The Singer's Gun

I heard Emily St John Mandel read about a month ago at our local bookstore and was intrigued by The Singer's Gun with its theme of escaping your identity. The book takes awhile to get where it's going but when it gets there, it gets there with a vengeance. Anton Waker and his cousin Aria make a decent living selling fake social security numbers and fake coveted American passports. Of course "decent" isn't quite the right word and eventually Anton wants out, especially after September 11 when it dawns on him that it isn't just sad immigrants yearning for a better life who might benefit from their products. His disillusionment begins to show when his cousin says, "We'll stop doing business in this country...when it's no longer legal to carry our product." She's being funny--not that she has a sense of humor--trying to point out that at least it's not drugs or guns, but Anton replies, "It's never legal to carry our product...And what other country would we do business in?"

And so Anton begins to extricate himself from the family-approved business. He obtains a Harvard degree--not in the usual way (but in a maneuver borrowed from an acquaintance of the author); he rises quickly in the business world of New York City, but not so quickly as to draw attention to himself; he falls in love and plans a wedding (three times, in a funny bit I heard read by the author), and then his carefully constructed world begins to implode. It turns out, Aria isn't ready to go solo.

We know bad things will happen eventually, but we don't know the what and the how. Can we ever really leave one life behind to start another? To a certain extent, we all try to escape our past, if only by growing up, but how drastic an escape do most of us have to make? The Singer's Gun is no classic gangster novel, though it has some of those elements. It's not even fully a "good guy does good" novel because Anton's not that good. Sure, he has standards, but most people do. You don't exactly root for him though there's nothing to dislike openly.The way the novel is constructed takes us back and forth in time and Emily St John Mandel does a nice job of setting us up with one expectation only to reveal later the true reason for a character's actions. That adds to the slower pace, but the pay off is interesting. Just don't expect to love anyone along the way.