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Communion Town (2012)

by Sam Thompson(Favorite Author)

3.09 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0007454767 (ISBN13: 9780007454761)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Fourth Estate

review 1: I first heard about this one from Christopher Priest on his blog. That probably should have been sufficient warning (I mean that in a nice way). This book is billed as a story of "a city in ten chapters", by which it's a set of interconnected short stories set in a fictional city. It's well written, but very confusing. Each story is different with different characters, etc. Not a problem except you don't really get a sense of the city at all. The only really common element is a mysterious entity known as the Flaneur, which differs in every tale from a bogeyman to the soul of the city. Re-readings are not only recommended, but probably required.
review 2: A hallucinogenic book. Thompson presents us with 10 chapters, each a different character describing ... moretheir experiences in a city almost like any other great city: of slums, murders, subway stations, warren-like alleys and bright public façades. The Flâneur of Glory Port - a Jack-the-Ripper type bogeyman - and deformed mutants haunt the shadows in many of the stories. The narrators vary in widely in social position and the stories in timbre. A hard-boiled detective speaks as if channelling Sam Spade, another Sherlock Holmes. Slaughtermen, immigrants, reclusives, automatons, all speak and reveal a different city, one that is just slightly futuristic, tangible, chilling and mesmerising. less

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