You know how, in this year's April Fool's post, I portrayed my 8th-grade math textbook as a deep and somewhat incomprehensible drama? This one is actually like that.
It's about a guy named Gabriel Syme who gets enlisted as a secret detective to infiltrate a group of anarchists. And ends up being elected to their secret council, wherein everyone is named after the days of the week. He's Thursday, hence the title.
Turns out, |he's not the only undercover policeman on the council|. In fact, |everyone on the council is an undercover policeman|. With the exception of |Sunday, the ringleader, who's the guy that enlisted all the undercover policemen to infiltrate the anarchists|.
|And who also, by the way, is implied by the ending to be God.|.
Oh, did I mention it was also probably all a dream? As evidenced by the subtitle (it's actually called The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare). Somehow this doesn't annoy me nearly as much as it does most of the time. Maybe because it's in the title? Or because it gets weird, somewhat surreal, and kind of dreamlike toward the end?
Either way, this is definitely a thought-provoking book, and would be even if Syme and Gregory (another character who kicks off the plot by being an actual anarchist) didn't sometimes go on opposing philosophical tirades.
Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for... um... I don't actually know. I still wouldn't hand this to a 10-year-old, and it would probably actually make a rather good videogame.
4 stars.
Favorite lines:
"Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it."
Page 23.
(Endnote: Despite the subtitle, this is not actually a horror novel.)
No comments:
Post a Comment