It just seemed a shame as I think the triumvirate of Lucky, Albie and Regina should have been sharper. I never really got to grips with the three people who run the Council and their various wheeler-dealerings as they search for a new name for their town, though I’ve never been strong on office politics or that interested in it. That said, I felt that other minor characters didn’t come over quite as well as the maid who never appears. The way she’s brought into the equation at the end, including the revelation about her identity, is deliciously good. She appeared to sense this, employing a primitive, animal awareness, growing quiet save for her quick, shallow breathing. But then she bellowed, “What are you doing that is so important!” and he decided that her problem probably claimed provenance in both nature and nurture. It occurred to him that she might have an organic defect in her brain. “You are preventing me from doing my job!” The two black stalks of her legs interrupted the light from beneath the door. He marvelled at the ridiculousness of this response, but kept his fingers crossed. “Housekeeping!” She loosed her little fury against the door. Or rather lack of appearances as she can never get in to our hero’s room and her efforts to enter become ever more violent and abusive: I also enjoyed the occasional appearances of the mad chambermaid. That somehow reminded me of Ishiguro’s work also, so there does seem to be a Japanese influence at play here, just not such a light-touch one. At first the name expert’s toe has merely been stubbed, an event we see by means of one of the regular flashbacks to his previous corporate life, and then we gradually see the whole digit become increasingly painful until it takes a very gory centre-stage in one of the main scenes at the end. Reading this book therefore felt more like a trudge than a dance in places, despite (or perhaps because of) the cleverness of it all.Īnyway, speaking about The Limp (capitals deliberate), I rather enjoyed this motif that becomes more and more evident as the story progresses. In fact I often felt the weight of both the satire and the story, not to mention the constant focus on names and what they mean, threatening to crush me as a reader, which wasn’t a particularly refreshing feeling. That said, the way the story is told doesn’t have the skill and sense of spaciousness that Murakami has. I think this was to do with how our hero both does and does not interact effectively with the townsfolk around him and the sometimes surreal nature of his thought processes. There was indeed something very Murakami-like both about him and in the way the book was written. Anyway, I rather liked our main character, the naming expert with the increasing limp. I am after all from Essex so nuances aren’t our strong point. Frighteningly clever really so I suspect I didn’t get all the nuances by a long chalk, but there you are. There are parts of this novel I enjoyed and those I was much less sure of, but it’s always very clever. I’ve been avoiding this book on my reading pile for a while as I’m not a great fan of work with marketing or advertising themes, but I was recently in the mood for something satirical so picked it up at last. What name will our limping word-catcher finally choose, thus deciding the future of the whole town and population? #Apex hides the hurt software#Lucky Aberdeen, the millionaire software entrepreneur, wants the name changed to something that will reflect the town’s capitalist aspirations Albie Winthrop, eccentric son of the town’s aristocracy, thinks Winthrop is a perfectly appropriate name and can’t imagine what the fuss is all about and Regina Goode, the Mayor, a descendant of the black settlers who founded the town, has her own secret agenda for what the name should be. Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead – a satire with too much weight?Ī “nomenclature consultant” – an expert on naming the most disparate things, from antidepressants to cars, and spoons to plasters – is summoned by the city authorities of Winthrop to decide on its new name.
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