St. John Mandel, Emily: The Singer's Gun

Emily St. John Mandel's The Singer's Gun opens on an investigation. A woman working for the State Department is listening over and over to a snippet of conversation recorded 15 days earlier—a few words only, confirmation of a job completed, nothing much. It's not clear for a long while how the recording fits into what follows. And what follows is an exploration of why Anton Waker abandoned his wife on their honeymoon and is now sitting alone on the island of Ischia, off the coast of Naples, biding his time and missing his one-eyed cat. Eventually all is made clear: the layers of Anton's life are slowly peeled away in chapters that explore his unusual childhood, the strange circumstances of his employment, his adversarial relationship with his cousin. Nothing in Anton's life is quite what it looks like on the surface. Any guess we may have initially about the reasons for his wait on Ischia would be wrong.

Anton is a complex character who's been living in a world that doesn't fit him. He's disturbed by his environment but doesn't break away from it given the opportunity, and he in fact participates in activities he doesn't quite approve of. The book thus introduces questions about what constitutes moral behavior and about personal responsibility. While it is by no means a fast-paced thriller, the book does become a tense read toward the end, and it is always compelling. Anton's situation—the wait on Ischia, and more so his being warehoused at work prior to his honeymoon—is so strange that you can't but read on for the answers. St. John Mandel's second book—see my review of Last Night in Montreal—is another winner.