Waxwings

Is this the definitive book on pre-9/11 Seattle? Of that time just before the 2000 dot.com crash, the years of the first startups and the WTO riots? To one who was there, it sure seems that way. I've never read a book with so many spot-on topical references, all perfectly chosen to act either as background color or foreground illustration, whichever is needed; and I've rarely read one whose characters and situations serve so well to make vivid a particular cultural moment. And I should say right away that it's also an easy reading, fun novel, frequently funny in a dry yet somehow warm way, convincing in its plot and fair to its characters. Maybe the fact that it was published in 2003, just a few short years from the time in which it's show more set, accounts for the vividness and lack of falsifying nostalgia, but it's a rare feat to be so clear-eyed about one's own time, to see accurately without the perspective of distance. Read it if you were there, or if you weren't. show less

Raban’s second novel, from 2003, written shortly after his best-known travel book, Passage to Juneau. It’s the story of an English writer and radio personality living in Seattle and dealing with a conjunction of crises including the break-up of his marriage (so we’re obviously not meant to imagine there’s anything remotely autobiographical going on here) against a background of the late 1990s iteration of the dot-com boom. Meanwhile we get the parallel story of another immigrant, the resourceful but undocumented young entrepreneur “Chick”, just off the boat from China and apparently well on his way to making a fortune.

Raban gives us plenty of local colour and some sneaky cross-currents of Victorian fiction (and a show more fascinating reflection on the connections between Kafka and PG Wodehouse), whilst keeping us well away from coffee shops to ensure that we don’t start imagining that we’ve landed in an even more anglicised version of Frasier. Erudite and cleverly-structured, but it all feels a bit slight compared to Raban’s non-fiction writing. show less

Set very solidly in Seattle, about a guy with an ordinary life who gets falsely accused, and his growing relationship with a Chinese guy fixing his house, and lessening relationship with his wife. Much better than I've made it sound - great characters.

Early in the book there is reference to a box that Tom keeps full of scraps that one day he might turn into a novel. I think that this book is from Raban's scrap-box. - Different stories roughly overlapped. The book didn't finish. It just stopped. I didn't really understand the Waxwing reference (I'd bought the book for old times sake remembering Pale Fire). I enjoyed the trip of reading it tho'.

Slow at first, but then I really enjoyed it-- and although I'm not sure why the author ended it the way he did (in terms of the last few paragraphs), somehow, it was just right.

a well-written description of Seattle during the heady dot-com era

Novel about the immigrant experience set in Seattle.