A film to be made!

Atmospheric, poetic, tragic, dark and light, crazy and sad, with intricately deep characterisations, and entertaining to the end. The author's narration works well for this book, adding a cinematographic feel to it all, at least I saw it while I heard it! A film to be made!

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Interesting story and listen

I really liked the authors narration to this, it really added more to the story than I think I would have got out of it by reading it alone.

The story was interesting and different and I did love following the journey throughout the story by Enzi

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Enthralling Tale

Enzi was born to academic parents but struggled to learn how to read and as a young boy he also developed a stammer. Not a combination that was going to make his early life easy. But he learned that he had an affinity with numbers, he simply loved unpicking the mysteries of mathematics. This was to be his saviour, his escape. When he was a little older his life was dealt another bad blow and everything was thrown into chaos. Eventually this enigmatic loner skipped town – no looking back.

The majority of this story takes place in Montana, the magnificent descriptions of this Big Sky state rivalling those laid down by James Lee Burke. There are to be women in Enzi’s life and he will fall hard for them. These women are idiosyncratic, somewhat wild and one of them is certainly unhinged. But this is the way with this tale, the people who populate it are all very different and yet they’re each oddly engaging, with their motivations often hard to pin down. Because of this and also its rhythm, it’s slightly jumpy chronology and conversations that are often hard to interpret, it felt to me reminiscent of something penned by Haruki Murakami. This impression was only heightened when a girl from Tokyo was thrown into the mix.

Set out as a first person narrative, we learn that despite the difficulties Enzi experienced in his early life, his gift – his genius – with numbers leads him to achieve some success writing computer code. But he is lured into involvement in an illegal enterprise, something we will only fully understand once this tale has fully played out. His life now starts to become very complicated and it’s hard to see how things can end well for him. From this point on we bear witness to an extended dance as the various players duck and weave, each seeking to influence the end game in their favour. It’s brilliantly done and I found it totally spellbinding, never quite knowing how it would finally play out.

The piece, taken as a whole, can be seen as one long confession and on one hand it’s simply a mystery novel but to me it’s much more than that, it’s a rich piece of literary fiction that just happens to pose a question which isn’t answered until the very end. I listened to an audio version of this book, read by the author, his soft, slow and sometimes halting delivery perfectly suiting this story. Have I read or listened to anything better this year? I don’t think so, this one might just take the top spot.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Modern but Chandleresque - excellent

So I got the audio version of this book and a great listen it was. Firstly the narration done by the author is very pleasurable to listen to. In fact he could probably make an excellent living doing voice overs, let alone being a talented novelist as well.

This is most definitely an author I'd read again as Paper Targets is really enjoyable (or as enjoyable as any murder story can get). At times it felt almost Chandleresque, there was just something about the tale telling that was classic in tone. However the subject matter is completely modern.

I confess I was somewhat annoyed by Enzi's insistence on getting involved with women who were clearly borderline psychotic. "Run away" I kept telling him but he didn't listen oddly enough.

However the story is thus: Enzi is a wanderer who lives on the edges of society until he meets Helen. However the relationship is shortlived and he moves on and up. We meet him again running his own successful software/coding company thus exploiting his talent for numbers.

He then meets Kaori who is still in love with her cheating ex and is as unstable as you can get. We follow what happens as Kaori and Enzi both battle their demons whilst a detective tries to trip Enzi up and Kaori is bent on her own destruction.

The story is extremely well told. The characters are all well drawn with the Montana landscape playing a big part in the tale.

Mr Saroff is a talented storyteller and I'll be looking out for more of his work in the future.

The author very kindly gifted me the audio version of his book for which I am grateful but the thoughts on the book are not influenced by that.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!