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A review by skycrane
The Peripheral by William Gibson
4.0
I just finished reading this for the first time since it came out. I listened to the audio version back when it came out, and I remember thinking the narration was mediocre. I liked the book then, and I still like it now. As in his other novels, the author draws a very vivid world—or in this case, two worlds—colored by the various cultures that inhabit it. Flynne's world isn't too far from our own, an extrapolation of existing trends in technology and politics. I think what I like most about it is that it's in rural America, a setting largely avoided by the genre, which tends to be almost exclusively urban. Netherton's London is also not quite what you'd expect, since the seedy underworld that's so ubiquitous in cyberpunk is non-existent, since most of the world's population died out over the course of the previous century. The city we see is more like a series of parks, bars, and mansions, with public areas populated mainly by androids to make the few residents feel somewhat less lonely. The split focus perhaps prevents each setting from being more fully developed, but for a mystery/thriller set over the course of week, I feel like I got a very strong impression of the worlds the characters move through. The poverty of Flynne's dying town comes in the form not of hunger or destitution, but an absolute absence of opportunity. You really feel how stuck everyone is there, surviving through disability checks, overworked and underpaid in one of the few remaining businesses, or some kind of hustle. And Netherton's London is a bizarre mix of theme park and sci-fi utopia, except run by the mob.
Characterization comes primarily through their voices. The book is written in close third-person, which chapters alternating between Flynne's and Netherton's POVs. Netherton is glib and incredibly melodramatic. The visual descriptions in his sections are often accompanied by some note implying his judgement about them. In particular, whenever Ash appears, there several lines describing her outfit, her possessions, etc. Netherton's absolute disgust towards her sense of style comes through, and this goes a long way in letting you know who this guy is. The narration in Flynne's sections is more direct and more introspective. When she sees Netherton's world, she doesn't have the knowledge or vocabulary to describe what she's looking at, which is a nice way of explaining things to the audience in a way more familiar to us, as well as telling us more about how she thinks. In this way, everything about the narration reflects the mindset of the characters.
Characterization comes primarily through their voices. The book is written in close third-person, which chapters alternating between Flynne's and Netherton's POVs. Netherton is glib and incredibly melodramatic. The visual descriptions in his sections are often accompanied by some note implying his judgement about them. In particular, whenever Ash appears, there several lines describing her outfit, her possessions, etc. Netherton's absolute disgust towards her sense of style comes through, and this goes a long way in letting you know who this guy is. The narration in Flynne's sections is more direct and more introspective. When she sees Netherton's world, she doesn't have the knowledge or vocabulary to describe what she's looking at, which is a nice way of explaining things to the audience in a way more familiar to us, as well as telling us more about how she thinks. In this way, everything about the narration reflects the mindset of the characters.