Dickens of a story
Michael Winter's modern orphans are all in their 30s
M.A.C. Farrant, Special to the Vancouver SunPublished: Saturday, January 12, 2008
The Architects Are Here, the latest novel by Michael Winter, is a stunner. Forty-seven synoptic instalments appeared online last summer in what his publisher claimed was "the world's first-ever Facebook novel serialization."
Comparisons to Charles Dickens inevitably arise. Think of the reported thousands who lined the New York docks waiting for the latest newsprint instalment of David Copperfield. I wonder if Winter's novel received the same treatment on the blog site 157 years later or if the event was drowned in the equal-opportunity soup that is virtual reality.
It probably was, but fortunately this doesn't matter: Being unmoored in the virtual world is what the book is all about. Furthermore, the novel -- published in fall 2007 -- stands as a solid object of excellence, something reassuringly old-fashioned, hand-held, enduring...
To read the rest of this review, please click here.
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The unabridged audiobook edition of The Big Why, narrated by Robert Joy, was recently published by Rattling Books. It is available from rattlingbooks.com as either an MP3 CD or Digital Download. Listening time 10.5 hours.
Michael Winter's modern orphans are all in their 30s
M.A.C. Farrant, Special to the Vancouver SunPublished: Saturday, January 12, 2008
The Architects Are Here, the latest novel by Michael Winter, is a stunner. Forty-seven synoptic instalments appeared online last summer in what his publisher claimed was "the world's first-ever Facebook novel serialization."
Comparisons to Charles Dickens inevitably arise. Think of the reported thousands who lined the New York docks waiting for the latest newsprint instalment of David Copperfield. I wonder if Winter's novel received the same treatment on the blog site 157 years later or if the event was drowned in the equal-opportunity soup that is virtual reality.
It probably was, but fortunately this doesn't matter: Being unmoored in the virtual world is what the book is all about. Furthermore, the novel -- published in fall 2007 -- stands as a solid object of excellence, something reassuringly old-fashioned, hand-held, enduring...
To read the rest of this review, please click here.
*************
The unabridged audiobook edition of The Big Why, narrated by Robert Joy, was recently published by Rattling Books. It is available from rattlingbooks.com as either an MP3 CD or Digital Download. Listening time 10.5 hours.
