A Borrowed Man

Very late Wolfe; his second to last. Still tricksy and deep, but not as cryptic or intricate as some of his other books. I'm not saying he'd lost his fastball, this would be among most authors' most inventive novels. And, the comparative simplicity is a good thing, maybe, as it makes the book much more fun as a straight read, rather than a homework assignment. It's completely approachable as a scifi noir detective story, with some darkness and fog at the edges.

Almost all of Wolfe's novels are, at heart, detective stories, or at least they felt that way to me. That might be because Wolfe wrote his main characters with an analytical bent, like he had. They spend a lot of time thinking, and then they figure out the answer. And they were show more men with many skills. Bruised, curious, idealistic, and experienced. In Raymond Chandler's words, "a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man". By being a former professional writer living outside his own time, Smithe's role as a stand-in for the 84-year old author becomes something you can see right away, rather than something you have to notice as a trend across many books.

Anyway, this was a fun read. It might be a good entry point for people interested in Wolfe Lite. But what do I know, you have to read these things at least twice to get a handle on them, and this was my first go round. show less

Another strange little tale from the mind of Gene Wolfe. This one is more straight-forward than most of his work but is still twisty and weird in places. The conceit, (clones as public property in a post-modern era), is nicely rendered via the fist-person narration of one such clone. On loan from the library to a wealthy and beautiful young heiress, our protagonist quickly finds himself in too deep in a double-homicide investigation that leads to strange out-of-this-world discoveries. A short, fast, and entertaining read that moves from detective noir to interplanetary science-fiction and back again with deceptive ease.

3.75 stars!
Clearly, Gene Wolfe wrote many works of depth and breadth and of inestimable worth to genre fiction, if we deign to call it that.

A Borrowed Man was his final published novel, from 2015, published 45 years after his first one. In this slightly futuristic tale, he adopts an unaccustomed voice and tells an unpredictable tale with a wacky conceit. I can see how the narrator, Ern A. Smithe, will fluster a lot of fans, but since this character was a mystery writer - before his 'recloning' - I found the somewhat average to sub-par word choice strangely appropriate. What is more likely, that Gene Wolfe wrote all of these mediocre sentences in order to construct the illusion of reality around his pulp concoction world building and show more further obfuscate his satire and sleights of symbolism, or he suddenly lost his writing ability after 45 years? You can believe the reviewers who bash the book if you want, but you'd be missing out on another absorbing, fast-paced, layered Wolfian creation.

In this version of the future, libraries have other uses, 'bots, and clones intrude into the lives of jaded aristocrats, and murder is an act as cliched as it is serious. What better way to poke fun at the mystery genre than to write a mystery with a mystery writer as the main character, and put this character through the ringer in ways that he could not predict or extricate himself from?

Aside from the subtle comments on publishing, genres, and the subliminal library puns there is an underlying sadness to Smithe's less-than-human life, his lost love, and the tired tropes he embodies. Like Wolfe's An Evil Guest, what might have been a clever, light reading experience is complicated by contortions of reality and the slow-burn surprise of the ending. Relish the hidden clues in minor details, and even if you don't read between the lines, you will be entertained. show less

Wolfe gives us a relatively straightforward book for him--or else I just missed some subtleties. He begins with the brilliant idea that after cloning has been accomplished, clones of minor authors are available in public libraries, for consultation or checkout. Our narrator, E.A. Smithe, is such a person. Smithe is checked out by Collette, a woman with a mysterious family: her scientist father inexplicably became very rich before disappearing, and her brother was recently murdered. So we've got a blend of science-fiction and mystery.

We don't get an exposition of the rules that govern the lives of such characters, but it seems that Smithe has a good bit of free will. He seems to feel bound by the workings of the library, and concerned show more that he be checked out regularly, for fear that he'll be burned as superfluous. He's not fully human and lacks certain rights, but he can do the things that most people can do.

Mysterious agents separate Smithe from Collette, and he spends most of the book looking for her and figuring out what's going on in her father's strange laboratory. The lab can be opened only by using a copy (the only copy?) of one of Smithe's obscure books, and it functions as a portal to another world.

So there's all kinds of cool ideas floating around here, and I was disappointed that Wolfe didn't do more with them. There are a lot of aspects of this world that are not thoroughly explored. For those who have read Wolfe widely, I'd say there are similarities to Free Live Free and perhaps Castleview in the tone and feel of the story. Smithe is another of his characters who are very good at figuring things out. It just seemed to me that Wolfe had a very rich vein open and could have gotten more from it. show less

A fun, tricky, disturbing, hilarious mystery by my fave, the old master himself. The conceit is that it's told from the perspective of an unusual library resource--a clone of an author, who can be checked out by "real" humans.

I originally thought this was billed as a science fiction book, but it is really a murder mystery set in a partially scifi world of a near future. Fun and very clever, but not his best book IMO.

This was certainly less strange than the rest of Wolfe's work that I've had the pleasure to read, but I kinda expected something a bit more progressive. I mean, the idea behind a genetic library that reconstructs men and their lives to be checked out of a library *does* sound pretty interesting, and I can think of several storylines right off the bat that would really lend themselves to a very interesting story, even when it's an author who had been dead for a hundred years coming back to play a part in someone's game.

But here's where managed expectations come in very nicely. If I had gone into this just knowing that we're dealing with a mildly clever *character* concept to be dumped into a full blown Mystery novel that also happens to show more be SF, I wouldn't have much of an issue with it at all. I tweaked my expectations and soon just got into the novel for what it was and it was fine.

There was a shadow of Castle (tv), a shadow of [b:Kiln People|96478|Kiln People|David Brin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1287261951s/96478.jpg|2300358], and even a pretty cool jaunt into a different world, but mainly it was all mystery-times following all normal conventions. It was entertaining and standard, with even reveals and a solid end.

On the other hand, if you're reading the novel from a slightly deeper perspective, you'll be pleased to note the over and undertones of the book publishing industry, including shelf-life for novels, reprints, and expectations for new works. Read this way, it's a very entertaining novel and extremely tongue-in-cheek.

If you don't care about that kind of thing, however, you might not really connect with the character concept too much. Maybe. It just feels a bit odd with a few major logical gaps. In other words, this is genuine Gene Wolfe. :) show less