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A review by sarahetc
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway
5.0
Nick Harkaway is a tremendous storyteller. If you take nothing else from this review, take that: tremendous storyteller.
Tigerman is a yarn about a lot of things-- geopolitics, environmentalism, colonialism, and other big buzzwords. And yet none of those things is anywhere near as important as the story they serve: intimacy, family, community. Lester Ferris is the British Brevet-Consul on the island of Mancreu, recently converted to a lawless no-man's-land after years of trade off between Britain, France and other countries. He minds the consulate, keeps an eye on the NATO men sent to monitor the island's inevitable destruction, and tries to be of use to the locals. Most days, he takes tea with a boy, very clever, who learned English via comic books and the internet.
Back up, you may be saying. The island's inevitable destruction? It's on top of a fault. And a lousy French company buried a bunch of toxic waste near the fault. Which leaked and mutated and is now expelled, at intervals, in the form of landscape and human altering clouds, predicted, measured, and tracked by a group of Japanese xenobiologists. NATO says the island must be destroyed to prevent ever greater, more harmful clouds from reach Africa to the west, the Arabian peninsula to the north, or India, east. The xenobiologists vehemently disagree.
One day, during tea time, bad men come and shoot the proprietor of the cafe where Lester and the boy are enjoying a truly good cuppa. All of these and none of these are the start or the whole or the direction of this story. Yet they all work together and, while engaging your brain with Harkaway's charming word choice and wry sense of humor, capture your heart.
This is a book where, as I got closer and closer to the end, I read more and more slowly. At one point I could only read a page at a time, not wanting it to end. I knew what was going to happen and I didn't want it to, even though I knew it could end no other way. There were a few twists (a Harkaway special) but none of them were sucker punches and all of them kept that abiding theme of intimacy and community.
A wonderful, beautiful, heartening and highly recommended book.
Tigerman is a yarn about a lot of things-- geopolitics, environmentalism, colonialism, and other big buzzwords. And yet none of those things is anywhere near as important as the story they serve: intimacy, family, community. Lester Ferris is the British Brevet-Consul on the island of Mancreu, recently converted to a lawless no-man's-land after years of trade off between Britain, France and other countries. He minds the consulate, keeps an eye on the NATO men sent to monitor the island's inevitable destruction, and tries to be of use to the locals. Most days, he takes tea with a boy, very clever, who learned English via comic books and the internet.
Back up, you may be saying. The island's inevitable destruction? It's on top of a fault. And a lousy French company buried a bunch of toxic waste near the fault. Which leaked and mutated and is now expelled, at intervals, in the form of landscape and human altering clouds, predicted, measured, and tracked by a group of Japanese xenobiologists. NATO says the island must be destroyed to prevent ever greater, more harmful clouds from reach Africa to the west, the Arabian peninsula to the north, or India, east. The xenobiologists vehemently disagree.
One day, during tea time, bad men come and shoot the proprietor of the cafe where Lester and the boy are enjoying a truly good cuppa. All of these and none of these are the start or the whole or the direction of this story. Yet they all work together and, while engaging your brain with Harkaway's charming word choice and wry sense of humor, capture your heart.
This is a book where, as I got closer and closer to the end, I read more and more slowly. At one point I could only read a page at a time, not wanting it to end. I knew what was going to happen and I didn't want it to, even though I knew it could end no other way. There were a few twists (a Harkaway special) but none of them were sucker punches and all of them kept that abiding theme of intimacy and community.
A wonderful, beautiful, heartening and highly recommended book.