SPOOK COUNTRY

'''Spook Country''' is a novel by William Gibson, released on August 2, 2007 in the UK and on August 7, 2007 in the US by publisher Penguin Putnam.^[1]
Gibson announced the book October 6, 2006 on his blog, where fragments of the novel have been posted non-sequentially for some time now, which has led to much speculation on the content and plot of the novel. Gibson has confirmed that ''Spook Country'' is set in February 2006^[2], and is a continuation of his previous novel, ''Pattern Recognition''.

Contents

Characters

Major themes

Critical reception and influence

References

External links

Characters

'Hollis Henry' -- Former member of the early-nineties cult band The Curfew, now a freelance journalist assigned by the nascent magazine Node to write a story about the use of locative technology in the art world.
'Tito' -- Part of a Chinese-Cuban family of spies, assigned by his uncles to hand over a series of iPods to a mysterious old man. Adept in a form of systema that encompasses tradecraft, a variant of free-running and the Santeria religion as opposed to the Russian martial art of the same name.
'Milgrim' -- An Ativan addict being held prisoner by the operative known as Brown, who is coercing him to translate the volapuk encoding used by Tito's family.
'Brown' -- The lead covert operative for an extra-legal organization. He appears to have had law enforcement training, but little training in tradecraft.
'Odile Richard' -- A curator of locative art. She is Parisian, but speaks good English.
'Jimmy Carlyle' -- A troubled, deceased member of The Curfew. He was addicted to drugs. These drugs lead eventually to his death.
'Bobby Chombo' -- An expert in geospatial technologies. His background is troubleshooting navigation systems for the US military. He provides the needed technology for the locative artists to create. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice.
'Alberto Corrales' -- A locative artist living in Los Angeles. His art often displays the deaths of celebrities such as River Phoenix.
''Spook Country'' also sees the return of two characters from ''Pattern Recognition'', Hubertus Bigend and Pamela Mainwaring - employees of the enigmatic marketing agency Blue Ant.

Major themes

The book takes a multilayered approach similar to Gibson's novels prior to 2003's ''Pattern Recognition'' and treats themes relating to espionage, the nature of media (see Locative Art), and esoteric martial artistry, as well as familiar themes from the author's previous novels such as emergent phenomena and the sociocultural effects of technology.

Critical reception and influence

References

External links

★ Node Magazine tumblog with very short chapter summaries of the new novel.

★ Review of Spook Country

★ Review published in The Village Voice

★ Online Review

★ Washington Post Review