I am going to be honest- I was really excited about this book and had it on my Amazon queue for a while. I jumped up and down when NetGalley ok'd me to read the book for review. I am glad that I had a chance to read a Galley version rather than paying for the book because I probably would have put it down, felt cheated, and been upset that I paid for this book.

I am sorry to say that this book became a chore to read simply because I did not enjoy the narrator. When the entire book is narrated by a character that I do not enjoy, things become difficult.

Jeremy O'Keefe makes some really questionable choices which he seems justified in, but as I reader, I had to really question. Some of those choices involve spoilers, but I couldn't help but wonder- why are you so paranoid as you know exactly what you did. We live in an age and the book takes place in an age where if one associates with a certain group of people, even unknowingly, it becomes suspect, especially when living in NYC!

I did enjoy two aspects of the book- O'Keefe's feeling of neither belonging in England nor in the US. In England he is called too American, but in America, he is called too English. I also enjoyed the way his story changes just a bit each time he tells it.

My major problem was the Jeremy's voice in the book. In small doses, I could see where he is charming or pleasant to be around, but in large chunks, I wanted to depart from him. The problem is one cannot because he is the narrator.

I did wind up finishing the book, but I will say that it was more reading just to finish rather than caring. I think this one is going to be a "I love it!" Or "I hated it!" Type of book. Sadly, I fell on the latter side. While not hating it, I just didn't enjoy it and it was due to O'Keefe himself.

I received this book from NetGalley. I have to provide an honest review and inform the reader where I received the book from. ( )

Twenty pages in and I hated this book. Just so pedantic, I couldn't keep from wondering what a bore the author must be. Then is struck me that the author may not be the pedant (he may be, who knows), but the main character certainly is. After about 50 pages I actually began to care about this officious man. After about 100, what the hell was going on with him and I couldn't put it down. After all that, it wraps up a little too conveniently. Still, a very decent page turner. ( )

I enjoyed the elegant voice in this novel. The voice is erudite, assured, educated, and possesses perfect diction and cadence...in short it sounds exactly like an American man whose career has been in academia, and who has returned to the US after a long time living in the U.K., which is exactly who the narrator is. I have to say how refreshing it was to read a book in this voice, after reading so many novels where the narrator is breathlessly speaking in present tense, or is a five year old child, or is some other approximation of a speaking person that has nothing to do with written diction. Having a narrator communicating at this level of diction felt like a clever choice to me, where the suspenseful and unpredictable elements of the story felt unusually charged with logic, and where I never knew whether to trust the story or not. ( )

Paranoids should greatly avoid this novel; one should not feed their manias. The rest of us get a lesson on how pervasive the surveillance society is. Much of what Flanery writes exists today (I know my keystrokes are incorporated into some or many corporate databases) and its not a far stretch of time until all the mechanisms Flanery presents are real ("You're imagining a world where even thought is a matter of public record. It's grotesque"). Not exactly a literary work of art but one that is very absorbing. Our protagonist is a dubious narrator, at best. ( )

Dense but very well done. The novel provided food for thought about surveillance in the United States. The book was driven by character development rather than by plot, and that is fine with me. The density of the writing makes sense considering that it is "written" by the main character who is an academic. Academics are the champs of convoluted writing. I thought that the at times convoluted writing in the novel was a nice touch to stay true to that detail. ( )