Lexicon (Max Barry, Mulholland)

The entire town of Broken Hill has been killed off by a deadly weapon: a word. And it seems as though the word is still in there. Only one man survived the attack on Broken Hill, but he doesn’t remember a thing. All Wil knows is that he’s suddenly being forced into violent situations, and that he’s supposed to believe there’s a ‘poet’ on the loose who is out to get him. This is a ‘high concept’ action-packed narrative, somewhere between Andrew McGahan’s Underground or Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, and a Hollywood thriller like Inception. There are layers of social commentary regarding privacy, surveillance, user-targeted content, and more; and there’s an overriding theme of persuasion. Words can persuade, but there are also invisible forces working behind the scenes, creating, shaping and teaching this language of persuasion. They ‘test’ words, like a company would test products or government weapons. Barry is careful, in his books, not to make the satire heavy-handed; Lexicon is a fast-paced read. It’s difficult to guess what’s going to happen, and the reader is particularly invested in a young character called Emily, who (in an almost Harry Potterlike way) is learning just how powerful the world of words can be.

Angela Meyer is a writer, reviewer and former acting editor of Books+Publishing

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Category: Reviews