Lexicon

A Novel

By: Max Barry

Narrated by: Heather Corrigan, Zach Appelman

Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren't taught history, geography, or mathematics - at least not in the usual ways. Instead, they are taught to persuade. Here the art of coercion has been raised to a science. Students harness the hidden power of language to manipulate the mind and learn to break down individuals by psychographic markers in order to take control of their thoughts. The very best will graduate as "poets": adept wielders of language who belong to a nameless organization that is as influential as it is secretive.

Whip-smart orphan Emily Ruff is making a living running a three-card Monte game on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization's recruiters. She is flown across the country for the school's strange and rigorous entrance exams, where, once admitted, she will be taught the fundamentals of persuasion by Brontë, Eliot, and Lowell - who have adopted the names of famous poets to conceal their true identities. For in the organization, nothing is more dangerous than revealing who you are: Poets must never expose their feelings lest they be manipulated. Emily becomes the school's most talented prodigy until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.

Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Jamieson is brutally ambushed by two strange men in an airport bathroom. Although he has no recollection of anything they claim he's done, it turns out Wil is the key to a secret war between rival factions of poets and is quickly caught in their increasingly deadly crossfire. As the two narratives converge, the shocking work of the poets is fully revealed, the body count rises, and the world crashes toward a Tower of Babel event which would leave all language meaningless.

©2013 Max Barry (P)2013 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"A dark, dystopic grabber in which words are treated as weapons, and the villainous types have literary figures’ names. Plath, Yeats, Eliot and Woolf all figure in this ambitious, linguistics-minded work of futurism." (Janet Maslin, New York Times)

"Imagine, if you will, a secret group of people called Poets who have the power to control others simply by speaking to them. Barry has, and the result is an extraordinarily fast, funny, cerebral thriller." (Time Magazine)

"An extremely slick and readable thriller." (Washington Post)

Very Entertaining

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It kept me guessing to the end. The plot is surprisingly fresh, not a repeated rehash of something expected.

I became obsessed with this book

Would you listen to Lexicon again? Why?

I will and I have. The ideas in this books are fascinating...pushed just passed reality...or are they?

What did you like best about this story?

Like I said the ideas that are fundamental to the story fascinated me. The idea that persuasion is far more than charm, that its scientific. Amazing. You keep guessing the whole book; who is the bad guy? Is there a bad guy? Is everyone the bad guy?

Which scene was your favorite?

The initial testing scene

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Most definitely wanted to. I hated to put it down

Any additional comments?

This book was mind bending. A great read I would gladly have spent a credit on it had it not been on sale when I discovered it

Great story, well worth the credit

Would you consider the audio edition of Lexicon to be better than the print version?

Didn't read the print version

What did you like best about this story?

I really liked the dialogue and unexpected plot twists (except for the end, which I could see coming.

Did Heather Corrigan and Zach Appelman do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

Zack did a great job. Heather...hmm, shouldn't someone have determined whether she could do an Australian accent BEFORE she got the gig? Her efforts were laughable and distracting, for me at least. I spent some distracted moments wondering whose niece she was and why they chose such a limited reader from the HOST of competent readers out there (Sorry Heather. Just keeping it real.)

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No, I don't think it's supposed to be that kind of book. I did have a dream about it, so that's something. I love linguistics and was intrigued by the catch phrase, "Words can kill." The whole names of famous poets thing was only okay, but I appreciated the author's occasional interjections of op/ed content. Actually agree with him about cable news.

Any additional comments?

Nope. Good on ya, Max Barry.

Definitely NOT a book for the paranoid!

This book took off in directions I didn't expect. The disjointed way in which it was told added to the concepts. It is interesting, knowing neuropsychology and marketing, to see how the manipulation of perception was taken to the next level. We have had many novels in the past that focussed on language and how it can be/might be used to manipulate populations, but this angle was fascinating.

Just okay

The story itself was alright, but not great. I had expected a more realistic story instead of the science fiction/fantasy aspects of it. The female narrator did a really bad job with the Australian accent, which made it awkward to listen to. I finished the book, so it wasn't so bad that I stopped listening or returned it, but it was not a favorite of mine

Pretty good

Well written and leaves the door open for more to follow. Performance was spot on, but the

An intriguing yet disturbing tale.

words have power and knowledge of you gives others power over you.

This story is about language and words and meaning and what happens when some try to use the power of words.

And a cautionary tale about giving away too much of yourself to Facebook et al.

The characters are pretty well built the and the story tight and well constructed. There were plenty of twists to keep it interesting.

Clever Words

Barry crafts a clever, well-written tale that along the way comments on social media, micro-targeting, and persuasion.

Innovative, clever, exciting, violent, SF

Max Barry is now one of my "I think I'll read everything he's written" authors.

I've been reading science fiction for decades, so I know how rare it is to come across a book like "Lexicon" which has not just a new ideas, but a clever, well-thought through plot, written by someone who is skilled at dialogue, characterisation and action scenes and who can unfold the story in a way that engages the reader's intellect and emotions.

The basic premise of "Lexicon" is that words have the power to control how we think and behave and that this power can be shaped into a weapon by those with the right skills.

The characters constantly explain how influence and manipulation work: get someone to pay attention to the wrong thing, play on their emotions to shape their perception of good and evil, understand their personality and then pry their psyche apart. Despite this, it took me several chapters to realize that Max Barry had been manipulating me from the first page onwards.He did it by controlling the order in which I received information, who I received it from and the emotional terms used to convey it. At least twice in the novel I had to reset what I thought I knew to be true. Barry didn't cheat. All the information correctly to understand what is going on is there but my own assumptions make me see one thing and read another.

A book that is about weaponising words is likely to appeal to those of us with a recreational addiction to fiction. We KNOW words have power, so we are ripe for the ideas in this novel. If, like me, you've been trained in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), public speaking, influencing skills, psychometric assessment and you read tarot cards and palms as a party trick, then the early parts of this book are frighteningly familiar. The book takes what I know I can do and then asks me to imagine what a motivated person, with REAL talent, no social ties, no inhibitions and the support of an organization with generations of research at their disposal, could achieve.

"Lexicon" is filled with coercion, violence and killing from the first page. Max Barry doesn't pull his punches but he doesn't turn the violence into pornography either. He makes it too real and too repulsive for that.

His main evil-incarnate character is suitably chilling but I could write that off as stereo-type. Elliot and Emily I got to know and like and care about, so what they did, to others, to each other and to themselves had much more impact.

My only niggle with the book is the last chapter. It's not where I would have gone with this. It felt like the kind of thing Hollywood might have changed in the movie version to ensure they stayed firmly in the summer blockbuster segment. But then, I'd never have thought up something as clever and powerful as "Lexicon" in the first place, so I'll go with Barry's judgement.

I listened to "Lexicon" as an audiobook, which, I think, made the book even more exciting. Zach Appleman did a splendid job as the rugged, world-weary, Elliot. His American accents are perfect and he at least managed to sound like he'd been to Australia. Heather Corrigan was marvellous at evoking Emily's vulnerability and her strength but her attempts at Australian accents ranged from unconvincing to inappropriately hilarious. Nevertheless, both narrators kept me listening, often on the edge of my seat.

Captivating and enchanting!

A very timely book that I rather wish had been a read than a listen. Narrators are quite good, but this is a book I think would be more enjoyable (and easier to track) if page-flipping and back-tracking were possible. Is this what Edward Snowden is reading in Moscow?