Spook Country
For many years I’ve enjoyed William Gibson’s novels. I read Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive when I was a teenager. In the last ten years or so I’ve reread those and several others and, while not as impressed as I was when I was younger, I still liked them. I especially liked his 2003 novel Pattern Recognition, which seemed to break many of Gibson’s patterns which held him back from being an excellent writer. Pattern Recognition’s characters showed depth, complexity, mystery, and development. Its plot involved technology but wasn’t just about the technology. Gibson’s writing in the 20th Century has been said to have created a new genre; Pattern Recognition rose above simple genre writing.
I was therefore very interested to read Spook Country and see where Gibson would go next. Sadly, it did not live up to Pattern Recognition’s promise. The plot was weak and with a couple notable exceptions the characters were thin and lifeless. There was very little about the story I found compelling. While it was clear that eventually the various storylines would intersect, it was never clear why the reader should care about the resolution of the unfolding events.
Making it all the more frustrating is that as poorly constructed as the story is, the book is exceptionally well crafted. Gibson’s use of language, as I noted in one of my vocab entries, is really a pleasure to read. He’s a clever writer and a top-notch wordsmith. He used words I had to look up without it ever seeming affected. Gibson gets points for that.
Nevertheless, the book never came together in a way that made the experience of reading it rise above the experience of reading a collection of short stories. It was worse, because in such a collection at least some of the short stories would have held together.
As well as Gibson’s writing has developed over the decades, I hope that for his next novel he comes up with something more substantial. If he does, I look forward to giving him another chance.
