Title: Zero History
Author: William Gibson
Publisher: Putnam
Year: 2010
404 pages
Although I like most Gibson, I'm less compelled by this "Where's Waldo?" of trousers. As with most newer Gibson, I experience the story as a house of mirrors, not just in terms of distortions and echoes, but its slick, cold, ultimate inaccessibility.
Gibson increasingly reads like an ad for iAnything crossed with a bridal column: "Hubertus Bigend, the behind-the-scenes, Oz-like micromanager, was resplendent in International Klein Blue...." I might care more if I had a sense of Bigend really wanting this, or even of watching with dispassionate curiosity to see what happens as the action unfolds--the clothing as proxy or catalyst for a cultural shift would make Gibsonian sense.
I liked the return to aspects of Pattern Recognition, but would have liked it even better if it had been more tightly woven into the narrative (obligatory textile joke).
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