The Bottom Line: I'm not going to reveal the ending, but it's a stunner! Raban is audacious and gutsy! You'll either love it or hate it – there is no in-between.
sfarmer76's Full Review: Jonathan Raban - Surveillance
Surveillance,$18.00 Amazon.com, is a novel from transplanted Seattle author Jonathan Raban. In his latest work, Raban exploits the intense fear generated by Washington D.C. after 9/11 – then he uses it to analyze our skittish everyday realities. Raban further heightens his themes by having each character in Surveillance involved in subtle forms of investigation.
Unfulfilled actor Tad Zachary formerly appeared in stage productions. With a downturn in the economy throwing a wrench in his career, Tad’s stooped to appearing in documentaries filmed by the Department of Homeland Security for $1,000 a pop. Zachary is an apartment dweller; his neighbor friend Lucy is a single mother that writes for magazines.
Readers will take a shine to Lucy Bengstrom, she’s so multidimensional. Tad’s longtime friend has just been assigned by a GQ editor to write an in-depth interview-profile on August Vanags. Vanags is a former UW history professor; he’s also authored a bestseller – Boy 381 – that’s just been optioned by Steven Spielberg.
Vanags’ memoir is about his experiences as an orphan during WW II. Lucy’s been offered $4,000 for doing preliminary research on Vanags, and the editor has even dangled $25,000 in front of her nose for the completed piece, but he basically thinks “it’s a unicorn hunt,” since Vanags is about as unreachable as J.D. Salinger.
Essentially what occurs next is this: while conducting research, Lucy begins to doubt the veracity of Augie’s memoir. She concludes her angle of attack should be to discredit him. Something about the man is fishy, unauthentic. After some scrambling on the phone, she scores a face to face meeting with the curmudgeon – perhaps too easily.
In any event, the backdrop of Raban’s novel is claustrophobic. Concrete barriers and barbed wire are being erected all over Seattle. Magnetometers are appearing in schools; spy cams are sprouting from every available telephone pole; interstate roadblocks are routine. Worse yet, Congress just hustled through a biometric National ID card, deadline September for Washington state.
Lucy can’t stand the stifling security measures in Seattle, but she’s coping; by burying herself in work, by drinking wine with her neighbor Tad, by going on long drives with her daughter Alida in the Spider. On her way to see Vanags for the first time though, Lucy nearly involves herself in a fatal crash.
Lucy’s girl Alida and Alida’s sixth grade friends Gail and Finn also become integral to the novel. Alida is concerned about her mother’s drinking, so she’s always inspecting the bottles in the apartment. Finn is designing a web page for Gail, because Gail has bribed him with blueberry muffins. Later on, Finn is nabbed by the F.B.I.
August Vanags is written up as a caricature of a Republican, sort of a cross between Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld. To tell the truth, Raban makes him too likable. Anyways, Lucy and Alida are invited up to his house, where they also meet his wife Minna Vanags and are allowed to bond and socialize.
Needless complication enters Lucy’s life when – while trying to complete the magazine assignment – her apartment building is sold to Charles Lee, an Asian parking lot magnate that recently purchased her dwelling; Lucy fears he intends to skyrocket rents or tear the apartment building down. When he enters her apartment while she’s away, Lucy steams.
Concern about Mr. Lee leads Zachary to investigate; Tad turns up an article suggesting Charles Lee has assumed someone else’s identity, pulls death and birth certificates for the real Charles Lee, and starts pursuing bank records concerning his rent deposits. Coincidentally, Finn got in trouble for installing a Trojan horse on that same bank’s servers.
Ending this review is difficult. I’ve given you a quick glance at the major players, and a sliver of plot. Mr. Raban crammed a ton of back story into his 258 pages (Alida’s conception, the firing of Alida’s teacher, the murder of Lucy’s father, Tad’s struggle with AIDS) which lent Surveillance, moments of complexity and strong emotion.
Visit the Publisher's Official Website: www.pantheonbooks.com www.randomhouse.com
Visit the Author’s Wikipedia entry: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Raban
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