentence, because the story here is actually pretty interesting.
As usual, characters stories intertwine and crash head on, but somehow the intensity is just lacking. It's not that the book isn't good, it's that its not great anymore. I still recommend his first 4 books to anyone who asks.
j
Mr. Gibson, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Us? October 20, 2007
17 out of 23 found this review helpful
Dissapointing. Ever since I first picked up Neuromancer 15 years ago I've really enjoyed Gibson's work. I make it a point to preorder his books. I wasn't thrilled with Pattern Recognition, but it was still pretty good. I was really looking forward to Spook Country, but unfortunately Mr. Gibson failed to deliver his typical riveting storylines and kept us in the shallow end of his vision pool.
Spook Country bounces constantly between at least 3 separate storylines in irritatingly short chapters (2-5 pages). The storylines eventually come together, as you know they must, but it's later in the book than I'd have liked, and it prevented me from really getting into the story. The brevity of the chapters exacerbated the problem so that not only could you not get into any given storyline before being jarred out of it and having to reacquaint with another host of characters from a different storyline, there was little opportunity to really acquaint with the characters at all until very late in the book, and even then it wasn't as much as I'd like. Where normally I'd be tearing through a book by a favorite author in a week or less, I found this one very easy to put down and out of mind and it took nearly two months for me to finish it in waiting rooms and at other incidental reading opportunities. And then when all was said and done the ending was weak and unsatisfactory, making me wonder why I'd bothered at all.
I could be easily convinced that Mr. Gibson was also taking advertising money from anyone and everyone just from the incredibly large number of present-day brand-names painfully wedged into the book at every turn. This will also likely doom the relevant lifetime of the book, reducing it to the quaintness of pop-culture frippery well before the end of the next decade. Mr. Gibson, how did you go from such innovative visions of the future to present-day product hawking?
I don't know that I'll be preordering Gibson's next work; I'll probably have to check it out of the library first so that I don't waste the money on another book unworthy of staying on my deliberately limited shelf-space after it's read. Here's hoping that the next one will be worth buying and keeping, because this one just wasn't.
He's on a roll... August 7, 2007
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
I always thought that Gibson's sci fi novels were too similar to each other for me to pick up each one, but after reading this book and Pattern Recognition I might just have to go back and read his backlist. This book reads like an intelligent thriller but with Gibon's quirky sensibilities adding to the excitement. I especially like the fact that part of it takes place in New York and the scene in Union Square is classic!
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