The experimental/meta in this book worked great for me - likening it to Inception is pretty accurate. I don't feel compelled by the Situationists' actual goals, unfortunately! Some of the philosophy, totally - random walks, exploring the built-in borders and questioning whether they make sense. But covering the earth with construction and cities because it's fun and playful can't sit well with me when I find nonhuman approaches to space, life, and movement even more varied and fascinating, and it's hard to suspend my personal disbelief when the entire structure of the story is about breaking down that suspension, yanno?

More complaints about [New] Situationists: there's a vast and echoing void at the heart of this book where workers, work, and material and monetary resources should be. For the story to operate, vast amounts of money just has to appear from the usual obscure sources (a pop star's career, a random trust fund partyboy) and the people who actually do the work (installing and building weird and intense architecture, constantly fixing up and repainting NB's sex-apartment) are entirely taken for granted and beneath notice. I feel like it would be interesting to know what the people building the NS lair thought of the plans! At the very very end someone says they now actually physically do construction work instead of outsourcing, but it's tell-not-show and seems more like a plothole filler.

I'm undecided whether I count that all against Disabato, because what she's trying to do here is not necessarily pro- or anti-Situationist, just playing in their jungle gym. The story itself is well constructed and interesting, if you like that kind of thing (I very much do), so! ( )

A great premise. Lady-Gaga-Meets-Che-Guevara goes missing and a couple of reporters (ok low-tier internet bloggers) decide to solve the mystery, in the process unearthing a conspiracy involving an avant-garde artistic and political movement that may or may not exist and may or may not be out to get them. It should have been Pynchon by way of Enrique Vila-Matas.
But it was infuriatingly uneven. I mean it was this great premise delivered with some choppy-ass prose. There were times when I felt like I was reading a Buzzfeed listicle. Also the lead was a clear author stand-in working with a glamorous dream girlfriend. I don't like that kind of wish-fulfillment when straight male authors do it, so it wasn't great here. ( )

Received ARC.
Review on Metapsychology Online ( )

Part novel, part research document, part investigative report, The Ghost Network is the story of a young woman’s (Catie DiSabato) quest to uncover the truth behind the staged disappearance of pop music star Molly Metropolis. The story combines celebrity worship, pop music and culture, conspiracy theories, radical urban planning, cartography and semi-Marxist philosophy.

After Molly Metropolis, who has built “an identity authentic in its artifice,” disappears it is revealed, to a select few, that she was a devotee of the late Guy Debord, a founder of Situationist International, which evolved from a type of urban planning group into a political action group before fading away. Molly becomes obsessed with the Chicago Subway System and all its permutations over the years, both built and unbuilt.

Catie is just the latest in a line of Molly’s followers and others to attempt to solve the disappearance. The book follows the efforts of them all. It’s an unusual, compelling and intriguing novel where fact and fiction freely intermingle. ( )