Penguin Podcast 47 - Spook Country

Preorder Spook Country today In this edition of the Penguin podcast, check out the first chapter of William Gibson's new novel, Spook Country. William Gibson will be appearing in Second Life on 2nd August on the first stop of his world tour - join the Penguin Readers group in SL today for more info. 

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For information about any of the authors and books featured in these podcasts, plus features, interviews and news on the best in UK fiction and non-fiction, visit Penguin Books.

Tito is from Cuba, but he's been trained by the Russians and he's now doing delicate jobs in New York involving information transfer. Milgrim is a junkie, surviving on little bubblepacks of pills, but like Tito he speaks Russian and it seems that he hasn't always lived on the streets. They don't know each other but they're working on the same job ... except they don't know what it is. It might be military, it might be political. It involves a lot of money, and a lot of danger for them both. William Gibson's new political thriller – his first book for four years – is nuanced and edgy, brilliantly written as always – and strikingly descriptive of the current political climate.

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Comments

[Jason Kennedy]

William Gibson has written some great books, but this chapter, it just does not seem to work. The narrative voice feels like you are listening to a thesis that is struggling to remember it is a novel and the central character is attributed a thought or a line of dialogue every now and then, just enough to retain their shape, but not enough to generate any development. There seemed zero sense that it was a female, or what age they were, or what type of character they were. Instead, they were just lost inside this ultra-wry narration. I don't know what it is about ground-breaking writers, and Gibson certainly qualifies as one of those, but they seem to hit a point in their career where the world has caught up with them and all that is left is self-parody. It happened to Ballard a decade ago and now it has happened to William Gibson.

But don't be put off by this, if you haven't done so, go and read the first 6 Gibson novels, the two trilogies, absolutely great books (particularly Idoru, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive)