The Variant
by John August
(Click here)
Book Summary Information
Author: John AugustEdition: Kindle Edition
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Kindle eBook
Published: 2009-05-14
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 21
Book Reviews of The Variant
Book Review: Clever, Rapid, Good
Summary: 4 Stars
John August knows how stories are built, but do the mechanisms of movies translate to the page? August's do.
"The Variant" is a quick and cunning yarn of spies, liars, nameless cats, and old wars, told with quiet cool. August's prose slides from the expository detachment of a newspaper account to the informed calm of a war vet, serving the clarity and action of the story the whole way. The characters live in their dialog.
The story here expands gradually from a modest librarian to quasi-psychic codebreaking and wartime weird, all through orderly and measured prose. Along the way, we're taught some secrets of spycraft and militarized science by the voice of someone who knows. It feels like John Le Carré wrote a crossover story for BURN NOTICE and ALIAS, in all the right ways.
If this is what we can expect when John August tells us stories through pages of text alone, I'll stick a dollar to my fridge door and watch for the next one.
Summary of The Variant
After 35 years working at the Central Library, Vincent Lewis has perfected the art of unremarkability. But when a terrified woman falls through his bathroom ceiling, he's forced back into a life of gunfights, double agents and paranormal research. The secret he's been keeping for nearly four decades might reunite him with his lost love, or kill millions.This new short story by John August falls into the genre of paranoid "spy-fi" popularized by writers like Jorge Luis Borges and shows like The Prisoner and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
== What Others Say ==
"I really dug the story. Gave it a glance just to see, got totally hooked, and blazed on through to the end."
-- Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen's Union)
"The Variant" is both a good, fun, smart story and an interesting experiment in indie self-publishing for fiction."
-- John Gruber, daringfireball.net
== About the Author ==
An excerpt of The Variant is available at johnaugust.com/variant
About the Author
John August is the screenwriter of eight feature films, including Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride. He wrote and directed the 2007 movie The Nines.
He can be found on Twitter, @johnaugust
After 35 years working at the Central Library, Vincent Lewis has perfected the art of unremarkability. But when a terrified woman falls through his bathroom ceiling, he's forced back into a life of gunfights, double agents and paranormal research. The secret he's been keeping for nearly four decades might reunite him with his lost love, or kill millions.
This new short story by John August falls into the genre of paranoid "spy-fi" popularized by writers like Jorge Luis Borges and shows like The Prisoner and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
== What Others Say ==
"I really dug the story. Gave it a glance just to see, got totally hooked, and blazed on through to the end."
-- Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen's Union)
"The Variant" is both a good, fun, smart story and an interesting experiment in indie self-publishing for fiction."
-- John Gruber, daringfireball.net
== About the Author ==
An excerpt of The Variant is available at johnaugust.com/variant
About the Author
John August is the screenwriter of eight feature films, including Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride. He wrote and directed the 2007 movie The Nines.
He can be found on Twitter, @johnaugust
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