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3.05 AVERAGE
3.05 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I thought this book had big promise, but I'm finally giving up, on page 324....!
The author has magnificent talents of description and dialogue that can put you directly in Atlantic City with casino sharks, or amongst the mysteries of the glass guild hierarchy in 16th century Venice... and it's a twisting weave of stories that includes the fringes of metaphysics. I thought I had found a new David Mitchell, and maybe a more readable version, as well. But he just just kept hammeriing away at a long bad trip between two sharks who can't keep my interest, leading out into an implausible meeting in the desert... that seems like he may have suddenly thought he should sprinkle some Carmac McCarthy in there. It doesn't work.
Page 324. That pretty much tells it all.
What a disapointment.
The author has magnificent talents of description and dialogue that can put you directly in Atlantic City with casino sharks, or amongst the mysteries of the glass guild hierarchy in 16th century Venice... and it's a twisting weave of stories that includes the fringes of metaphysics. I thought I had found a new David Mitchell, and maybe a more readable version, as well. But he just just kept hammeriing away at a long bad trip between two sharks who can't keep my interest, leading out into an implausible meeting in the desert... that seems like he may have suddenly thought he should sprinkle some Carmac McCarthy in there. It doesn't work.
Page 324. That pretty much tells it all.
What a disapointment.
I confess this book had split personalities (three different narrators) and I would give one of them (toss up between Curtis and Crivano) 4 stars at times, but Stanley, meh.
And it was a slog. I wanted to give it a chance hoping it would turn out like the Instance of the Fingerpost where things got tied together at the end but no such luck.
Still some parts (probably more Crivano than Curtis, though Curtis is more likable) were really good, but it was hard going.
And it was a slog. I wanted to give it a chance hoping it would turn out like the Instance of the Fingerpost where things got tied together at the end but no such luck.
Still some parts (probably more Crivano than Curtis, though Curtis is more likable) were really good, but it was hard going.
Just shy of 600 pages and I have no idea why I read this or what the point was...
I expected too much from this book. The David Mitchell comparisons weren't warranted and the shifts to different perspectives were plodding, rather than dynamic and exciting as I've come to enjoy with Mitchell. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't opened it with eager anticipation.
Another book that didn't live up to its blurb. Too slow and not interesting enough. Just when it started to get interesting it switched character viewpoints and I bounced.
What to say about Martin Seay's The Mirror Thief? It was fascinating, infuriating, engrossing and incredibly challenging. A story in three stories, each reflections, often distorted, of the other. The Venetian, Venice Beach, and, of course, Venice itself, in the fifteen hundreds, the nineteen fifties, and the early 2000s, each set on fire by a man with a bizarre, engrossing goal with motivations that span the gamut: Curtis, in 2003, has been sent to find his father's old gambling buddy Stanley, by a friend promising a job as he puts his life back together following his retirement as a US Military Police; Stanley, in 1953, scours Venice Beach for the Adrian Welles, the author of The Mirror Thief, a book that has consumed him since he happened upon it; Crivano, in the late 1500s, has been sent to spirit a glass-maker and a silversmith from Venice in order to bring the closely-guarded mirrormaking skillsets they harbour into the hands of a sultan. The parallels between the three men, and their three Venices, are fascinating and done in a way that feels genuine and careful. Seay does not endeavour to be heavy-handed in the many ways in which mirrors feature in his novel, including in his three main characters. His prose, however, often comes across as such, with breathtaking passages frequently weighed down by description that slows down scenes that should be fast-paced, and drags down even the slow, emotional scenes that are necessary to anchor the book's action. At its core, the book is philosophical despite the action-adventure thriller that weaves throughout the three narratives. What is morality? What is one willing to do to be transported, to create an identity, to shed an identity? Is it, ultimately, justifiable? It is a book about alchemy, but not in the traditional sense (although there's just enough of even that to satisfy somebody who appreciates the details) - it is about transformation. I mean, I hope it is. It's a dense book, and what one gets out of it seems to be different from person to person.
I think 3.5 stars is my accurate rating, but I've rounded up because wow, that was quite an epic interweaving of stories.
I picked this book up because I live in Venice, California and the concept of a book about three Venices was too good to pass up. (I did find a pretty glaring error in the local-to-me section that I'm surprised wasn't caught in editing: There was no Abbot Kinney Blvd in 1950's Venice. That street name came about in 1990. All locals know that. Maybe the author did too and ignored that fact in order to easily get into a discussion of Abbot Kinney, the founder of Venice of America, but it annoyed me.) I wasn't sure how the stories set so far apart in time and space would come together, but they did.
Things that set me back in my enjoyment of the book:
1. There were big parts of the Crivano story in 1500s Venice, Italy that confused me. And the change in the author's language/narrative style in that section, while understandable, didn't help.
2. In 1950s Venice, California the inclusion of an offbeat twisted sexually deviant plot twist felt more like a nod to post-modern writing than a needed element of the overall story, but maybe I just didn't completely understand the character that element centered around.
3. The length. I think the book would have held together a little better if it were closer to 500 pages. Some of the descriptions and tangents pulled me out of the story. While overall the writing style was enjoyable, there seemed to be too much extraneous information. At least for my taste...
Overall, impressive and interesting, if a little hard to get through and digest.
I picked this book up because I live in Venice, California and the concept of a book about three Venices was too good to pass up. (I did find a pretty glaring error in the local-to-me section that I'm surprised wasn't caught in editing: There was no Abbot Kinney Blvd in 1950's Venice. That street name came about in 1990. All locals know that. Maybe the author did too and ignored that fact in order to easily get into a discussion of Abbot Kinney, the founder of Venice of America, but it annoyed me.) I wasn't sure how the stories set so far apart in time and space would come together, but they did.
Things that set me back in my enjoyment of the book:
1. There were big parts of the Crivano story in 1500s Venice, Italy that confused me. And the change in the author's language/narrative style in that section, while understandable, didn't help.
2. In 1950s Venice, California the inclusion of an offbeat twisted sexually deviant plot twist felt more like a nod to post-modern writing than a needed element of the overall story, but maybe I just didn't completely understand the character that element centered around.
3. The length. I think the book would have held together a little better if it were closer to 500 pages. Some of the descriptions and tangents pulled me out of the story. While overall the writing style was enjoyable, there seemed to be too much extraneous information. At least for my taste...
Overall, impressive and interesting, if a little hard to get through and digest.
This isn’t the type of book I would ordinarily pick up just based on its description, but I met the author recently at the Midwest Writers Workshop and was intrigued by his discussion of the unique use of point of view in this novel. I’m very glad I decided to tackle it.
This is the type of novel that *should* be lauded as a true “masterpiece,” far more so than some of the more widely recognized books I have read recently. You can tell the care and research that went into it and that it truly was a labor of love. Every word and scene is intricately planned and executed. Fantastic prose, which also was slightly different depending on the time period.
Beyond that, I enjoyed the intertwining plot threads and thought the structure fit the story perfectly. I was also invested in the characters and cared about where they ended up. What else can one ask for?
If one wants to do a lot of research and put it into a novel, this is an example of how to do it right. This book does not do what so many other “researched” fiction books do: info-dump long blocks of academic-sounding information that might as well have just been cut and pasted from Wikipedia. Here, the author metes out just the information needed where it makes sense to do so, where that information is relevant. Hooray for no gratuitous info-dumping!
I thought the non-standard use of multiple types of point of view also worked really well and was very satisfying in the end.
This is the type of novel that *should* be lauded as a true “masterpiece,” far more so than some of the more widely recognized books I have read recently. You can tell the care and research that went into it and that it truly was a labor of love. Every word and scene is intricately planned and executed. Fantastic prose, which also was slightly different depending on the time period.
Beyond that, I enjoyed the intertwining plot threads and thought the structure fit the story perfectly. I was also invested in the characters and cared about where they ended up. What else can one ask for?
If one wants to do a lot of research and put it into a novel, this is an example of how to do it right. This book does not do what so many other “researched” fiction books do: info-dump long blocks of academic-sounding information that might as well have just been cut and pasted from Wikipedia. Here, the author metes out just the information needed where it makes sense to do so, where that information is relevant. Hooray for no gratuitous info-dumping!
I thought the non-standard use of multiple types of point of view also worked really well and was very satisfying in the end.
