Recently in Pre-publication (teaser / spoiler) reviews Category

Chapter 83. STRATHCONA

"And you’re writing your thesis on Baptists, Mr. Milgrim?"

Chapter 84. THE MAN WHO SHOT WALT DISNEY

'It's not bad,' said Bobby, spilling a little of his second piso mojado as he leaned back in his chair to see the top of Bigend's building through Hollis's helmet.

[...]

She put the helmet on, turned it on, and looked up to where Alberto’s giant cartoon rendition of the Mongolian Death Worm, its tail wound through the various windows of Bigend's pyramidal aerie like an eel through the skull of a cow, waved imperially, tall and scarlet, in the night.

Chapter summaries - may contain plot and character teaser / "spoiler" information, depending on how many reviews, or on how much of the book, you have read so far:

Chapter 82. BEENIE’S

"The unfamiliar ring tone of Garreth’s cell woke her."

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Chapter 81. IN BETWEEN EVERYTHING

'You can’t give me a number?'

Chapter summary - may contain plot and character teaser / "spoiler" information, depending on how many reviews, or how much of the book, you have read so far:

Chapter 79. ARTIST AND REPERTOIRE

"'Where’d you say you’re from?' asked the man from Igor’s label, offering Tito an open bottle of beer."

Chapter 80. MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM

"'Business-class lounge for Air Asshole,' declared Inchmale, enthusiastically taking in the central area of the first floor of Bigend’s flat."

Chapter summaries - may contain plot and character teaser / "spoiler" information, depending on how many reviews you have read so far:

The Los Angeles Times (Sunday edition), another major mainstream publication, which will reach a large (United States) readership, has a review of Spook Country, which is again a positive one.

When will the critical mass of US mainstream media reviews be reached, which may wake up the United Kingdom media, who seem to be ignoring the book, despite its slightly earlier publication here ? Until Spook Country is "mentioned in the media", it will not be made available widely in bookshops outside the major cities, especially the large retail chains like W.H.Smiths or Waterstones.

The reviewer Ed Park (formerly a literary editor at New York's "Village Voice" until it got taken over by The New York Times last year) seeks to draw comparisons with a couple of American novels, with which I am not familiar (are you ?) namely: Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, and Willam Gaddis's The Recognitions

Luckily, these days a few seconds, via a world wide web search engine, is sufficient to find decent articles about these two books, something which was impossible when they were written.

Ed Park also alludes to to William Gibson's previous novel Pattern Recognition, concentrating on apophenia and, presumably, the William Gibson discussion board thread on the name "Hubertus Bigend".

'Spook Country,' a novel by William Gibson
Technology and consumerism mingle and turn monstrous as a young journalist pursues an elusive lead for a story.
By Ed Park
August 5, 2007

N.B. may contain plot and character teaser / "spoiler" information, depending on how many reviews (or how much of the novel) you have read so far:

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Another good review of Spook Country: can be found on the A World to Win - for a future without global capitalism (!) website (no date or time stamp entries, or reader comments published on their blog)

Freerunning through cyberspace

Review by Corinna Lotz

Corinna Lotz is a leftwing art historian and critic, and veteran of various factional splits, purges and vendettas which seem to characterise the decline of the Marxist / Stalinist / Communist / Labour intelligentsia in the United Kingdom.

Despite this, she has produced a very fair and intelligent review of Spook Country, concentrating on the global societal, real world and cyberspace aspects of the book.

N.B. this may contain plot and character teaser / "spoiler" information, depending on how many reviews you have read so far:

Chapter 77. SLACK ROPE

"The Guerreros were not waiting for him, when he left the dark bed of the truck, blinking under artificial sunlight."

Chapter 78. THEIR DIFFERENT DRUMMER

"My purse,’ she said, as they drove back to Bobby’s."

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Chapter 75. HEY, BUDDY

"Oshosi, scout and hunter, had entered Tito in mid-backtuck. "

Chapter 76. LOCATION SHOOT

Having dropped Tito and driven on, not far at all along the strip of low-lying auto-body repairs and marine supplies, Garreth turned right, into the parking lot of what seemed to be a much taller building, one built on an entirely different scale.

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Chapter 73. SPECIAL FORCES

"Going somewhere she’d never seen, at night, in a van with two men, with equipment, reminded her of the beginning of the Curfew, minus Heidi Hyde."

Chapter 74. AS DIRECTED

"Milgrim had been thinking about offering Brown a Rize, when he spotted the IF walking along the sidewalk."

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Chapter 71. HARD TO BE ONE

"'What do you know about money laundering, Hollis?' the old man asked, passing her a round foil dish of peas and paneer."

Chapter 72. EVENT HORIZON

"'That jacket we put you in, in New York, for the helicopter,' the old man said, walking around Tito, who had just put on a new black hooded sweatshirt that Garreth had given him.

Chapter summaries - may contain plot and character teaser / "spoiler" information, depending on how many reviews you have read so far:

[via oddmanrush]

The Village Voice has an interesting review of Spook Country which concentrates on the similarities and diffrences with William Gibson's previous novel Pattern Recognition, especially with regard to Hubertus Bigend and the main female protagonists in the two novels Cayce and Hollis.

The Anxiety Maze
Magic capitalism and crazy Russian typewriters in William Gibson's new Spook Country
by Nathan Lee
July 31st, 2007 1:38 PM

"Magic capitalism" invokes the literary style of "magic realism", which was influenced by the pioneering Jorge Luis Borges, an author who William Gibson admires, and who has even written a forward to an edition of the Labyrinth anthology.

There are Santeria deities as well as cyberspace in Spook Country

N.B. may contain plot and character teaser / "spoiler" information, depending on how many reviews you have read so far. If you are in the process of reading a copy of Spook Country you will not be reading this review, or anything else, until you have turned the last page !

Chapter 69. MAGNETS

"Garreth took Tito to the far end of the second table, where ten disks, each no thicker than a small coin, and about three inches in diameter, were arranged on a half-sheet of fresh plywood."

Chapter 70. PHO

"Brown took Milgrim to a dim, steamy Vietnamese restaurant, one with no English signage whatever."

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Chapter 67. WARDRIVING

"Milgrim sat beside Brown on one of the two benches in a very small park, under the bare branches of a row of young maples."

Chapter 68. SNAP

"Hollis thought that he looked a little like William Burroughs, minus the bohemian substrate (or perhaps the methadone)."

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Chapter 65. EAST VAN HALEN

"She opened her PowerBook on the counter of Bigend's crypto-kitchen, taking wifi for granted."

Chapter 66. PING

"Tito sat on a paint-spattered steel stool, looking up at a dirty skylight of wire-embedded glass."

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Chapter 63. SURVIVAL, EVASION, RESISTANCE, AND ESCAPE

"Tito watched the old man fold the copy of the New York Times he’d been reading."

[...]

"Gradually, in the crisis of self that your captivity becomes, [the captor] guides you in your discovery of who you are becoming."

Chapter 64. GLOCKING

"'Score some shit,' said Brown, sounding like he'd rehearsed the line, as he handed Milgrim a fold of colorful foreign bills."

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Chapter 61. THE PELICAN CASE

"They took the black plastic Pelican case on in Montana."

Chapter 62. SISTER

"'This is Sarah,' said Odile, when Hollis found her, on the crowded cafe patio of a municipal gallery."

[...]

"[Chombo] implements finite differential methods for the solutions of partial differential equations, on block-structured, adaptively refined rectangular grids".

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Chapter 59. BLACK ZODIAC

"Brown rented a remarkably ugly and uncomfortable black boat called a Zodiac".

[...]

"Cities, in Milgrim's experience, had a way of revealing themselves in the faces of their inhabitants, and particularly on their way to work in the morning. There was a sort of basic fuckedness index to be read, then, in faces that hadn't yet encountered the reality of whatever they were on their way to do."

Chapter 60. ROLLING THE CODES

"Hollis woke on Bigend’s mag-level bed, feeling as though it was the altar atop some Aztec pyramid."

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Chapter 57. POPCORN

"Commercial airlines were like buses, Milgrim decided, staring at the textured ceiling in his room in this Best Western."

Chapter 58. ALPHABET TALK

"The pilot followed the highways."

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Chapter 55. PHANTOM GUN SYNDROME

"'Miller,' said Brown, from his enormous white leather recliner, across ten feet of off-white shag carpet."

Chapter 56. HENRY AND RICHARD

"A pale boy with a very thin beard was holding a rectangle of white cardboard inscribed with Henry and Richard in green marker, as the left the customers hall."

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Chapter 53. TO GIVE THEM THE PLEASURE

Chapter 54. ICE

"Tito woke as the Cessna's wheels touched down."

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