Gnomon Hardcover – 2017

Gnomon is an incredible 400 page novel. The trouble, of course, is that it's actually about 560 pages long.To be fair to the author, some of that is by intent - if a major theme of your text is information overload, then it makes some sense to overload the reader with a bunch of indecipherable--and irrelevant--information. On the other hand, there is no particular justification for larding the text up with $10 words where a $1 one would've done the trick. Nor is there any particular justification for the long, nonsensical digressions that appear to be more about the sound of the author's voice than advancing the message, or plot, or anything else. In other words, much of reading this book is like dealing with a particularly irritating dream - everything is laden with portentous symbols, you run into random people who say important-seeming things, but none of it makes a lick of sense or SAYS anything. I breathed a sigh of relief at the mention of Baudrillard because it was the first indication that any of this was intentional...and when French post-structuralism comes to you as an oasis of meaning in a desert of absurdity, something has probably gone wrong.Why, then, 3 stars? Why not 1 or 2? Because, frustratingly, the back half of the book rescues things quite a bit. Things start fitting together (and the incomprehensible structure of the first part even starts making sense), revelations are made that are genuinely astonishing, and certain seeds planted in the first half of the book bear unexpected--and delightful--fruit. (It's possible that other seeds also bore fruit, and I simply forgot them; if you can't tell, dealing with this book is A Lot). In fact, the second half of the book is written so well that I nearly recommended the book to my wife, who had patiently borne my frustration about the first half without complaint. Add in the fact that the book's message is interesting and that it has a refreshing take on a somewhat tired theme--I don't know if you've heard, folks, but mass surveillance might not be as good as we think!--and it's not hard to see why people recommended it to me.But I cannot do the same. I simply cannot recommend, in good conscience, a book which requires sitting through ~300 pages of incomprehensible nonsense for a payoff that, while strong, is not revolutionary. I read books to change how I view the world, yes, but also for enjoyment. And if I'm going to completely sacrifice the latter, as this book demands, the former better be a near-religious form of epiphany. This book, while quite strong on that front, simply does not meet that standard.Tl;dr: Gnomon is an unforgettable book with a strong second half. In the hands of a more courageous editor, it might've been a true classic. As it is, though, it's simply not worth the effort it demands.

This book made me feel dumb. I love it, but I also hate it. I was constantly having to look up words (love that built in dictionary in the kindle app) that nobody uses in regular conversation. In fact, I looked up some words multiple times because they are so esoteric. There are some made-up words, and my memory of prefixes and suffixes and Latin and such that I learned in high school is too distant for me to be able to figure out most of those made-up words.That said, the story line is fabulous if you can keep up (I was okay until about the last third of the book).After I read this book I read something easy, and hated it. Nick Harkaway has spoiled me. He's as good as Neal Stephenson. I am now reading the rest of Harkaway's books and they are fabulous. Gnomon is a challenge, but worth it.

I adore this novel. It's like 1984 on steroids for the current generation. Don't get me wrong, Haraway didn't rewrite that story - you could say that about any number of Big Brother type novels; instead he extrapolated on a reality that currently exists - surveillance in London, and ran screaming for the hills from there.The result is an exuberant, thriller that draws outside the lines with a glee that is clearly obvious, and I must add, contagious. I couldn't help myself smiling while reading, or crying a few times too. The novel is so alive. You start off being Detective Inspector Mielikki Neith with a stellar reputation, and someone has died in custody of the System, an A.I. that has replaced the government of England by watching everyone everywhere to make sure everyone behaves themselves. If something unseemly does happen, the System can be hooked up to offenders' brain to play back exactly what happened, and fix the offending behaviour using brain microsurgery, so you comply with the herd.Except someone is dead instead of fixed, the DI must find out what happened - and now things just start to get interesting. If you like books that are thrilling, that require you to pay attention, that take you on a wild rollercoaster ride through history, technology, foreign countries, intrigue, conspiracies, then this is your book. The cast is large and varied. It even included my favourite Saint - St. Augustine. By the time I finished reading, all the TBR on my Kindle looked paltry and flat. I took a break from reading just to process everything from this tale, before I could start again. That rarely happens.Don't listen to those who say it should be even a single page shorter. I loved every dam n page. I have added Harkaway to my favorite authors list, because anyone who could write this mad, intricate, thoughtful tale, has to write more of the same.I have one question - why aren't people shouting from the rooftops about this novel, when so many lesser works are being touted as glorious heights of literature? The PR budget, of course. If you read it and love it, review it. (Getting off my soapbox - tidepods, of course)Good Thumping Read!Recommended for people who like detective thrillers AND technology, philosophy, alchemy, conspiracies, etc, Just read it.

Some critics have picked on the novel for its digressiveness, its "Wikipedia-style exposition dumps," as The Guardian had it. I found the digressiveness to be like the digressions in Moby Dick--yeah, maybe a good writer would have edited that stuff. But a great writer doesn't care what a good writer would do. This is the novel where the writer decided to take on the white whale (or shark, in this case). There was no sense holding back on any of those digressions. In addition to Moby Dick, I'd say it mixed it a little of A Hundred Years of Solitude, some Phillip K. Dick, and a splash of The Matrix at the end. It's one of the best takes on surveillance out there, because it realizes to take on one thing, you have to take on everything, because "everything is more than one thing."