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A review by eshalliday
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway
4.0
I returned to this as an old favourite, since I've been reading some male authors lately, and I guessed enough time had passed that I could re-read 'Tigerman', cheerfully forgetting its ending and the revolutions of its plot that make it so astonishingly original (it should be said that I love the persona of Nick Harkaway! Give him a follow on social media - he used to be quite active on Instagram, and is always good for a giggle).
'Tigerman' is a robust novel, fantastically fun and unabashedly cinematographic in its mises-en-scene, but that doesn't mean it's not physchologically subtle. I find Harkaway's protagonists are always profoundly lifelike, sagacious, engrossing. So, here, Harkaway plays with the motifs of the Superhero, the Superego, and the Superman, as they all play out (in Lester Ferris and in his 'sidekick' The Boy) within the setting of the pre-apocalyptic, expropriated island 'of uncertain legal status', soon to be fire-razed Mancreu, where norms of acceptable behaviour and standards of values are fuzzy (at best), societal structures collapsing under the countdown to imminent biological annihilation.
Lester Ferris adopts the tigerman Superhero costume as his Superego collapses along with Mancreu's laws and ethics, and in doing so, Harkaway plots Ferris's striving effort towards his inner Superman/Übermensch. And, as it goes, I remembered just how much I love Harkaway's authorial style. Heavily masculine in places, especially when the protagonist is feeling particularly lustful. But, although comparisons to James Bond novels abound, the way Harkaway writes about hetero sex in his novels actually manages - delicately - to avoid many perils of the Male Gaze. Lester Ferris's sex drive is certainly healthy, but Harkaway embeds it in the text as a key aspect of characterisation, and it's not overdone. In fact, I found myself wondering as I was reading, whether I might actually be gaining some insight into the masculine psyche.
This was a joy to return to, and makes me think I'd like to go back and revisit [b:Angelmaker|12266560|Angelmaker|Nick Harkaway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326121401l/12266560._SX50_.jpg|14751763][b:Angelmaker|12266560|Angelmaker|Nick Harkaway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326121401l/12266560._SX50_.jpg|14751763] and [b:The Gone-Away World|3007704|The Gone-Away World|Nick Harkaway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328322676l/3007704._SX50_.jpg|3038235] too.
'Tigerman' is a robust novel, fantastically fun and unabashedly cinematographic in its mises-en-scene, but that doesn't mean it's not physchologically subtle. I find Harkaway's protagonists are always profoundly lifelike, sagacious, engrossing. So, here, Harkaway plays with the motifs of the Superhero, the Superego, and the Superman, as they all play out (in Lester Ferris and in his 'sidekick' The Boy) within the setting of the pre-apocalyptic, expropriated island 'of uncertain legal status', soon to be fire-razed Mancreu, where norms of acceptable behaviour and standards of values are fuzzy (at best), societal structures collapsing under the countdown to imminent biological annihilation.
Lester Ferris adopts the tigerman Superhero costume as his Superego collapses along with Mancreu's laws and ethics, and in doing so, Harkaway plots Ferris's striving effort towards his inner Superman/Übermensch. And, as it goes, I remembered just how much I love Harkaway's authorial style. Heavily masculine in places, especially when the protagonist is feeling particularly lustful. But, although comparisons to James Bond novels abound, the way Harkaway writes about hetero sex in his novels actually manages - delicately - to avoid many perils of the Male Gaze. Lester Ferris's sex drive is certainly healthy, but Harkaway embeds it in the text as a key aspect of characterisation, and it's not overdone. In fact, I found myself wondering as I was reading, whether I might actually be gaining some insight into the masculine psyche.
This was a joy to return to, and makes me think I'd like to go back and revisit [b:Angelmaker|12266560|Angelmaker|Nick Harkaway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326121401l/12266560._SX50_.jpg|14751763][b:Angelmaker|12266560|Angelmaker|Nick Harkaway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326121401l/12266560._SX50_.jpg|14751763] and [b:The Gone-Away World|3007704|The Gone-Away World|Nick Harkaway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328322676l/3007704._SX50_.jpg|3038235] too.