Review of Connector:
I enjoyed tremendously Connector by Paul Seward, available from Barnes and Noble; be sure your platform has internet capability or is already tied to B &N. The title alone is a three way pun. There are more connections than … than …. OK, a story: years ago I found a spider web that blocked off any traffic on that side of the house. The architect was perched in the middle looking wonderfully smug. The devil took me over, and I placed my middle finger hard against the numb and gave her a thump that ripped the web apart and flung her fifteen feet. I went about my business, but next morning she was back. The reconstructed web had three bright, white zigzags on it like a radiation hazard sign. It was as if she said, “Look out. There’s a web here.” I thought, “She’s giving me a friendly warning. It hasn’t even occurred to her that I was low enough to hit her deliberately and rip up her web. She lives on a moral plane immeasurable superior to mine.” All right, there are more connections than in that web.
Paul’s narrative style is deft and powerful. In fiction there is a principle that one character has the point of view. Other characters only say and do. The principle character can also think and feel. The book respects that convention but pushes it to the limit.
Foreshadowing is done so subtly you don’t know it is happening until rach plot point is sprung.
Reading the book is like going through an emotional roller coaster and wringer washer at the same time.
Time and again a scene is described that is so compelling you think, “He’s been there.” But could anybody do so much? The setting is both strange and familiar at the same time, strange in that I have not seen elements of the same era portrayed before (It is set before red top tubes were regularly evacuated; does anybody remember that? Ever read about it?) and of course familiar in that the action takes place in the time we shared. One major point of action late in the book resurrects an idea common then but almost now forgotten (although not quite; I have young friends who carry the torch) but if you don’t know what it was, you’ll learn; it you do remember you’ll see what I mean.
It is a masterwork cunningly wrought. If you’ve not read it, prepare for a treat.
I hope for a sequel.
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