- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: WW Norton (Jun 27 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393051161
- ISBN-13: 978-0393051162
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.9 x 2.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 603 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,272,688 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Substantial insider detail and highly developed, creatively drawn characters help make Mark Costello's Big If a highly memorable work. Struggling to find her place in the Secret Service, Vi Asplund has accepted the high-stress position of guarding the vice president during his New Hampshire primary run. Her brother Jens, co-creator of the realistically brutal computer game Big If, can cash in his lucrative stock options soon if his increasingly troubled conscience and mental imbalance don't overwhelm him first. Both are reeling from the death of their father Walter, a respected insurance-adjusting atheist. Vi's boss Gretchen, a single mom, is trying to maintain unity among her team as well as a connection to her troubled son. Her diverse crew includes Tashmo, a veteran agent with an overactive libido, and Lloyd Felker, a revered protection theorist and creator of The Dome, the Service-implemented area of safety.
While Jens reluctantly bows to pressure from his superiors to create human-like monsters for Big If, Felker's mysterious disappearance heightens apprehensions among the team, who are increasingly uncertain about their ability to protect the vice president against a dense and volatile public. Costello offers a remarkable level of accessible and fascinating governmental information, and he's rendered his cast with inventive depth, such as Tashmo's fixation on Ronald Reagan and the woman on the Land O'Lakes logo, or Walter's habit of crossing out the word "God" on every dollar bill. Big If is a rare novel: a complex examination of conflicting American ideals that's also accessible, fun, and totally worthwhile. --Ross Doll
From Publishers Weekly
Costello's second novel, the first under his own name (he published Bag Men as John Flood), may well be the literary discovery of the season. Organized around the presidential campaign of an unnamed vice-president who is barely glimpsed, Costello shines the plot light on the man's Secret Service guard. In Costello's America, the citizenry has given up on politics except as sort of a minor holiday; passionate political commitment belongs primarily to potential assassins. The Dome (the Secret Service's nickname) is headed by Gretchen Williams, a black single mother from L.A. haunted by the specter of riots. Her crew contains two veterans of the Reagan years: Lloyd Felker (a protection intellectual and the founder of the Dome) and Tashmo, a '70s-style philanderer suffering through the waning of his adulterous impulses. There's also the diva of Protection, beautiful, horny Bobbie Niles, and heroine Vi Asplund. Vi comes from Center Effing, N.H., where her father, Walter, was an atheist Republican insurance adjuster. Vi joined the Dome after Walter died (the compliment at his funeral from an arson squad cop was that no one could read scorch marks like her father ), and Jens, Vi's brother, works for Big If, an interactive fantasy role-playing game company. Jens is suffering a crisis of cyber faith: his code is beautiful, but the end products are literally monsters. Costello moves easily between riffs, with a truly magical feeling for insider's knowledgehow a cop sits at a bar, how a real estate agent spiels a sale, how an insurance adjuster analyzes damage. Costello might be this season's Jonathan Franzen, a dazzling literary novelist with popular appeal.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Center Effing is a town between the Ocean and I-95, on the old and settled seaboard of New Hampshire. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Center Effing is a town between the Ocean and I-95, on the old and settled seaboard of New Hampshire. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Women in Black,
By
This review is from: Big If (Hardcover)
With this book blurbed by Franzen and Foster Wallace you know sort of what you're in for: verbal brilliance, unusual settings, darker humor. Costello does not disappoint. His novel about Vi, a Secret Service agent assigned to an unnamed Vice President in the midst of a Presidential campaign, also tells of Vi's larger family, her collegues, their 'down time' lives, and a refracted view of America. While Costello seems to fit right into a certain subcategory of novelists (afore mentioned Franzen and Wallace--what category would that be labelled I wonder?) he isn't a clone. He has a more narrative driven, accessible novel here, one where you get to care about some of the characters; certainly he is very very talented with the language; quick wit.
3.0 out of 5 stars
almost...,
By
This review is from: Big If (Paperback)
This good book would have been better IF:1) The only character who really mattered, Naubek, had been dealt with in as great a detail as a real-estate agent, a potential hippy assassin who is whacked out and Lydia Felker, who I saw as Ruth Buzzy from Laugh In. 2) The Lloyd Felker story line was a bit more clear. I actually wasn't sure if he was alive or dead. 3) The writer, a fine one, worried a little more about his readers and less about his literary intentions. Actually, I don't feel as if I wasted my precious reading time. Costello did a great job of developing characters, except Naubek. But, after some reviews I read, I was expecting much more. I thought the Commissariat of the Enlightenment was superior.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Borrower,
By
This review is from: Big If (Paperback)
Many of the previous reviews either rave or absolutely rant about this book, but I think both are unfair representations for potential readers. The books proponents note that Costello writes well and provides interesting "insiders" perspectives of campaign politics from a secret service agent's point of view, the operations of an Internet business, and modern family life. He really does do a good job of describing the lives of the characters and weaving their narratives together. As for the naysayers, they are correct that the story has no plot and you never really care about a particular character and when the book is done, it isn't something that leaves you wanting more. I am sure this was intentional by Costello, but for my money and I think many casual readers, it is not really what they want. I will not remember Big If in a year, I do not want Costello to come out with a sequel to quinch my thirst for this story, and it isn't the first book I'll ever recommend to any friend. It was worth the short time it took to read, but it would be a better library book, one you don't have to pay for and won't take up space on your shelf for more than a month because you won't want to read it again in the future.
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