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Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (Paperback)

by Cory Doctorow (Author) "Alan sanded the house on Wales Avenue ..." (more)

3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition edition (Jun 15 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0765312808
ISBN-13: 978-0765312808
Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.7 x 2.3 cm
Shipping Weight: 295 g

Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #19,518 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. It's only natural that Alan, the broadminded hero of Doctorow's fresh, unconventional SF novel, is willing to help everybody he meets. After all, he's the product of a mixed marriage (his father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine), so he knows how much being an outcast can hurt. Alan tries desperately to behave like a human being—or at least like his idealized version of one. He joins a cyber-anarchist's plot to spread a free wireless Internet through Toronto at the same time he agrees to protect his youngest brothers (members of a set of Russian nesting dolls) from their dead brother who's now resurrected and bent on revenge. Life gets even more chaotic after he becomes the lover and protector of the girl next door, whom he tries to restrain from periodically cutting off her wings. Doctorow (Eastern Standard Tribe) treats these and other bizarre images and themes with deadpan wit. In this inventive parable about tolerance and acceptance, he demonstrates how memorably the outrageous and the everyday can coexist. Agent, Russell Galen. (May 5)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Middle-aged entrepreneur Alan, for whom mother is a washing machine and father is a mountain, has moved into one of Toronto's more interesting neighborhoods. The brother Alan and his other brothers killed years ago has returned to hound the family, and those other brothers, who are nesting dolls, show up on Alan's doorstep starving because the innermost brother has vanished. A next-door neighbor has wings that her boyfriend cuts back regularly so she can pass for normal. In the midst of such ordinary oddness, getting involved in a scheme to provide free wireless Internet to the neighborhood and eventually the city seems reasonable, even when it's masterminded by a crusty punk whose gear comes from Dumpster diving. Eventually, Alan concludes that he must go back to the mountain, a home he hasn't visited in years. The combination of Alan facing up to his family and their strangeness, the damage his dead brother will do to everything Alan cares about, and Doctorow's inescapable technological enthusiasm eventuates in a lovely, satisfying tale. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Alan sanded the house on Wales Avenue. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews

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3.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Someone Comes to Stay, Dec 21 2005

By	Amy Lavender Harris (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (Hardcover)

I don't read much science fiction; I'm not sure this *is* science fiction (although it's certainly speculative); but I read this, and I'll read it again soon. It's a sensitive -- although not sentimentally told -- narrative about characters struggling to figure out who they are. Often we conceive that as a struggle to be human. In Doctorow's novel, though, that category is expanded, just as it should be in real life. Is it okay to be the son of a mountain and a washing machine? To love a girl with wings who does not love herself? To be an undead and loathesome creature or a set of Russian dolls? Is it possible to be an anarchist who gets along with a telecom executive?

Much of Doctorow's novel seems to explore the difficulties and possibilities of communication across categories, experiences, and multiple identities. His disparate characters work on building a free, city-wide guerilla, wireless network built out of scavenged electronic parts. His identity-seeking (and thus ambivalently named) protagonist tries to rescue himself by saving others. Telecommunications, books, back alleys, and trip(s) back home to the mountain are vehicles for the characters' explorations of identity and belonging.

I felt as though this novel was written for me. This is a rare experience, but it's a rare novel. You can download the novel, but I recommend buying a copy so you can read it on the subway or while sitting in Bellevue Square park. It's a very good Toronto novel, but should be read in every city.

If I have one criticism, it is that the novel could have used a stronger edit. This is a minor criticism, though: Doctorow's novel is a more than worthwhile read and re-read.

If you're looking for other Toronto fiction to read alongside Doctorow's novel, I'd recommend Dionne Brand's What We All Long For. Both are powerful and even moving explorations of how identity is mediated across memory and space. I like both books well enough that I've designed a undergraduate literary geography course around them.

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1.0 out of 5 stars This book is complete nonsense., Jul 29 2005

By	Mark Rosemond (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (Hardcover)

This book is complete nonsense. Read it online first. If you can make sense of it and like it then buy it, otherwise you'll be kicking yourself for believing the author would create something similar to his previous works.

This is not a description of the workings of a fantastic fictional world, a la "Down and out.." and "Truncat". There is no consistent world presented, just odd stuff happening all around.

This is not a person's creating technology in a world near today a la "Eastern Standard...".

This is not awe inspiring tech of "0wnz0red".

This is like "A place so foreign" devoid of meaning and with the weirdness meter jammed past eleven.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Difficult, but Terrific, Jun 28 2005

By	P. Salus (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (Hardcover)

It's hard for me to know exactly what to say about "Someone..."
It's as though James Joyce met Alfred Bester and they channeled
through Russell Hoban. This is a combinatorial product of
"Finnegans Wake" and "Fondly Fahrenheit." And, like the Wake,
it ain't easy. But it is wonderful. And about half of it
takes place in Toronto's Kensington Market area. I don't know
what it is. I don't think it's SF. Buy it anyway. Read it
and enjoy it.

Thanks, Cory.

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