Far From Brooklyn

The Raw Shark Texts, by Steven Hall

So, the first thing you should know about this book is that it has nothing to do with Hunter Thompson.

The next thing you should know is that this is a fairly successful attempt to meld metafiction, maximalism, and mystery novel, or perhaps better said, it’s a cross breed of Moby and Philip K. Dick.

In short, it’s a mashup.

The thing is, though, I never really got past thinking of it as a mashup.

With the best mashups, you don’t sit there marveling at the way they merge  multiple familiar parts.   Somehow they instantly become something new to you. Like this.

But with this book you can see and hear the gears grinding all the way – “Oh, I get it, it’s metaphysical, it’s playful, it’s serious, it’s pop culture, etc. etc. etc.”

It does have a neat flipbook near the end that made me laugh.  And I did read it to the end, which as has been demonstrated time and again is not necessarily my norm.