Ms. Emily St. John Mandel is my author crush of the month, maybe of the year. I scored on getting her new book on sale and like Last Night in Montreal, I couldn't put this one down. Our main protagonist, Anton Waker has a bit of a different life; his parents sell stolen antiques in which they refurbish and put back on the market. He ends up getting into some shady business himself as he works with his cousin on selling fraudulent society security cards and passports. As the saying goes "the grass is always greener on the other side", Anton craves a normal life, whatever that means. The Singer's Gun is about that, what it means to want normal, to make choices and to live with the consequences. One of my favorite things about the two Mandel novels I've read is the way she uses the world as her scenery. Singer's Gun mostly takes place in Brooklyn but brings together some remote places in Canada and Italy; for someone like me who has never really traveled outside the U.S., it elevates her stories to a more imaginative level.
"There was something about the way the air around her was painted; Anton leaned in closer. They were standing together against a brick wall, and there was the faintest disturbance in the bricks, the slightest electrical charge, a haze, and then he understood: Evie had a halo around her. An opening line from a novel he'd once read came back to him unbidden--We are not alone, this side of death--and he took the painting and left the room very quickly, leaving the door ajar. He locked the door of his own room behind him. "
I can't wait for her to write more.
