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I just finished the audiobook version of Lexicon by Max Barry. It made my drive to
Pennsylvania for the next residency in my MFA program a riveting adventure
instead of drudgery.
I've been a Max Barry fan since he was Maxx Barry. I loved
Jennifer Government, and I've made it a point to read every book he's written.
Max's infectious, dark humor has always been a hallmark of his work, but the
tone of Lexicon surprised me. It
feels like an older, more mature brother of his other works. It's a blisteringly
brilliant book. I was a fan before this novel came out but this new book puts
Max into a different tier.
Be careful...reading Lexicon will compromise you, turning you
into one of his proselytes for this heart-stopping thriller. It's a profoundly
intelligent tale that covers a global conspiracy to use words as keys to unlock
the human mind.
The novel follows a young street hustler drafted into a secret
organization, made into a weapon by careless inattention, and a seemingly
innocent bystander, the only survivor of a horrific disaster. Usually his barb filled
prose are more than enough for me but he goes for a different approach in this
book. The normal tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek style is set aside for a more
serious tone, elevating Max Barry into the upper echelons of science fiction
writers. He has obviously done a lot of historical research to ratchet this
story up several notches and combined with the philosophical undertones, it really
messed with my head. Barry jumps back
and forth through the timestream, which serves to maintain a blistering pace
and keeps you guessing who is one whose side and what's going to happen next.
