The Singer's Gun [Hardcover]

Emily St. John Mandel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 4, 2010

Everyone Anton Waker grew up with is corrupt. His parents deal in stolen goods and his first career is a partnership venture with his cousin Aria selling forged passports and social security cards to illegal aliens. Anton longs for a less questionable way of living in the world and by his late twenties has reinvented himself as a successful middle manager. Then a routine security check suggests that things are not quite what they appear. And Aria begins blackmailing him to do one last job for her. But the seemingly simple job proves to have profound and unexpected repercussions. As Anton s carefully constructed life begins to disintegrate around him, he s forced to choose between loyalty to his family and his desires for a different kind of life. When everyone is willing to use someone else to escape the past, it is up to Anton, on the island of Ischia, to face the ghosts that travel close behind him. Emily St. John Mandel follows up her electric debut with a spellbinding novel of international crime, false identities, the depths and limits of family ties, and the often confusing bonds of love. Taut with suspense, beautifully imagined, full of unexpected corners, desperate choices, betrayals and halftruths with deadly consequences, The Singer s Gun explores the dangerous territory between one s moral compass and the heart s desire.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mandel (Last Night in Montreal) attempts a globe-spanning crime novel, but the clunky, lukewarm result will please neither thriller aficionados nor more literary-minded readers. Anton Waker, a Manhattan water systems consultant, finds that his world is slowly imploding as his shadowy past as a document forger comes back to haunt him. Compounding his troubles is his alluring and Machiavellian cousin, Aria Waker, who is conspiring to reel him back in for one last big score. All the while, hard-nosed State Department G-woman Alexandra Broden is closing in on the forgery ring. Along the way—the narrative travels from New York to Canada to Italy—Anton must also come to grips with his crumbling marriage and an office romance. While Mandel's prose is brisk, the narrative reads like a slightly dressed-up B-movie screenplay—flat, stocked with one-dimensional characters, and relying on awkward flashbacks to explain away character motivations. But the biggest problem is the narrative's blandness: the sex isn't sexy and the violence isn't especially violent. (May)
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From Booklist

Mandel’s follow-up to Last Night in Montreal (2009) revolves around a family of thieves. Anton Waker is trying to escape his family’s legacy of dishonesty by getting a job as a manager at a water-systems consulting firm, though in order to do so, he has to obtain a fake college diploma. The house of cards Anton has built threatens to come crashing down around him when a zealous State Department investigator forces his secretary to spy on him in the hopes he’ll reveal details about his days of selling counterfeit Social Security cards and passports with his cousin Aria. The danger only increases when Aria blackmails Anton into doing one last job for her—delivering a package on his honeymoon. When his reluctant bride storms off after finding he has to spend more time on the Italian island of Ischia than they’d originally planned, Anton is left with time to contemplate his marriage, his family, and what the future holds. A gripping, thoughtful meditation on work, family, and the consequences of major life choices. --Kristine Huntley

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Unbridled Books; 1 edition (May 4, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1936071649
• ISBN-13: 978-1936071647
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,129,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Emily St. John Mandel was born on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York.

Her new novel, The Lola Quartet, is coming out in May 2012. Her other novels are Last Night in Montreal (a June 2009 Indie Next pick and a finalist for ForeWord Magazine's 2009 Book of the Year award) and The Singer's Gun (winner of an Indie Booksellers Choice Award, #1 Indie Next Pick for May 2010, included on a number of flattering lists.) She is married and lives in Brooklyn.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another winner from St. John Mandel [4.5 stars], May 2, 2010

By 

Debra Hamel (North Haven, CT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Singer's Gun (Hardcover)

Emily St. John Mandel's The Singer's Gun opens on an investigation. A woman working for the State Department is listening over and over to a snippet of conversation recorded 15 days earlier--a few words only, confirmation of a job completed, nothing much. It's not clear for a long while how the recording fits into what follows. And what follows is an exploration of why Anton Waker abandoned his wife on their honeymoon and is now sitting alone on the island of Ischia, off the coast of Naples, biding his time and missing his one-eyed cat. Eventually all is made clear: the layers of Anton's life are slowly peeled away in chapters that explore his unusual childhood, the strange circumstances of his employment, his adversarial relationship with his cousin. Nothing in Anton's life is quite what it looks like on the surface. Any guess we may have initially about the reasons for his wait on Ischia would be wrong.

Anton is a complex character who's been living in a world that doesn't fit him. He's disturbed by his environment but doesn't break away from it given the opportunity, and he in fact participates in activities he doesn't quite approve of. The book thus introduces questions about what constitutes moral behavior and about personal responsibility. While it is by no means a fast-paced thriller, the book does become a tense read toward the end, and it is always compelling. Anton's situation--the wait on Ischia, and more so his being warehoused at work prior to his honeymoon--is so strange that you can't but read on for the answers. St. John Mandel's second book--see my review of Last Night in Montreal--is another winner.

-- Debra Hamel

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emily St. John Mandel Wins Again!, May 6, 2010

By 

Manda Kay "Manda Reads" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Singer's Gun (Hardcover)

In Emily St. John Mandel's new book, The Singer's Gun, Anton Waker has found himself in trouble, without a possible way out. Anton thought he was finally done with the business of illegal dealings and shady transactions, but when his cousin comes to him with one more job, and the blackmail to force his hand, Anton finds himself once again in over his head. Anton's carefully constructed life hangs on the edge and things take an unexpected turn, he's forced to choose between a life that he made for himself or the one that's thrown upon him. Will he make it out alive, and if so at what cost?

This is Emily St. John Mandel's second novel, and I've had the pleasure of reading both of her books. Her writing talent and impressive skill once more shine again. She has proven that her first novel wasn't just a fluke and she is definitely an author I'll keep reading. Again, Mandel jumped from past to present in this novel and it worked beautifully. The shifts in time were never uncomfortable and they flowed beautifully. I loved this novel even more than her first. The story was interesting and detailed and I was pulled into it immediately. I read The Singer's Gun all in one sitting because I just could not bear to pull myself away. I loved the main character, Anton. He was extremely personable and I felt the struggles he went through were believable and realistic. Emily St. John Mandel has won me again, and The Singer's Gun is something that everyone must read.

Review originally posted on my blog Draw A Blank.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Unbridled Books. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255 : "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a passport, April 15, 2010

By 

keif (museum of evolution, bologna) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Singer's Gun (Hardcover)

To some degree or another, we all live in a caste society. The Singer's Gun offers us an antidote: If you cleave with all your might to your own deepest nature, the rewards will be -- goddamned Mediterranean in nature. This is not your soulless Horatio Alger dogged overcoming-of-obstacles; it is the transformative oomph of the personal lodestone. When coupled with shady imports, felonious forgery, a skewering look at illegal immigration -- and of course Emily St. John Mandel's sly prose -- The Singer's Gun becomes a passport out of -- well, whatever the reader happens to be mired in at the moment of that reading. And a passport -- as we learn in all of Mandel's work -- is a *very* valuable thing.