***
BOOK: Lexicon
AUTHOR: Max Barry
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2013
REVIEW:
Max Barry’s Lexicon is a thriller exploring the power of language and the very roots of communication. Lexicon follows a talented young woman who is selected for a furtive training program that transforms her into one of the most powerful minds in the world. As the storyline flashes forward and backward in time, we learn of an apocalyptic event in the Australian desert, a secretive group of operatives known as poets, and the suggestion that recent catastrophic events may not be what we have been led to believe.
Filled with references to the Bible and other creation stories, as well as linguistic curiosities, Lexicon is more than a page turner, it is also a love story and an examination of human weakness. What does it mean to explore intimacy and love? Can a person feel desire without losing control?
***
RATING (one to five whistles, with five being the best): 3.5 Whistles
***
HOW TO PURCHASE: Amazon
***
ALSO ON OUR BOOKSHELVES:
A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler
A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon
Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan
Cockpit Confidential, Patrick Smith
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer
Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin
Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino
Malice Aforethought, Frances Iles
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer
My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik
One Summer: America 1927, Bill Bryson
Out of the Blackout, Robert Bernard
Plotted: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff
Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart
The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith
The Dancer of Izu, Kawabata Yasunari
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks
The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah
The Mother & Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
Up At the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham
***
Contributor Jonathan Ells lives in Brooklyn with his wife.
***
Image Courtesy of Penguin Random House