Satin Island

De: Tom McCarthy

Narrado por: James Garnon

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015

Meet U. – a talented and uneasy figure currently pimping his skills to an elite consultancy in contemporary London. His employers advise everyone from big businesses to governments, and, to this end, expect their 'corporate anthropologist' to help decode and manipulate the world around them – all the more so now that a giant, epoch-defining project is in the offing.

Instead, U. spends his days procrastinating, meandering through endless buffer-zones of information and becoming obsessed by the images with which the world bombards him on a daily basis: oil spills, African traffic jams, roller-blade processions, zombie parades. Is there, U. wonders, a secret logic holding all these images together – a codex that, once cracked, will unlock the master-meaning of our age? Might it have something to do with South Pacific Cargo Cults, or the dead parachutists in the news? Perhaps; perhaps not.

As U. oscillates between the visionary and the vague, brilliance and bullshit, Satin Island emerges, an impassioned and exquisite novel for our disjointed times.

Reseñas de la Crítica

Smart, shimmering and thought-provoking…McCarthy isn’t a frustrated cultural theorist who must content himself with writing novels; he’s a born novelist, a pretty fantastic one, who has figured out a way to make cultural theory funny, scary and suspenseful — in other words, compulsively readable.

Should you read the new Tom McCarthy book? (A: Yes. Always yes.)

Dazzling and elusive… a magisterial ethnographic portrait of our overstimulated, interconnected, simulacra-addicted times.

The kind of strange and ambitious fiction that you feared might have died with J. G. Ballard. ...Provokes and beguiles and, at the point of revelation, it withholds. On finishing it you will have the powerful urge to throw it across the room, then the powerful urge to pick it up to read again. And that’s what’s so brilliant. (Duncan White, 5 stars)

Confusing, clever and about to be massive.

For page-turning ideas, it’s a must.

Nails the modern condition of information overload (Anthony Cummins, 4 stars)

Satin Island is an undeniably dazzling piece of writing, a perfect tight circle of interlocking motifs, mini-treatises and allusions. (Theo Tait)

A Kafka for the Google Age.

Gripping... an elegant and eerie tale.

I really thought this was it...

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Let me start by saying that the writing of Tom McCarthy is addictively enjoyable to read.
So much so that, after devouring his first chapter in a Terminal bookstore, I bought the audiobook for my flight with reckless anticipation.

McCarthy is clearly a brilliant and wonderfully tuned writer, but if the publishers summary promised a book the oscillated between 'brilliance & bullshit', I felt it too often flickered between brilliance & navel-gazing. For me, 'bullshit' (perhaps a hint of real DBC Pierre madness) might have filled the void, so my excitement fizzled to an irritation.

Ok, yes, I'm a little pissed the (parachutist) sub-narrative failed to ignite, (and of this, I was fore-warned) but I make no apology for offering my attention for a little narrative reward.

Don't be misled by one opinion—decide for your self but I came away feeling this book was the published study for a future great novel.

Would you ever listen to anything by Tom McCarthy again?

Yes. Addiction is not a casual reference.

What does James Garnon bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Brilliant performance.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Satin Island?

I have been cruel enough already—and I'm not worthy of directing this artist.

Any additional comments?

I genuinely expect great things...