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    The Singer's Gun
    The Singer's Gun
    The Singer's Gun
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Singer's Gun

    Written by Emily St. John Mandel

    Narrated by Morgan Hallett

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, “a gripping story, full of moral ambiguities, where deception and betrayal become the norm, and where the expression ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma’ is lifted to new heights” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

    Everyone Anton Waker grew up with is corrupt. His parents dealt in stolen goods, and he was a successful purveyor of forged documents until he abandoned it all in his early twenties, determined to live a normal life, complete with career, apartment, and a fiancée who knows nothing of his criminal beginnings. He’s on the verge of finally getting married when Aria—his cousin and former partner in crime—blackmails him into helping her with one last job.

    Anton considers the task a small price for future freedom. But as he sets off for an Italian honeymoon, it soon becomes clear that the ghosts of his past can't be left behind so easily, and that the task Aria requires will cost him more than he could ever imagine.

    Look for Emily St. John Mandel’s bestselling new novel, Sea of Tranquility!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateMar 1, 2016
    ISBN9780735206526
    The Singer's Gun
    Author

    Emily St. John Mandel

    Emily St. John Mandel was born in Canada and studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Her novels are Last Night in Montreal, The Singer’s Gun, The Lola Quartet, Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel. She lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for The Singer's Gun

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Emily St. John Mandel is a clever writer. The plot builds slowly but steadily, with built in expectations along the way.

      Each flashback comes at just the right place to show something the reader needs to know about a character. And every character, even the few minor ones, seems to be there for a reason.

      I put this book on a to-read list, somehow thinking it was science fiction, but by the time I realized it wasn't I was into it and happily read to the end.
    • 4/5
      Anton grew up in a family that stole architectural salvage to make their living. His cousin Aria embraced the family business when her mother was deported to Ecuador and she was left behind. Anton spends time selling Social Security cards and passports to immigrants, but attempts to go “straight,” based on a fraudulent Harvard degree. While Aria descends into deeper levels of crime, Anton grasps at normal life but it slithers away. Not much action in this plot, but Aria’s double cross of Anton is an unexpected twist.
    • 3/5
      This author draws me in - the characters are well defined and believable and the writing is crisp and clear and totally unaffected. But . . .
      My problem is that I compare her later books against Station Eleven, and the later books haven't, as yet, done well in that comparison.
      I enjoyed The Singer's Gun, but not as much as Station Eleven. My (minor) quibbles were that I was a little disappointed with the plot - it wasn't quite as ambitious as I would have preferred; and that I had a Chekhov's gun moment with some eary references to the way that travel was now more difficult. I immediately started looking for a story set in a slightly dystopian future, but difficult travel never again appeared. I wonder if the author had made some Covid refernces and an editor removed them as potentially dating the work?? Who knows?
      Anyway - a very enjoyable book, and I'll be back for the next volume from this gifted writer.
    • 3/5
      An early book of Mandel's that shows the beginning of her talent with a bit of mystery/thriller feel. Anton tries to lead a normal life after growing up in a family of criminals, but his cousin, Aria, will not let him go. Not a great book, but always interesting to read a favorite author's early work.
    • 4/5
      Yup, I'm definitely going to have to go back and read all of Emily St. John Mandel's books now, since every one so far has been such an excellent experience. This one, like the others I've read so far, is a wonderfully complex, skillfully woven tale that I thoroughly enjoyed.
    • 4/5
      Emily St. John Mandel's intricately plotted second novel finds her hero, Anton Waker, attempting to escape from a family that makes a comfortable living through unlawful enterprise. His parents deal in stolen goods. Anton, for his part, worked for years with his cousin Aria to provide illegal immigrants with forged passports and other documentation. But Anton was never cut out for life as a criminal—he’s too sensitive and he has a conscience. While in his twenties, his attempt to leave the family business landed him in a well-paying job with a water system consulting company in a downtown Manhattan office tower. The problem is, to get his foot in the door he used his skills from his previous trade to conjure up some impressive credentials and a Harvard diploma, a scam that has come back to haunt him. Mandel allows Anton’s situation to evolve gradually, over several chapters, while she fills in the blanks with flashbacks. At work, when his deception comes to light, Anton, though kept on the payroll, is relieved of his responsibilities and banished to a vacant office. Perplexed and bored at work, Anton is also buffeted at home by the shifting whims and moods of his fiancé Sophie, who has called off their weeding twice, at the last minute. But eventually they do get married, and head off to Italy for their honeymoon. Perplexed by Sophie, who is often cold and harshly judgmental, Anton had been conducting a casually erotic affair with Elena, a previous customer, a Canadian living in the US illegally using papers Anton provided and who also worked as his secretary at the water company. But Anton’s troubles are only beginning. When Aria decides Anton would be useful for one last deal, she persuades him to conduct a transaction while in Italy—giving him no choice: if he doesn’t, she’ll tell Sophie about his fake Harvard diploma. And to top it all off, a federal agent is on the case, tracking Aria’s and Anton’s illegal activities. Mandel’s ingenious novel is every bit as complicated as it sounds, but to her credit she manages the individual strands of her plot with skill and grace, moving everything briskly along while keeping it all from getting hopelessly tangled up. As the reader nears the end, the twists and turns come in quick succession. Granted, some of details strain credibility. But Mandel’s empathy for her characters and clever handling of her material ensures a satisfying resolution to Anton’s story.
    • 4/5
      This is the 2nd book I have read by the author. The first, Station Eleven, was excellent and was given rave reviews and a National Book Award nomination. Based on that I decided to read more of her work. This novel was very good but had some flaws. It deals with weaving the past and present in a story about Anton who has a shady past and upbringing that he has tried to move away from. The plot revolves around his final attempt to get away from his past. The book touches on our current environment of post 9/11 and the issues of illegal immigration. The book was just under 300 pages and had enough suspense to hold my interest. A couple of plot flaws influenced my rating but overall it was a good read. I highly recommend Station Eleven as the novel to start with in terms of St. John Mandel but she is a good writer with a bright future.
    • 4/5
      Mandel has once again written a totally unique story. Reading The Singer's Gun as like reading a puzzle for the first half--little pieces just kept falling into place and by the time they were all fairly well set, I had to keep reading to see what would happen.
    • 5/5
      Yet another clear winner from Emily St. John Mandel. In fewer than three hundred pages she manages to weave a complex tapestry that ranges from New York, the remote Arctic reaches of Canada and the Italian island of Ischia and encompasses themes of love, loss, fidelity, forged documents, trafficking and murder, with disenchantment, disenfranchisement and the war against terror thrown in for good measure. At times this book reminded me of William Gibson's haunting 'Spook Country', though it also recalled Jonathan Raban's marvellous 'Waxwings'. It manages, however, to eclipse both of those accomplished works.

      Anton Waker grew up knowing that his family's architectural salvage business frequently strayed into nefarious territory, selling goods of dubious provenance. While this troubled him, it didn't bother his cousin Aria who came to live with the Wakers. She took inspiration from her aunt's and uncle's flexible sense of enterprise and, from an early age, developed her own line of business, in which Anton gradually collaborated. However, as the novel opens, he is primarily concerned with the state of his relationship with his fiancée Sophie, who has already cancelled (or at least postponed) their wedding twice. When they do eventually make it down the aisle, they go to Ischia for their honeymoon, where, after a couple of days, Anton delivers his own bombshell, telling Sophie (without any prior hint of such an idea) that he wants to stay on in Ischia for a couple of weeks, with a view toi writing a book. Sophie is unimpressed and departs back to mainland Italy, and thence to New York, almost without a word.

      We are then given an insight into Anton's life in the weeks immediately preceding the wedding. Having striven to pull himself out of the criminal subculture into which his family had been driving him, he had been working as a consultant for a water provision company. Things had, however, started to go awry, and he found himself reassigned to a different office, with alarming consequences. Meanwhile, his secretary Elena, a Canadian from a small settlement well into the tundra wastes of the Arctic Circle, has begun behaving oddly.

      The story unfolds in a series of episodes, moving backwards and forwards in time, and shifting focus. Such an approach can, of course, be confusing or distracting, but Mandel handles it brilliantly, and the shifting timeline and perspective serve to illuminate rather than confuse the flow of the story. She also has an extraordinary ability to create characters who are immensely believable and who remain essentially sympathetic even when their behaviour is far from exemplary.

      Another exhilarating facet of the book is Mandel's mastery of a complex and interlaced plot, and P. G. Wodehouse would have been proud to have conceived and delivered such an intricate but beautifully resolved plot.
    • 5/5
      I have a new author to add to my Favourite Authors list!

      The Singer's Gun is the story of Anton Waker, born into a life of crime that he wants to escape for an ordinary life -- a job in an office, married with children -- that's his dream.

      Emily St. John Mandal explores how our childhood shapes us as she did in her first novel, Last Night in Montreal. In that book, the main character is unable to break the pattern of her childhood. In The Singer's Gun, Anton also struggles to break free of his past life of crime and fraud.

      What I like about Ms. Mandal's books is that the characters are well developed through thier actions. She has found that important (for me, anyway) balance between character development and story. Her characters "walk the talk" of who they are. Sometimes I don't understand their motivations, but that's reality. So, if you are looking for a good story populated by real people, this is an excellent choice.
    • 5/5
      I didn't think it was possible for Mandel to best her dizzyingly great debut novel, but this account of a family caught up in a dirty business is superb. Again, she excels at structure and pacing, moving forward and back in time seamlessly. Highly recommended for fans of the second season of The Wire.
    • 4/5
      The Singer's Gun was a 4.5 star book for me. The story was a look at a young man's life, complicated because of the lies he and his family lived by. Secrets were uncovered, and new webs were woven by the people nearby to take their place.There are aspects of a thriller, of good guys and bad guys and guns and pursuit. But even more than a thriller, this was a personal tale-- How does one person escape the web he was born into, particularly if he uses the tools of his upbringing to stage his escape.The characters were (mostly) complex, likeable and interesting. Anton in particular, of course, but I also really liked Elena. Her one major deception (doing business with Anton) draws her into his web, and she has to deal with the consequences, and then the ramifications of those events.I was intrigued by Anton's family. The only character I'm not sure about in Anton's cousin Aria-- I can't decide if she was too simple, or too complex!
    • 3/5
      The Singer's Gun is not, in my ever-so-humble opinion, a good book. It's not really a bad book, either - I never felt the urge to quit reading, especially since it went so quickly - but there are only so many hours in the day. I respectfully submit that you should spend your time with some worthier work.

      The actual writing is solid, and the pacing is very good; other than that, though, I can find little to praise. The characters, in particular, are disappointing. Anton is boring (all he wants from life is the chance to work in an office) and spineless (he is reactive, never active - and even his reactions are meek and ineffectual). I see how these traits could be endearing, but that would take some kind of offsetting or redeeming qualities, and I couldn't find any in his case. Elena is also bad; she's almost as dull as Anton, and while she *is* capable of decisive action, those actions make little sense - at least to me. Her motivations seem to change both sharply and repeatedly over the course of the novel, and we never really find out why that is. (The minor characters are even worse; almost all of them behave in highly, highly implausible ways.)

      Unless I've missed something, there's at least one *very* major plot point that goes totally unexplained. Another presumably important development happens and then un-happens so quickly that it's hard to understand why it was included at all. And there's really not much of a climax. I know I praised the pacing earlier, and the book has definitely got a destination in mind - but it's a little underwhelming when you get there. Finally, the title is baffling - I get what it refers to, but I don't understand why it's *worth* referring to.

      The Singer's Gun might make a decent beach book, but there are definitely better options out there.
    • 4/5
      We are told early on in The Singer’s Gun that everything is holy. Anton’s mother told him that, “God is the universe,” and from then on Anton looked at the trees, the stars, the train stations all as holy places of creation. Emily St. John Mandel is such a phenomenal writer that I started to see everything in her novel as holy as well.

      The Singer’s Gun is book that only could have been written now, after 9/11, after the war on terror, after the breaches by our government in order to keep us “free”. Anton Waker gets caught up in all of this. He reminded me of Jay Gatsby-searching fruitlessly for the American Dream that was never created for someone like him.

      On an allegorical level, I completely bough into the plot of The Singer’s Gun. On the literal, however, there was one part that still bothers me. Without giving too much away there is one section where blackmailing became involved in the story. I found some of the characters’ reactions unbelievably and obnoxious. Still, in a book as beautifully written as this one, that seems like a small price to pay.

      In the end Mandel created a book that simultaneously shows a world that is holy and unholy, truthful and full of lies. The Singer’s Gun is a book that I will not soon forget, and it is one that I wish I had picked up sooner.
    • 4/5
      This is a good read for a book club. The more I think about it, the more divided my reaction, a sure promise of a lively discussion. The book examines illegal immigration from the point of view of a man whose family profits by selling fake social security numbers and passports to desperate foreigners. Anton's job is to deliver the packages and accept payment from the illegal recipients. Because Anton wants to get out of the business, we're supposed to like him. Further, he has sympathetic feelings for the people he's "helping." Plus, his fiance calls off their wedding twice! Who couldn't feel sorry for that guy! Finally, after several years, Anton finally says enough is enough, a decision that pits him against Aria, an adopted family member who organizes Anton's drops and collections.

      So from this POV, we have a sympathetic look at illegal immigration. But if we see Anton as a criminal, which he is, an unfaithful husband, which he is, and a conspirator in a capital crime, which he is, his good-guy veneer falls away, and his seemingly innocuous crimes have very dire consequences, indeed. Yes, he thinks he is giving a future to desperate people, but ultimately wants only one thing: to get away with it, and live happily off the radar with his girlfriend in an Italian vacation paradise.

      So this book pulled in two directions; a sign of a provocative novel, and a skillfully written one. The author did some technical things I'd never seen before. The title's meaning, for instance doesn't become clear until the story's climax which plays out "off stage;" that is, we are outside the scene, removed from the action. Daring, but it worked. The author is also skilled at weaving flashbacks into the narrative so that past and present seem to meld, dreamlike.

      In the end, I enjoyed The Singer's Gun, but it didn't bowl me over, and after all the good things I'd heard about it, I wanted it to. I almost gave it 3 stars, but I would enjoy discussing this book, and for that, it gets a 4.
    • 4/5
      the opening scene of The Singer’s Gun gives the definite feel of a suspense/thriller novel:

      "A man’s voice: It’s done. There is a sound on the tape here – the woman’s sharp intake of breath – but all she says in reply is Thank you. We’ll speak again soon. He disconnects and she hangs up three seconds later."

      and with that, i was intrigued, but not sold. i felt like a fish watching a dangler, waiting to see if it looked fake or yummy. and whatever else i was searching for to hook me didn’t come until much, much later. it honestly took me until about 150 pages into the book to really start to feel the rhythm and feel compelled to keep going. that slow start was a little discouraging, but not so much that i didn’t enjoy the book.

      Anton Waker has grown up around his corrupt parents, who sell stolen goods, and his cousin Aria, who distributes fake passports. as a result, he has a jilted view of morality, to say the least. and yet, he wants to be better, to legitimate his life and have a normal desk job and a family. but, when Aria needs his help for one last job and blackmails him to cooperate during his honeymoon, no less, things start to unravel and you start to find out just how deep the rabbit hole really is.

      the plot line was interesting and compelling, with enough depth to keep me interested, despite the slow start. as the story unravels, the complexity of both the plot and the psychological depth of the characters is revealed, and this is where the book shined. Anton’s back story, as well as Elena’s, is actually very interesting and worth reading about. the writing is clean, with an almost sparse, dry feeling that suits the tone of the book very well. even the sex scenes are sort of cold, like the characters…

      "Later on in bed she opens her eyes to watch the movements of his shoulders above her, the side of his face, his neck. His eyes are clenched shut. She watches him intently. Trying to concentrate on [him] only, trying not to pretend that [he] is anyone else. [name removed to avoid spoilers]"

      so, i did like the book. BUT, i definitely didn’t love it like some people did. my primary reason for not taking the bait early probably had to do with the fact that i couldn’t stand any of the characters. i mean, not. at. all. Anton was irritating in his holier-than-thou, yet entirely too-flawed character, and Elena was just plain creepy from the get go. Anton’s family was even worse, corrupt and proud of it. so, needless to say, i never really fell into place with any of them.

      one thing that i did love, though, is the title. you’ll have to read it to find out the significance, but it’s rather clever.
    • 5/5
      The Singer's Gun is a great summer read. The book has all of the prime elements for a suspense novel - illegal dealings, investigative crime units, secrecy, blackmail and foreign rendezvous. Anton Waker is a man with a conscience to do the right thing. Unfortunately, he was born into a family of dealers in stolen goods. Anton attempts to make a clean break of this side of his life by landing a respectable corporate office job with plans to marry Sophie, a girl with no knowledge of his family's shadier side. Things don't work out as Anton plans - not really a surprise - and a snowball of events brings Anton to agree to do one last job for his cousin Aria as she attempts to branch out from dealing in forged passports and social security cards.

      If you are looking for your typical action thriller, this isn't one of those. This is what some have categorized as a non-action, action thriller. The story is a woven tale of flashbacks and shifting perspectives of how our characters have arrived in the situation they find themselves in. The pieces are slowly presented to the reader at a steady, introspective pace. St. John Mandel is a great writer for creating complex characters, conveying a blurring of the lines between right and wrong while giving her stories an air of realism. This is a great action sleeper that keeps the reader intrigued with what is going on with the characters, not the action itself.

      A fantastic book.
    • 4/5
      I first was introduced to Emily St. John Mandel's writing in Last Night in Montreal, which nearly knocked my socks off. The writing was superb and the story was intriguing. Even so, I was not sure what to expect with her latest, The Singer's Gun. I was eager to give it a try though. Like with her first book, I hesitate to describe it (which is why you are presented with the publisher blurb above). There is so much to The Singer's Gun. On the surface it sounds like a crime fiction novel, but it really is more about the characters: about Anton Waker in particular, and his struggle to lead a law abiding life and also about Elena who is also struggling to form her own identity and live life as she desires.

      I was struck by how similar Elena and Anton are and yet also how different. Both want different lives than they are born into. Both are going through the motions of life. Anton comes close to realizing his dream, only to have it disintegrate. Elena, in her effort to be free of normalcy and routine, ended up doing exactly what she didn't want to do in the first place; at least, until her own life, based in falsehood, was uprooted too.

      Aria's appearance in the novel was sparse, but the reader gets a good idea of her background and importance in Anton's life. She is resourceful and clever. She is also greedy. I felt sorry for the young Aria, but even then there was something about her that warned me to keep my distance.

      The story is revealed to the reader layer by layer, and not necessarily in chronological order. The novel opens as Alex Broden with the State Department's Security Service is in the middle of her investigation, searching for Anton Waker who has disappeared. From there we go back in time to the day Anton arrives at his office only to discover his secretary , Elena, has been reassigned and he no longer has any responsibilities. He suspects something is up, something related to a recent background check, but he isn't quite sure. And no one around him will give him any answers.

      The novel raises questions about personal responsibility, about how one's upbringing influences the direction our lives take, and about the choices we make in life and the consequences that follow. It also touches on morality, both in its clarity as well as how ambiguous it can be. Nothing is quite as it seems.

      Like with The Last Night in Montreal, the author caught me in her spell with her subtle style and simple yet lyrical prose in The Singer's Gun. I still find myself thinking about the book days later, wondering about the characters and where they might be now.
    • 4/5
      This book took me right from the very beginning, on a mysterious adventure into a world of thievery, lies and fraud. I was captivated by Anton and his life, and though I should have disliked Aria, I really liked her character too.
      This is one of those books you go around telling all your blogger buddies about... so listen up, I'm talking to you! Get the book, it's pretty exciting!
      On my recommendation list too!
      (4.5/5)
    • 5/5
      “Sometimes regular channels aren’t open to you, and then you have to improvise. Find your own way out. Think about it, Anton. What does it take to succeed in this world?”



      “It’s never easy. You have to be creative sometimes. You have to make things happen for yourself.”


      What does it mean to be a good person? Can you justify a tiny bit of crime, maybe by simply looking the other way, if your intent is good? Are you saving the world if you ignoring your own child?

      The Singer’s Gun is an incredible novel, one that has consumed me since I began reading it. Tension and suspense are mixed in with significant questions regarding morality and family honor in a world changed by 9/11. Anton is the protagonist, a man who wishes to wash his hands of his family’s criminal links, but finds that doing that requires its own sort of dishonesty. This novel discusses the complex links that connect us to our past and lead to our future. How desperate do we have to be to make a new beginning?

      The novel makes you consider all these things without ever getting preachy or dull. The stride is brisk, and the characters are all unique and compelling. As in real life, very few people are completely good or completely bad: this explores all the mysterious layers and inconsistencies of everyday life. Anton is appealing: after all, he adopts a one-eyed cat and shows up at his job reliably, long after he’s been quietly fired. Yet he’s lost, gripped by an inertia brought on by not wanting to do wrong but not having the courage to do “right”.

      What I really enjoyed, besides the completely unique characters, was that the plot continually rotates, changing viewpoints, so that you can observe scenes through another characters eyes and thus see their own justifications. It complicates the drama and adds tension. The author subtly weaves little threads of foreshadowing here and there to add another dimension. Some seemingly unrelated minor events appear that actually serve to rough up and texture the identities of the characters. My only minor irritation was that the character Elena kept "looking at her reflection" in the window over and over...I don't know why I got hung up on that but in most of the scenes she appears in, there is some sort of comment on her looking at the glass. I thought it was a nod to something about her character, something that would present itself later, but I don't think it did. It was just a phrase that seemed to get overused in an otherwise perfectly written story.

      I had heard raves about the author before: now I know why! I spent most of today’s unusual heat wave parked in front of a fan with The Singer’s Gun, and was sad to see it end. I should have savored it more! This one would be ripe for a sequel, because the moral ambiguities can never be completely resolved.
    • 5/5
      Anton Waker wants to live a different life than the one he grew up in. So he creates one. But when that doesn't work out, he has to make new plans. Why does he seem to leave his wife on their honeymoon? Why is he not fired from his job but has been moved to work in a storage room? Is his past catching up to him?


      That's about all I can tell you with out ruining the story. I loved this book. I loved her first one, Last Night in Montreal, but I think I loved this one more. Hard to tell, they are both so great. The Singer's Gun gives us Anton Waker, who I found to be a fascinating character. He is low key, yet a character I could discuss at length. But I can't do that here or I will ruin the book for you.

      Mandel's work stands out against others as it is so well-written and perfectly told. This is a writer who does not drag her story or manipulate emotions. She is an unsentimental writer who writes beautifully and really lets you decide for yourself about her characters. Of course, I love them all. She flawlessly moves from past to present and back again without jarring the reader.

      I highly recommend this as well as her previous novel, Last Night In Montreal. You won't be wasting your time, I promise! This is one of those great books that is really hard to review.

      my rating 5+/5
    • 5/5
      Whether you normally read thrillers or not, you NEED to read The Singer’s Gun. Mandel’s characters are complex, conflicted, and carefully drawn. Her prose is beautiful, and her examination of identity—on many levels—and family and the drive to create “a different kind of life” is quietly mindblowing. Mandel’s characters live in the moral gray areas, and they know it. Anton’s father tells him “You have to do things that are a little questionable sometimes…It’s all part of making a living,” and his mother tells him, “It isn’t black-and-white, what we do or what anyone else does in the world.”

      Mandel enters the gray areas gracefully and presents a story that is so well-crafted that she *almost* allows us to forget it is also about something bigger…but not quite. And that is a beautiful thing. The Singer’s Gun isn’t a slam-bang kind of thriller; it’s a slow burn, a story that draws you in, gradually builds up tension at the perfect pace, and lulls you into complacency until, all of a sudden, you realize you’ve been holding your breath for pages at a time.

      I found myself reading and then re-reading many sections of The Singer’s Gun, taking in the story on the first pass and going back for a deeper understanding of what Mandel says about identity, morality, family, and what we will do in the name of possibility. This is a literary thriller of the highest order, a story that can be read for sheer enjoyment or for much more, and I can’t say enough good things about it.
    • 4/5
      And it struck him instantly as the most obvious, possibly even the most important question you could ever ask anyone – How were you formed? What forged you? – but no one had ever asked him that before, and for a second he found himself flailing in the dark. It was corrupt. It was beautiful. My parents were the best parents anyone could hope for, and also they were dealers in stolen goods. I was in love with my cousin. I was raised by thieves. I was often happy, but I always wanted something different. – from The Singer’s Gun, page 47 -

      Anton Waker, raised by thieves and working for his corrupt cousin Aria selling forged passports and Social Security numbers to illegal aliens, one day decides he no longer wants to live an immoral life. He finds himself a legitimate job and decides to marry his squeaky clean girlfriend, Sophie. But when he agrees to one final job on the island of Ischia, events quickly spin out of control.

      Emily St. John Mandel’s second novel begins at the end with State Department investigator Alexandra Broden investigating Anton Waker’s disappearance. The facts are blurry, the characters unformed – the reader feels as confused as Broden. From here, Mandel tells her story in a mostly non-linear style – moving back and forth from past to present to uncover the complicated layers of Anton’s life, and finally bringing into focus the mystery of what happens on the island of Ischia.

      At its core, The Singer’s Gun is a mystery, but through the skill of the author, it also becomes a meditation on how the choices we make can define our lives. Mandel’s exploration of the illegal immigration problem through the eyes of the mostly sympathetic character of Anton reveals not only the very human side to the issue, but also the gritty criminal element which preys on those who are most desperate. At first Anton does not see the negative side to his criminal activity.

      The business was a success from the first month and Anton loved his job for years. There was no career he could possibly have been better suited to, he thought at first, than the sale of fraudulent Social Security cards to illegal aliens in the city of New York. – from The Singer’s Gun, page 86 -

      But later, as he becomes more uncomfortable with his narcissistic cousin Aria and her shady contacts, Anton’s conscience begins to bother him. He begins to examine his life and his moral upbringing, and despite his ongoing affair with a young Canadian girl named Elena, Anton longs for a normal corporate life with a wife and possibly children.

      Sophie and the new job together formed the foundation of his new life; between the straight clean lines of a Midtown tower he rose through the ranks, from junior researcher to senior researcher to VP of a research division. His dedication to the company was mentioned in his performance reviews. He directed his team and came home every night to a woman he loved in an apartment filled with music in his favorite neighborhood, until it all came apart at once and he found himself in Dead File Storage Four lying naked on the floor next to his former secretary in the summer heat. - from The Singer’s Gun, page 109 -

      Mandel’s writing has both an elegance and a simplicity to it. Her prose is understated yet absorbing. She builds her characters slowly. They are all flawed human beings and none of them are all good or all bad. In short, they are believable and complex – and the reader finds herself deeply immersed in their lives.

      The Singer’s Gun explores the idea of identity – Who are we? How are we formed? How do we separate ourselves from our biological bonds and stay true to those we love? Through the character of Anton, the reader sees how one seemingly simple decision can have repercussions which will impact the rest of one’s life.

      If there is a flaw in the book it is perhaps with the character of Broden – a woman who neglects her husband and daughter to pursue the truth, and yet at the end seems to lose steam in the pursuit of her prey. I felt Broden could have been more deeply constructed as a character. She seems to play a central role in the book at the beginning, but then becomes almost a minor character at the end.

      Despite this minor criticism, The Singer’s Gun is a haunting novel about love, loss, and betrayal which kept my interest from beginning to end.

      Recommended for those readers who enjoy literary fiction and mysteries.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! It is mesmerizing and enthralling. The characters are intricate and at the same time stark and simple. What an extraordinary mind Emily St.John Mandel must have to conceive of and create this story that unfolds layer by layer with subtlety and suspense. I was totally drawn in to this story and couldn't put it down! I will remember this one for a long time.