As some of you may know, I’m a fan of the author Max Barry. The first book I read of his was “Company” (it’s his third book, so I was a bit out of sequence); then I read Syrup and Jennifer Government. More recently he wrote Machine Man – all are excellent books and I can recommend them (and I’ve written about them elsewhere on this blog). Recently his latest novel “Lexicon” was released, and I bought a copy and finished reading it a couple of days ago.
At this point, for the impatient among you, I will give you the short version of the review: it’s utterly compelling, and you will be thinking about it for days afterwards… go and buy it now.
The book itself has a fascinating premise: I don’t want to give too much away, but the book focuses on words used almost as weapons. What if, using the right words, someone could be persuaded to do … anything? The astute among you will notice that this is actually not far from the truth. In the world as it stands, people are persuaded with arguments constructed with words. Using words is a legal way of bringing someone round to your way of thinking (well, unless something like blackmail or some other form of coercion is involved, but let’s leave that aside for now). What Lexicon does is explore the possibility of a world where words can be taken a step further: words don’t have the power to just persuade someone of the truth of an argument; they actually can compel a person to do a particular thing – overriding the will of that person.