Satin Island

By: Tom McCarthy

Narrated by: James Langton

Meet U. - a corporate anthropologist secreted in the basement of a large consultancy. U. spends his time toiling away at a great, epoch-defining public project that no one, least of all its own creators, understands. Besieged by data, confronted at every turn by the fact of his own redundancy, U. grows obsessed with the images - oil spills, Rollerbladers heading nowhere over streets that revolutionaries once tore up, zombies on parade - that the world and all its veil-like screens bombard him with on a daily basis. Is there a plot at work behind the veil? Is it buffering a portal to the technological divine? Who killed the parachutist in the news? And what's this got to do with South Pacific cargo cults? U.'s disconnected notes from underground in fact amount to an impassioned, integrated vision - of disintegration. Satin Island is a book that captures our out-of-joint times like no other.

©2015 Tom McCarthy (P)2015 Recorded Books

An examination of recursivity AS theme

Meaning and meaninglessness are examined in beautiful prose, using the thin veil of a storyline.

A glossy weft surface but a dull warped back.

I'm going to bounce back and forth between three and four stars on this one. When McCarthy is writing about things and dancing through data, symbols, fabrics, etc his prose reminds me of William Gibson and his Blue Ant trilogy. He has a way of organizing chaos or at least describing the chaos in a way that allows the reader to float and sometimes surf his text. When McCarthy is writing about place and people he reminds me a bit of J.G. Ballard (especially books like Crash and Super-Cannes). He creates an ambiant zone of transgressive urgency that is as smooth as Brian Eno pissing into Duchamp's little fountain.

But dear Lord, just skip the sections when he writes dialogue. They hurt. They feel like I was dropped from some lush avant-garden to some backwoods, underwatered, status of woe. Cotton-mouthed, McCarthy writes conversations that would be better dressed in most YA fan fiction. OK. Perhaps, I've gone too far, but seriously, the dialogue needed a bit of work. Other than that, it was a good book and didn't scare me away from reading more of Tom McCarthy

intriguing story. well read

I don't like books that play with emotions. Tom McCarthy focuses on rational, objective insight, and he does well with it!

Pynchon-esque

I loved this novel until very end. Not to say the end wasn't in keeping with the style and theme of the novel but I needed something a bit more and I can't even say for sure what that might be. In many respects it is very much a modern novel like Crying of Lot 49 etc. in which many details are presented to protagonist and reader and you make connections that may or may not be there or lead where you think. I don't know exactly what it is about ending that bothers me and it may be that I got too caught up in what I had decyphered as the purpose/meaning of the novel and I tripped myself up. I may try it again and I have Langton's Remainder to do on a friend's recommendation and he really loved both of them, and I may also after another go. As I said I totally loved it right to very end.

Beautifully written a must read. I enjoyed

loved the book, it was beautifully written, vivid structural representation of ideas and scenes well done.

I read this book on a rainy day in New York

I had a Lhasa Apso named “Moose Hog”. She ran away when I was in 9th grade and I never saw her again. We did find some bones and fur stuck to the fence behind our duplex the following spring but I couldn’t tell if was Moose Hogs. One of the saddest days of my life, sadder than 911.

Paint dries at a more rapid and exciting pace than this book.

I have never heard so many words used to not tell a story. It was like sitting in a very long and drawn out meeting that went nowhere and solved nothing.

VACUITY

To this listener, "Satin Island" is an intellectual journey to nowhere. Obviously, others who determined McCarthy should be nominated for a Booker Prize for "Satin Island" disagree. Anthropology is the scientific study of human behavior, cultures, societies, and languages of the past.

McCarthy's main character is an anthropologist working for a fictional think tank that analyzes companies wishing to have some insight to an unknown future. His employer gives the anthropologist an assignment to write a paper that capsulizes the world's future based on an understanding of the past and known present.

McCarthy's story begins in Turin Italy with a brief explanation of the shroud of Turin which is alleged to have been wrapped around Jesus's body after crucifixion. The shroud could never have had the imprint of the remains of Jesus. The anthropologist notes it is proven fake because the shroud's fabric is manufactured centuries after Christ's crucifixion. The fake of the shroud is an inartful premonition to the course of the story.

The story ends with the death of the owner who hired the anthropologist. The irony of the story is that the anthropologist is widely acclaimed for his final report meant to tell the future of life when he knows his story is like the shroud of Turin. To this listener, there is too much intellectualism and not enough story. That may be why it did not win the Booker Prize. That is reason enough to me.