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3.05 AVERAGE
3.05 AVERAGE
What a terrible book. I only finished out of sheer stubbornness.
As I've said before, the sections about Crivano are almost incomprehensible. And the sections about the young Stanley were boring. The parts about Curtis were the best, but the author tried so hard to be mysterious that the giant plot holes left me completely bored & bewildered.
Don't bother with this book. I almost gave it 1 star.
As I've said before, the sections about Crivano are almost incomprehensible. And the sections about the young Stanley were boring. The parts about Curtis were the best, but the author tried so hard to be mysterious that the giant plot holes left me completely bored & bewildered.
Don't bother with this book. I almost gave it 1 star.
I had so much fun reading this book! I was completely captivated by each of the three story-lines, and every time a section would end (to move along to the next storyline) I felt sad to leave that particular character and perspective. The writing was vivid, the kind of literary escape that allowed me to forget my surroundings. The story was action packed, the kind of intrigue that I seek out in audio-books so I stay awake on long drives. But it wasn't a mindless heist, each era was well researched and jam packed with ideas of truth and replication. Seay wrote as though the reader was hip to the culture and politics of 16th century venice, for instance. Because the story and the writing were soo good, I didn't mind, even enjoyed looking up all the random battles or colloquial terms that Seay deployed. Each trip to wikipedia prolonged my escape into THE MIRROR THIEF. I could have read another 600 pages.
This book is bananas. There's three stories at once happening here, and how someone even came up with this idea as a book premise is beyond me. Took me a while to get into it, but at some point I found myself completely hooked into Stanley and Crivano. Lots about alchemy and seeing and truth and how we present ourselves to the world and how history repeats themes over.
Seay is clearly an intelligent, literary writer. Here he has tackled a three-layered parallel narrative that is pretty epic in scope, and a tad hard to follow. My biggest wish is that his editor might have pared back the story a bit as there was more than one scene that left me wondering exactly how its inclusion moved the story along.
The story toggles between 1958, 2003 and the 16th century in three separate stories that are woven together in the end. Concept is great, but this is too wordy and thus not exactly a page-turner nor gripping.
The story toggles between 1958, 2003 and the 16th century in three separate stories that are woven together in the end. Concept is great, but this is too wordy and thus not exactly a page-turner nor gripping.
4.5
(First appeared at http://www.thenewdorkreviewofbooks.com/2016/06/the-mirror-thief-epically-mitchell-esque.html)
I finished Martin Seay's epic, lengthy, intricately detailed, awe-inspiring debut novel The Mirror Thief about a month ago. And I still don't know exactly what to say about it, or to whom exactly to recommend it — other than readers who like good, challenging books (like David Mitchell writes, for instance).
But I got to see Martin Seay talk at Printer's Row Lit Fest this past weekend, and it helped crystallize some of my thoughts on the novel. He talked about how the novel had started as a writing prompt in an Experimental Fiction grad school class. The prompt was to write a story about someone telling a story about another story. And so The Mirror Thief is just that: It includes three distinct stories.
The first, which reads like a crime thriller, takes place in 2003 Las Vegas. An ex-Marine named Curtis tries to find a mysterious gambler named Stanley and runs across various shady characters throughout his odyssey through the absurd, unreality of Las Vegas. (He's staying at the Venetian, by the way. You'll see this as part of a pattern.)
The second story is in 1950s Venice Beach, California, and reads a little more like good old-fashioned literary fiction — it's about 16-year-old Stanley hunting down the author of a book of poetry titled The Mirror Thief. There's some really cool stuff in this part of the story about readers' relationships with books, and subsequently, authors — who may or may not disappoint them if they meet in person (incidentally, Martin Seay decidedly DID NOT disappoint when I saw him in person. He says things like this: "When you spend all day hanging out with imaginary people, you can get a little weird.")
Seay at Lit Fest
Finally, the third story whisks us back to 1592 Venice, Italy, where we delve into the "actual" story of the person chronicled in the book of poetry Stanley loves. His name is Crivano, and he's mixed up in a plot to kidnap mirror makers. At Lit Fest, Seay explained that Venice had nearly a monopoly on mirror-making, and if you had that skill, leaving Venice could get you killed. So smuggling mirror makers out of Venice was kind of a big deal. This section is intricately chronicled (almost to a fault) with historical detail and is really fascinating.
Whew! Got all that? The nested stories allow Seay to explore myriad themes from myriad angles. What is real? How do we know what is real? What is luck, and is it real? Is reality simply a reflection of what we hope/want it to be? Etc.
Seay mentioned he spent five years writing this and seven finding a publisher — it's an amazing amount of time for such an amazing book to finally see the light of day. Thank goodness it did. This has been a novel slowly gaining word-of-mouth momentum — and truly, if you're a David Mitchell fan, you will like this, I think.
(First appeared at http://www.thenewdorkreviewofbooks.com/2016/06/the-mirror-thief-epically-mitchell-esque.html)
I finished Martin Seay's epic, lengthy, intricately detailed, awe-inspiring debut novel The Mirror Thief about a month ago. And I still don't know exactly what to say about it, or to whom exactly to recommend it — other than readers who like good, challenging books (like David Mitchell writes, for instance).
But I got to see Martin Seay talk at Printer's Row Lit Fest this past weekend, and it helped crystallize some of my thoughts on the novel. He talked about how the novel had started as a writing prompt in an Experimental Fiction grad school class. The prompt was to write a story about someone telling a story about another story. And so The Mirror Thief is just that: It includes three distinct stories.
The first, which reads like a crime thriller, takes place in 2003 Las Vegas. An ex-Marine named Curtis tries to find a mysterious gambler named Stanley and runs across various shady characters throughout his odyssey through the absurd, unreality of Las Vegas. (He's staying at the Venetian, by the way. You'll see this as part of a pattern.)
The second story is in 1950s Venice Beach, California, and reads a little more like good old-fashioned literary fiction — it's about 16-year-old Stanley hunting down the author of a book of poetry titled The Mirror Thief. There's some really cool stuff in this part of the story about readers' relationships with books, and subsequently, authors — who may or may not disappoint them if they meet in person (incidentally, Martin Seay decidedly DID NOT disappoint when I saw him in person. He says things like this: "When you spend all day hanging out with imaginary people, you can get a little weird.")
Seay at Lit Fest
Finally, the third story whisks us back to 1592 Venice, Italy, where we delve into the "actual" story of the person chronicled in the book of poetry Stanley loves. His name is Crivano, and he's mixed up in a plot to kidnap mirror makers. At Lit Fest, Seay explained that Venice had nearly a monopoly on mirror-making, and if you had that skill, leaving Venice could get you killed. So smuggling mirror makers out of Venice was kind of a big deal. This section is intricately chronicled (almost to a fault) with historical detail and is really fascinating.
Whew! Got all that? The nested stories allow Seay to explore myriad themes from myriad angles. What is real? How do we know what is real? What is luck, and is it real? Is reality simply a reflection of what we hope/want it to be? Etc.
Seay mentioned he spent five years writing this and seven finding a publisher — it's an amazing amount of time for such an amazing book to finally see the light of day. Thank goodness it did. This has been a novel slowly gaining word-of-mouth momentum — and truly, if you're a David Mitchell fan, you will like this, I think.
”How wondrous, it seems to say, is this thing that destroys me.”
I think I get what Martin Seay was attempting to do in The Mirror Thief and on one level I admire it. It’s complex and ambitious (not to mention thoroughly researched), but its central conceit, its enigmatic-ness, is what didn’t work for me. I love things left to the reader to interpret and figure out, but for this reader there was too much, and I literally lost the plot at points. Pages of (often beautiful) prose in places that seemed to serve neither character nor story didn’t help, especially at almost 600 pages. If nothing else, I learned a lot about mirrors and sixteenth century Venice.
I think I get what Martin Seay was attempting to do in The Mirror Thief and on one level I admire it. It’s complex and ambitious (not to mention thoroughly researched), but its central conceit, its enigmatic-ness, is what didn’t work for me. I love things left to the reader to interpret and figure out, but for this reader there was too much, and I literally lost the plot at points. Pages of (often beautiful) prose in places that seemed to serve neither character nor story didn’t help, especially at almost 600 pages. If nothing else, I learned a lot about mirrors and sixteenth century Venice.
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I tried. Made it almost halfway. Decent writing does not make up enough for lackluster story.