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Loading... Lexicon: A Novel (original 2013; edition 2014)by Max Barry
Work InformationLexicon by Max Barry (2013)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Man, I really wanted to like this book more. The whole concept of words that kill was one I loved. The first 60 pages were dynamite and then it just lost steam for me. It took forever to get where it was going. The ending was bang up and redeemed it a little for me. All in all it was enjoyable but left me feeling like it could have been more.
Poets—yes, you read that right, poets—are specially-trained operatives who can change the minds of anyone, provided they use the right words in the right way. This two-tiered narrative gives us Emily, who has been recruited to join the mind-control group, and Wil, who is being tortured when the book opens and as his amnesia recedes, we see more and more of his link to the poets. ... As always, Barry is a social critic first and foremost. The power of his work comes from the absurdist take he has on already-absurd elements of our consumer-driven, advertising-fueled culture. Mark this one up as another winner in the Barry canon. So there are several different genres and tones jostling for prominence within “Lexicon”: a conspiracy thriller, an almost abstract debate about what language can do, and an ironic questioning of some of the things it’s currently used for. The sheer noise of the thriller plot and its inevitable violence end up drowning out some of the other arguments Barry is making. Modern-day sorcerers fight a war of words in this intensely analytical yet bombastic thriller. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Suspense.
Thriller.
HTML: At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren't taught history, geography, or mathematics. Instead, they are taught to persuade. The very best will graduate as "poets": adept wielders of language who belong to a nameless organization that is as influential as it is secretive. Whip-smart orphan Emily Ruff becomes the school's most talented prodigy until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love. Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Jamieson is brutally ambushed by two strange men in an airport bathroom. In order to survive, Wil must journey to the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, to discover who he is and why an entire town was blown off the map. .No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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I just wanted more from it. More character development, more understanding of the control words, the sectors, the barewords, everything. What was The Organization really trying to do? Why did they have all the operatives, what was their main purpose? Why cultivate the talent if they had to live such miserable, repressed lives. So many unanswered questions.
I cared a bit about Emily and Harry and Elliot but not enough. Yates was kind of a generic super villain and I think we needed to know more about his plans earlier on in the tale.
I'm still not sure I really understand everything that went on towards the end of the book and I have no idea who has the word. ( )