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Satin Island cover art

Satin Island

By: Tom McCarthy
Narrated by: James Garnon
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Summary

Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, 2015

Meet U. - a talented and uneasy figure currently pimping his skills to an elite consultancy in contemporary London. His employers advise everyone from big businesses to governments, and, to this end, expect their 'corporate anthropologist' to help decode and manipulate the world around them - all the more so now that a giant, epoch-defining project is in the offing.

Instead, U. spends his days procrastinating, meandering through endless buffer zones of information and becoming obsessed by the images with which the world bombards him on a daily basis: oil spills, African traffic jams, roller-blade processions, zombie parades.

Is there, U. wonders, a secret logic holding all these images together - a codex that, once cracked, will unlock the master meaning of our age? Might it have something to do with South Pacific cargo cults or the dead parachutists in the news? Perhaps; perhaps not.

As U. oscillates between the visionary and the vague, brilliance and bullshit, Satin Island emerges, an impassioned and exquisite novel for our disjointed times.

©2015 Tom McCarthy (P)2015 Random House AudioBooks (UK)
Literary Fiction Technothrillers
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    4 out of 5 stars
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Profile Image for Setareh Akbarimood

When you focus on the details you forget the whole

I liked the book, quite weird but philosophical. It's not for those who want to follow a simple story, the narrator jumps a lot from one report to another, but I liked to follow his thought. I first read Remainder by McCarthy and really liked it, very original. So that one still remains my favourite.
I don't understand why people didn't like the voice, I actually liked it a lot, it is in tune with the protagonist's shattered way of thinking.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Robert

Pretentious and cliche-ridden

Has Satin Island put you off other books in this genre?

Yes.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Boredom.

Any additional comments?

Pretentious, cliche-ridden and outright boring. One of the very few occasions I have given up half way!

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Kat

the worst narrator I ever encountered.

What would have made Satin Island better?
Different narrator. He stops mid-sentence, emphasises random sounds, and genuinely struggles with words which have more than three syllables. I own over 200 audiobooks, but this is the first one I encountered where the narrator actually COULD NOT READ. Even authors, who are obviously not trained professionals, read their books much more professionally than this man. I am returning this book.

How could the performance have been better?
This narrator should be banned. It was like listening to recorded speaking exercises of someone who is working on their stuttering problem.

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5 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Jon

"Intoxicated by his own verbosity".

Huge disappointment! Kept going - It had to be going somewhere? How wrong I was!

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