I love the way that William Gibson writes women. Gibson usually has both male and female protagonists in his books, who may or may not even see one another during the course of the story (the almost-but-never-quite is something he comes back to again and again). Regardless, his female characters are always as strong and capable as the men (and often more so). Cayce Pollard is a wonderful character, and I think that Gibson deftly avoided all the usual pitfalls of men writing female characters.

For instance, in this book there is no male character of even approximately equal importance to Cayce. And I like that. She seeks help from time to time, but ultimately, Cayce stands on her own. The book is nota love story. Well, not in anything like the traditional sense.

The plot of the book revolves around Cayce's attempts to track down the origin of mysterious video clips that have surfaced on the internet. The disjointed, nonsequential footage is almost always of a couple, walking, talking, kissing. No one knows who the couple is, where the footage is being shot, when it was shot, what sequence the clips are supposed to be viewed in, etc. The first clip footage was simply discovered uploaded to a video site several years before, and an underground following has tracked down and collected all of the subsequently released clips. Fans make their own compilations, putting the videos in the order they think they go.

Cayce is a member of one of these online fandoms, but her day job is as a consultant to advertising firms: she is able to 'know' somehow whether certain advertising approaches will be successful, which happens because the ones that are successful are able to tap into culture in a particular way that Cayce is aware of and sensitive to. One of these firms becomes interested in tracking down the origin of the footage as a way of discovering just how it is that something can become an underground sensation, and puts Cayce on the job.

I can't really say any more without ruining the story. But there are Gibson's usual array of fascinating secondary characters who manage to seem both completely human and completely unique. And there are strong existential themes throughout: what is it that comes of always experiencing emotion and touch at one remove (through the camera)? What is the ultimate effect on the photographer, and what is the effect on the audience? This book is an anthem of both unity and alienation.