Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

by Cory Doctorow

Alan is a middle-aged entrepreneur in contemporary Toronto, who has devoted himself to fixing up a house in a bohemian neighborhood. This naturally brings him in contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings--wings, moreover, which grow back after each attempt to cut them off.

Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain; his mother is a washing machine; and among his brothers are a set of Russian nesting dolls.

Now two of the three nesting dolls, Edward and Frederick, are on his doorstep--well on their way to starvation, because their innermost member, George, has vanished. It appears that yet another brother, Davey, who Alan and his other siblings killed years ago, may have returned...bent on revenge.

Under such circumstances it seems only reasonable for Alan to involve himself with a visionary scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet connectivity, a conspiracy spearheaded by a brilliant technopunk who builds miracles of hardware from parts scavenged from the city's dumpsters. But Alan's past won't leave him alone--and Davey is only one of the powers gunning for him and all his friends.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Canada, Science Fiction Fantasy

315 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2005

About the author

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture Of The Nerds and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Brooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel contained two stories that were smushed together in a not-entirely-convincing way: a story about blanketing a neighborhood in Toronto with free WiFi, something I'd expect from author Cory Doctorow, and a story about a man whose parents are a mountain and a washing machine, a magical realism twist that I wasn't expecting. The result felt incomplete since neither story was fully fleshed out, and they just didn't seem to go together. The WiFi plot seemed like it was just a platform for the author to get on his soapbox. A scene where the main character was lecturing about video rental stores keeping too much information on its customers was especially preachy. Rather than finding authentic ways to work his views into the narrative, the author just had his characters parrot his thoughts.

It could have been charming, but just fell short as if it wasn't yet finished when it went to print.

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that makes strenuous demands on the reader, defying classification and pushing metaphor as far as it will go. Depending on whether you throw it down in disgust or allow it to seduce you, you will love it or hate it but you cannot remain unmoved by this stunning tour de force unless you have the imagination of a pea. But then you would never have found this book.

Raised in a dysfunctional family by a remote father and a mother who provides only comfort and clean clothes, resilient A, the oldest of the brothers, is the least affected by his siblings rivalry and the most normal in appearance. A kind of reverse Moses figure, he cares for them all, even the one he kills, with their help. (This is not a spoiler, its referred to early on) When he comes down off the mountain, it is at first to assimilate with the world. An obsessive compulsive, introverted, alienated yet well intentioned man, it's hardly a surprise that he falls in love with an angel who has not realized her potential, and gets swept up in a mad scheme to provide free internet access for all of Toronto.

It's hard to write a cutting edge book because by the time the book circulates, its no longer cutting edge. Doctorow manages to pull this off. He is prescient enough and concise when he wants; otherwise he could out vague a politician.

I enjoyed this book the most after I stopped trying so hard to figure it out and just enjoyed it. CD is fluid writer, reminiscent of Dick and Ballard with a bit of Coetze, Palaniak, and Chris Moore.Surely it will continue to perculate in me and maybe one day I will get it more thorougly. To be read again.

[Juliet · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly weird read. We meet the central character, Alan, as he prepares to move into his new apartment by sanding the floors obsessively, then rocks up on his unknown neighbours' doorstep early in the morning with coffees for everyone, and insists they get out of bed to be sociable. This is the protagonist? How can we ever empathise with him?

The story gets ever stranger as Alan's throwaway references to his father the mountain, his mother the washing machine and his nesting dolls of brothers prove to be literal, not symbolic. Who are these people, ancient gods of some kind? And how does Alan's dysfunctional and deeply odd family story relate to his quest to blanket an area of downtown Toronto with free wireless internet coverage? Well, it doesn't, really.

The book shouldn't work, but somehow it does. My advice is to read it as a story and not try to invest it with any deep symbolic meaning. I found myself drawn to the strange and quite sad characters, and was completely absorbed during a three hour plane journey from Melbourne to Perth. It's not for everyone. There is quite a bit of graphic violence and some tub-thumping about freedom of communication. But never mind that. Enjoy the strange ride.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was only good. I hated the first 40 or 50 pages which is something I can't just ignore. Those first pages seemed very male oriented and I felt like I couldn't relate to the story or characters at all, but once I got passed those first pages I became more engaged in the story, especially once the character of Kurt was introduced. Kurt was definitely my favorite character and he made the story actually enjoyable to me. I was okay with the other characters. They didn't really turn me away from the story but they weren't my favorite characters, though I did really like Kurt and Lyman. I found myself getting lost quite a bit in this story. there was a lot of jumping around and weird interspersed stories and I couldn't always follow where everyone was and what they were doing. It also took me a bit to get used to the name changing thing throughout this book. I think for me this was still an interesting read and I would probably pick up other books more similar to this in the future even if this particular book wasn't my favorite. I think for anyone thinking about reading this give it a try, but don't be ashamed about putting it aside or not completing the book if this style just isn't your thing, because I know for the first 40-50 pages I was seriously considering not finishing this book, which is not something I typically do.

[Guy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intriguing but ultimately unsuccessful mixture of magical realism and technopunk. Doctorow does not lack for creativity, but he does lack focus... and perhaps either a good editor or the willingness to listen to the one he has. There are numerous problems: the two strands of the story don't fit together well, the narrative jumps back and forth haphazardly (at times leaving the impression that whole sections have been inadvertently left out), the ending leaves too much unresolved (in sort of the opposite to deus ex machina, here the authorial decisions which would complete the story arcs are absent), the characters are insufficiently justified (and so appear at time to act almost randomly)... and so on.

If, as a blurb from the Toronto Globe on the back claims, this is Doctorow's best work yet, then I wouldn't bother reading anything else he has written so far. He has promise, but at least with this book it remains unfulfilled.

[Mona · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Too Weird for Most Readers

This book is so weird, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it until the very end. The ending redeemed it.

This won’t be most people’s cup of tea for sure. I have a pretty high tolerance for weirdness, and it almost wasn’t for me.

Prose Is Straightforward

The prose isn’t weird. For the most part, the writing is pretty straightforward (except you have to remember that the main character, Alan, and his brothers, go by multiple names all beginning with the same first letter. For example Alan is usually called Alan, but sometimes he’s referred to as Andy or Avi or Albert or Adam. Same with his six brothers, with names beginning with letters B through G).

Story and Characters are….Unusual

But the story and characters are very strange.

Alan’s father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine. One brother is an island, three brothers are Russian nesting dolls.

There are golems, girls with wings, dumpster divers, anarchists, punks, and so on.

There’s a project to supply Kensington Market, a Toronto neighborhood, with free wireless internet.

Doctorow’s Bizarre Humor

There’s also Cory Doctorow’s macabre sense of humor.

For example, three of Alan’s infuriating brothers (the nesting Russian dolls) come to visit him:


They’d walked around the shop slowly, picking things up, turning them over, having hilarious, embarrassing conversations about the likely purpose of an old Soloflex machine, a grubby pink Epilady leg razor, a Bakelite coffee carafe.

The arguments went like this:

George: Look, it’s a milk container!

Ed: I don’t think that that’s for milk.

Fred: You should put it down before you drop it, it looks valuable.

George: Why don’t you think it’s for milk? Look at the silver inside, that’s to reflect off the white milk and make it look, you know, cold and fresh.

Fred: Put it down, you’re going to break it.

George: Fine, I’ll put it down, but tell me, why don’t you think it’s for milk?

Ed: Because it’s a thermos container, and that’s to keep hot stuff hot, and it’s got a screwtop and whatever it’s made of looks like it’d take a hard knock without breaking.

And so on, nattering at each other like cavemen puzzling over a walkman, until Alan was called upon to settle the matter with the authoritative answer.


A Unique Read

This novel shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.

It’s also entirely original.

Peter Watts Admires This

I picked this up because Peter Watts, a writer I really like, wrote admiring words about it on his blog

Audio Narrator

Actor Bronson Pinchot reads this really well, so I can overlook his occasional reading errors.

[Ruby Tombstone Lives! · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some amazing beginnings in this book. Or some potentially amazing ideas. That is, they could have been amazing ideas, had Doctorow seen any of them through to completion. While that is almost the hallmark of Doctorow's novels, I found that the first three in particular were so scattered and poorly structured that the ideas themselves actually suffered. In this case there are also two main stories at play which really have very little to do with each other: the story of A and his bizarre family, and the story of an open wireless internet network. While the latter is interesting, it does nothing to advance or enhance the main story. If it were any other author, I would assume that the two were connected, and that I had somehow missed the point. In this novel you can also clearly see Doctorow experimenting with a few new literary devices from time to time, but without consistency. To add to the confusion, the protagonist is writing a story, so passages of this story also pepper the text.

That said, I do love the surrealism of this book. In this sense it is completely different from any of his other novels. To give you a taste of what I'm getting at, the family of the protagonist consists of: Father (a mountain), Mother (a washing machine), Brother B---- (a fortune teller), Brother C---- (an island), Brother D---- (a corpse), Brothers E-F-G---- (a set of 3 Russian nesting dolls). All the brothers' names change throughout the story, retaining only their initial letter. So B----- is Bob, Billy, Bailey, Ben..... you get my point. I loved this part of the story. If Doctorow had concentrated on developing this, giving it structure and clear meaning, developing a consistent writing style - it could have been a GREAT novel. I think that's from whence my frustration stems - the sense of having missed out on something extraordinary.

Don't get me wrong - this is a highly entertaining read. I would still recommend reading it. Just don't make it the first thing of Doctorow's you read. The most recent three novels are much better books.

[Astray Penguin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt the book had a lot of promise but failed to deliver on it. The story seems to just be the beginning and then comes to a climax of the side story while leaving the main completely in the dark.

I enjoyed some of the characters, but found them to act at random and be dull in general. Relationships were unexplained and why two characters team up together is just impossible to work out.

I also feel the book is too much of a political statement by the author. The more I read about the Wireless network the more I felt it was forced and the author was trying to write a propaganda piece rather then a good novel. As a geek I found the idea interesting but ultimately a silly waste of time, which while I understand is very much in character with the people involved, it didn't sit well with me on the whole.

I would not advise people to read the book, while it has some solid ideas at it's foundation it didn't make the most of it's resources. While it's not badly written (possibly over sexual for my tastes), it just doesn't feel complete.

[Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

First, read the description. Now you know why I had to pick this book up. It is some of the most original and unique fantasy I've read. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the world Doctorow creates. He's also has some interesting ideas about writing. My particular favorite was the way he played with the names of his characters. That said, I did have some problems with the plot. I couldn't rap my mind around how Alan would get distracted from a family members murder, which could easily be followed by his own, by the idea of city-wide free internet. Just doesn't seem like a pressing issue. I also felt the ending was less than climatic or not fully resolved. City-wide internet included. All the same it was filled with fresh ideas and was a book I couldn't put down. I'll be reading more of Mr. Doctorow.

[keikii Eats Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

76 points/100 (4 stars/5)
Genres: urban fantasy, magical (sur)realism

Alan has bought a house and fixed it up for himself to live in. Adam introduces himself to his neighbors. Then one of those neighbors announces she has wings, but that's okay with Allen. His father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine...and his brothers are different, too. Then two of Arthur's brothers show up saying that a third is missing. They believe a fourth brother, who they teamed up to kill themselves years ago, killed the third. 

Alan is my spirit animal.

I had an insanely fun time reading this. It starts off weird and then...it just keeps going. I don't typically read super weird stuff. Yet, when I read the line "his father is a mountain; his mother is a washing machine" in the blurb, I knew I had to read this. I'm so, so, SO glad I did.

Because Aaron is my spirit animal.

Andy is weird. He isn't human. He doesn't respond as a normal human would respond. He is unreasonably cheerful for no good reason. Andrew does the weirdest stuff, thinking it is normal, like just inviting himself into other people's houses. You can tell he isn't human, he is just too weird to be human. No one is that cheerful and positive. Yet, Adrian fakes being human really well.

Alan’s father was a mountain, and his mother was a washing machine—he kept a roof over their heads and she kept their clothes clean. His brothers were: a dead man, a trio of nesting dolls, a fortune-teller, and an island.

This little paragraph in one of the first few pages of the book tells you all you need to know about Austin's family and how he grew up. Just how does a washing machine and a mountain raise a cadre of boys? They don't. Who does? Alex. How did he get raised? Well, he had to raise himself.

The thing is, if we look past the surreal, this is perhaps the best I've ever seen a dysfunctional family life being described in urban fantasy. Like so many main characters that I have read before now, when they were growing up the family doesn't function. The difference is, Asher has to raise himself and 6 brothers, one of whom is even more dysfunctional than the family is.

Doug was the one he’d help murder. All the brothers had helped with the murder, even Charlie (Clem, Carlos, Cory), the island, who’d opened a great fissure down his main fault line and closed it up over Doug’s corpse, ensuring that their parents would be none the wiser.

Yes, you read that right. Everyone teamed up to kill one of the brothers and hide it from their parents. This is a book of revenge. In urban fantasy, typically we're on the side. We're trying to get revenge against someone for some wrong. Instead, we're trying to stop someone from getting revenge on you. It is an amazing turn of events.

Yet it isn't without merit. Damien is an unholy terror. He cried for an entire year straight when he was born. Nothing could soothe him. When he grew up, he was constantly hurting people, calling them names. Dallas would say horrible things, threatening to kill everyone. Got kicked out of kindergarten within 15 minutes of his first day. He was broken from the start, and no one could fix him.

Again, once you look past the weirdness of this book, this happens to people. Sometimes, children are born broken. It takes a skilled person to guide them into being a person who doesn't kill, who doesn't torture. Yet, remember: Amir is raising all of his brothers. He is a child himself. Here is where this bends away from reality, because all of his brothers kill Darrell when he gets to be too much for him, and they get away with it for years. And then he comes back for his revenge. Again, in urban fantasy we've seen characters who are broken before, but this is the best, most realistic version I've actually seen of this before.

As the eldest, Alan was the first to recognize the early signs of her pregnancy. The laundry loads of diapers and play clothes he fed into her belly unbalanced more often, and her spin cycle became almost lackadaisical, so the garments had to hang on the line for days before they stiffened and dried completely.
...
The details of her conception were always mysterious to Alan.

To you and me, both, Abraham. The entire scene where the washing machine gives birth is magical. Absolutely magical. His musings on how she got pregnant in the first place just.. perfect. The worldbuilding in this book is as best as I could possibly have hoped for when I knew I had to read this book. There are so many excerpts I wish I could show because it just was perfect to read. I don't want to inundate you with them and spoil the magic of the book. Also, I didn't highlight them all properly.

“Who said anything about money? How much do you think UUNet and PSI charge each other to exchange traffic with one another? Who benefits when UUNet and PSI cross-connect? Is UUNet the beneficiary of PSI’s traffic, or vice versa? Internet access only costs money at the edge—and with a mesh-net, there is no edge anymore. It’s penetration at the center, just like the Devo song.”

Unfortunately, there is that. Weirdly, this book is sort of about creating a homebrew internet service piggybacking off a proper internet service by creating boxes that somehow share the internet? Wooosh, as that all goes over my head. I almost nodded off a few times reading these parts. A strangely large portion of this book is spent on this, and I still am not quite sure why. We actually keep going back to it, which ends up confusing me quite a bit.

It confuses me because the narration kind of breaks down at the end (and if you want to make the joke "Better call the Maytag repairman", you've already been beaten to the punch). The entire book we're popping between scenes in the past and present. This is especially confusing because there aren't actually any chapters in this book... Anyway. In the first half of the book, this was pretty well done, moving back and forth between Alvin's childhood and the present. Halfway through the book, however, I had a really difficult time keeping up. It got increasingly more confusing about where we were in the story, because it started being told out of order. I had to backup a few times to figure out if I just missed something, or if something was skipped.

The most confusing part was the story Anthony was writing. At the start of the book, Antonio said he was going to write a book. It takes him a really long time to get to this book. Yet, when he does get to it, it is threaded within the story. I..don't really understand what happened there. I'm not used to reading stuff with meaning to it, and I just cannot decipher what Doctorow means by that story or by threading it through at the end. 

Sidenote: This has been the easiest time I have remembered who was who after having to set the book aside for extended time in ages (I had to sleep). This is hilarious because most of the characters never had a name they stuck to. I found it amusing to see all the names that were used throughout this book for the same person.

You've seen the ones for Allan, the oldest. The second oldest, the fortune teller: Brian, Brandon, Billy, Ben. The island isn't mentioned as much, and one of the quotes above has some for him. Then there is the Deadman: Darien, Daniel, Dylan. My favourites are the nesting dolls. Most of the time they're called in trio, because one cannot exist without the other. Edward-Francis-Gregory, Eric-Fred-George, Ethan-Fabio-Grayson. Even once they were called E-F-G. I loved this naming scheme.

Sidenote #2: Who uses "mons" in a sex scene??

I enjoyed the hell out of this read, and I really do recommend it. This was so delightfully bizarre. 

Check this out if:

* you're looking for something truly weird

* a dysfunctional family dynamic that is strangely realistic sounds interesting

* you want to see how a character in a book can become someone's spirit animal

Don't bother if:

* randomness isn't for you

* a story where the timeline jumps repeatedly makes you less interested in the overall story

* technobabble for 13 year old technology (where a 32 MB zip drive is considered anything more than useless) makes you fall asleep

Read more reviews like this at Keikii Eats Books

[Deedee · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first 18 pages described the perfect house for a bibliophile. Yes! Walls that have bookshelves, floor to ceiling, filled with books, in every room --- perfection. I wanted to live there.

After page 18, the novel focussed on other areas. I wasn't pulled into the events post-page 18, but I was willing to give the novel some time to tell its story.

I tossed the novel when it began describing how our hero's brothers were birthed by his mother (around pages 35-40). It wasn't gross or anything like that. It was just completely and totally unbelievable. Since reading, and especially reading fantasy, requires that the reader willingly suspend disbelief for the duration of the novel; and since I could not suspend disbelief, not for that birth scene; I decided to toss this novel and go read something else.

[Ryun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Up until recently, I’d been avoiding Cory Doctorow’s books. Seriously! I would have these internal dialogues every time I saw one of his books at the store:

Good Me: “Hey, Cory Doctorow has a new book out. He’s supposed to be awesome.”

Evil Me: “Don’t believe the hype, you wannabe hipster. That dude is totally milking his involvement in the Boingboing.net blog phenomenon. He can’t be as ‘all that’ as they say. Nobody’s that ‘all that.’”

GM: “If you say so. I just heard he’s a good writer, is all.”

EM: “Why don’t you buy an SUV and start watching FEAR FACTOR with all the other drones?”

Well, I finally cracked open one of his books, and the Evil Me says he’s sorry.

More: http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/sci-f...

[Eden Frost · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is truly spectacular. It traces the story of the son of a mountain and a washing machine, something that isn't really explained, but you come to feel is somehow right. More specifically, it traces him, his family, and his friends through the story of his life and, more broadly, his family. The writing presents the world in such a way that "normal people," the human race as a whole, becomes its own character, a special dynamic that really makes the story great.

[Three · Rating 4 out of 5]

strange and beautiful but kept me too off balance. i’m too hungry with want for understanding in all things to be so patient kind as is asked... did not make me fear govt surveillance (pro) but did compound my existing feeling of being just left of human (con) also somehow empathized with and revolved around the aforementioned need to understand without actually keeping much care for it, i found. talked about it instead of to it. would not look me in the eyes but left me outside my center of gravity trying to see anyway... lovely characters but i am as ever inclined so much more to fall in love with worldbuilding and worlds and their rules and their intricacies... adrien and i are kindred souls in this manner i feel. interesting to me this book about him is not something written much with him in mind in that way, yes?
read in one day, june 2 2020, while listening to album “it’s a derevolution, baby” by artist the derevolutions.
archie should have more respect for good t-shirts. favorite character: kurt! VERY much enjoyed the names in this book (as someone who thinks about names quite a bit). goodnight!

[Zéro Janvier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Après deux romans de Cory Doctorow que j'avais trouvé sympathiques mais sans être totalement emballé, je dois dire que celui-ci, publié en 2005, m'a semblé un cran au-dessus.

On quitte cette fois la science-fiction classique pour une histoire à la frontière entre le fantastique, le réalisme magique, l'urban fantasy, et une légère touche de science-fiction.

Ce roman est aussi un peu plus long que les deux premiers que j'ai lus de cet auteur, et je pense que cela joue : les personnages sont plus fouillés, le récit prend le temps de se développer avec son lot de mystères et de suspense.

Tout cela a parfaitement fonctionné pour moi, et j'espère que mes prochaines lectures des oeuvres de Cory Doctorow seront du même acabit.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were moments when I was thinking, 5 star book? But no... while this book was a very enjoyable read, something I was glad to read rather than having felt like I was just sort of killing time in a not unpleasant fashion, 3 star style, it has a couple of flaws.

First, it is a novel of x,y,z, and internet connectivity. The IC is a hobbyhorse of the author, but does not actually contribute anything to the plot of this book, other than to give the protagonist an excuse for a friend. Second, weak ending. Only one real transformative bit there, with a non-protagonist, no one else really changes, many things are unresolved, it just sort of ends.

Some good sex scenes. Some clever writing. Some interesting psychology. Some annoying writing quirks that may be code for some secret meaning I can't be bothered to figure out (protagonist and brothers names keep changing, they are identifiable by the first letter of the name, which also indicates birth order.).

Definitely Fantasy, contemporary, not sci fi in any way shape or form.

NOTE: to all my pals who sent or allowed goodreads to send me emails for so long begging me to join-- LAME! None of you are updating your content here. Spending too much time on facebook? The exception is Sebastian, who is pumping out ratings, all 5 stars, no reviews. I guess this is of some limited utility, but really at this point I think I am just putting this stuff up here for my own benefit. Not a bad idea, since I am now reading a lot of books from the library rather than buying them, and this provides me with a record, as long as it's up here anyway.

[Michael Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ooh, Cory, you came so close.

Over the several of his novels that I've read so far, its often felt like the books are less about the story and more about the stuff he actually wants to talk about, with the plot occurring as some kind of affectionate afterthought. This in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, there are plenty of writers who by sheer force of personality are able to craft characters and/or situations that are entertaining enough on their own without unduly burdening the experience with rigid coherence.

Doctorow, unfortunately in my experience, hasn't proven to be one of those writers. Most of his characters are articulate and highly skilled and confident in that age-old Heinlein fashion without the sort of exuberant charm that at least made it fun. Often they seem to be very interested in the things that Cory Doctorow is interested in and magically those ideas seem to make things run better, and at times the stories go to great lengths to prove how much better the stories would work if people listen to the main character more. It's a bit of a wearying approach unless you're super-into people crafting their entire lives around issues of digital copyright and while Doctorow's novels (to his credit) are often short enough to not totally overstay their welcome, its probably telling the only one I've kind of thought was all right was the one mostly centered around Disney World.

With all that said, there was a point partway through this book where I thought he had a chance of breaking his streak of woe with me, where I really thought he had made a convert out of an initially skeptical me, at least for one book. Alas, no.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Considering how much I enjoyed the middle portions, the story starts out in an unpromising fashion, with our hero Alan arriving in a new town having sold his recent semi-successful store and taking steps to renovate a house to make it the perfect house to write a story in. We're treated to enough pages about home renovating that you might keep expecting to turn the page and find that the book was sponsored by Home Depot, all of which proves Alan to be a capable person. So capable and confident that he's soon barging into his new neighbors' house (a mix of young men and women) with coffee to sit and talk about all his plans and how he can help them out. They've just woke up. He's only known them for five minutes. Surprise!

Technically the book should have probably ended there with Alan under arrest (it is Canada so maybe that legendary politeness saved him) if not for trespassing but for the assault of Quirky that then proceeds to be foisted on us. Since Alan's narrating, we begin to get hints that he's not quite a hundred percent human. He mentions a brother who's an island, one who's clairvoyant, one's who undead and another who is a series of Russian dolls, a father who's a mountain and a mother who's a washing machine. And while that sounds like a country song written by someone who lost a bet and was forced to consult with a Mad Libs poorly translated from another language, its not even Doctorow getting drunk on the possibilities of overreaching metaphors. Nope, its all literal. His mom really is a washing machine that spit all her children out over the years in a soup of detergent foam (does she get plugged in anywhere, I don't remember if the book addressed that) and his father is a giant mountain and somehow those two crazy kids met and made love and created a family. Aw.

It’s a bit of a hard sell for a concept and Doctorow seems to believe readers will just go with it as a kind of weird surrealism. The book doesn't even try to ground the concept into the world at large, eschewing even nonsensical mechanics or explanations for a simple shrug and a "Can't explain, that's just how it is." Playing it mostly straight makes for a tonally strange experience at times and the average reader's enjoyment of the book may depend on their individual tolerance for stuff like this. Even if he was trying to be funny it would be tough but taking it seriously means he has to sell you on characters that are five steps divorced from anything resembling reality in the first place. Oh and to make matters worse, he and his brothers are basically alphabetized and answer to anything beginning with that letter, so its not uncommon for Alan to be called four different names on a single page, all starting with the letter "A". If you're stuck for baby names, here's a nerdy way to spark some ideas, I guess. But it just seems to call more attention to how artificial the concept feels, done for the sake of being unconventional and weird. Take that, Sal Dali!

Still, if you can overcome all that the book slowly starts to justify itself better. While Alan's family background remains unconvincing as an idea, the more that Doctorow focuses on what its like growing up in a weird family the book starts to have some weight and flashback scenes of Alan making friends at school (and trying to live in the world with a bizarre family) are actually interesting in that they feel grounded by actual emotions. The relationships between him and his brothers, or with his parents, after a while do start to feel not too far off from other novels that trend similar "coming of age" territory, even if you start to wonder if anyone ever bought the extended warranty for his mother. Despite everything it starts to work within its own strange framework and even if the logic isn't all there, it comes near enough to a reasonable suspension of disbelief that you can excuse it. Almost.

Meanwhile, inside all this there's an actual germ of a story that Doctorow sort of plays footsie with, where Alan learns how to relate to other people socially while still acknowledging that his background is very, very weird but concluding, hey, you can't choose your family. Alan's journey into learning what social cues are before getting punched in the face wouldn't have been an awful story in itself if he had just chosen to go with that, even without Daddy as a consequence of plate tectonics. Too bad it has to become both simultaneously unfocused and over-the-top.

The main thrust of the story early on is that Alan's homicidal brother is trying to murder him (and his other brothers, though the island seems pretty safe) for reasons that mostly seem to come down to "I am sadistic and homicidal", which are reasons, granted, but not very compelling ones. The other leg of the tale is Alan's hookup with local punk Kurt, who is trying to set up a free wireless Internet network that can be accessed throughout the neighborhood. To do this he dumpster dives for components, assembles them and is trying to convince local shopowners to allow them to set them up to expand the network. Alan's all-in on this and its pretty clear that its near and dear to Doctorow's heart as the book proceeds to spend any moments not obsessed with flashbacks or murder (or both!) detailing the intricacies of their quest.

This is okay as long as it becomes clear that all the threads are at some point going to combine in some harmonious, unifying whole. Heck, even a disharmonious whole would have been preferable. But as the book spends more and more time on Alan's attempt to bring the gift of the Internet to the whole neighborhood while occasionally ducking into the "he wants to kill all of us" subplot like clockwork, as if to remind all of us (including himself) that it still exists, you start to get the sinking feeling that the grand culmination isn't going to come at all, even by half-measures.

Eventually it starts to feel bland, despite the increasing goriness of his brother's violence (which starts to feel out of place, not even shocking). Once the novelty of the concept has worn off, it seems he has no new wrinkles to explore with it even when it seems like things should matter (one brother, the more interesting one to me, doesn’t come out of this well at all and it doesn't seem like the book even cares) but instead he keeps plowing ahead with TotalWiFi or whatever until you're hoping that it's some kind of feint to trap his brother. Sadly, no.

Instead it ends almost abruptly, with barely anything resolved at all, as if he was saving something for a sequel but got bored with the entire concept. I'm not expecting Dickens in the way it all comes together but the whole conclusion feels so clumsy in how it goes out of its way to resolve absolutely nothing (his brother has a helper but its never clear what the relationship is . . . that one kind of bothered me) not because he's interested in cultivating a mysterious ambiguity, but because he couldn't work up the energy to pull it all together. He can't even try to write decent female characters, with the main ones either being tortured and murdered (thus giving Alan a motivation), a victim of domestic abuse (who needs Alan to rescue her) or in his mother's case, have no dialogue at all (in contrast to his equally inanimate father, who does have a voice). By the end it just feels hamfisted, a collection of ideas with no actual direction or attempt to say anything (he offhandedly tosses out that there's inhuman people in the world, including the winged girl on the cover and that some folks can spot them but then does absolutely nothing with it), all of which are merely thrown at us as if we're supposed to find the very fact that Doctorow has come up with something so utterly out of the norm so impressive that the feeling will carry throughout the entire book. But even the strangest concept needs something underlying it (Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman" is about as surreal as anything you'll ever read but manages to convey an uneasy atmosphere that defines its own reality) and Doctorow's ideas don't have enough meat to justify the side avenues he takes. Its disappointing, because during those middle portions he gives us a hint of what the book could have been, an unconventional family saga about someone trying to live in the world while trying not to lose the frame of reference that made him who he is. But that would required more development that Doctorow was interested in and once the book veers toward safer territory for him, that's it, and the original idea just becomes a burden. It feels like such a missed opportunity that I wouldn't mind if he ever attempted a do-over on this (perhaps he'll let someone else do a better version) with the stipulation that he present the concept to someone who will ask, "Yes, but so what?" which maybe should have happened the first time around.

[Cleo Pau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cele trei stele ar insemna in mod normal o apreciere asa, mai rezervata, a unei carti. Adevarul este ca in cazul acesta cele trei stele sunt fix media aritmetica intre cat am fost de impartita de lectura. In primul rand Cory Doctorow stie sa scrie. Are cuvintele la el, curg suvoi fara stavilare, se descurca in dialoguri, stilul de scris merge de la argotic pana la savant, ce mai, o placere sa-l citesc. In al doilea rand Cory Doctorow are idei originale de o stranietate aparte. Excelent! In al treilea rand Cory Doctorow e activist si asta ar fi bine, as semna cauzele lui fara rezerve, dar... propaganda intr-un roman ma face sa sforai. A intins-o ca pe peltea, pana am zis in gand "ajunge"! In al patrulea rand Cory Doctrow a scris o carte de o violenta respingatoare. Copii ucigand cu sadism alti copii. Si iac-asa, impartita intre ce mult mi-au placut unele lucruri si cat de insuportabile le-am gasit pe celelalte, am ajuns la media celor trei stele.

Avem practic doua fire narative in acest roman, unul fantastic, din care nu divulg nimic spunand ca este despre sapte frati, ciudati, ai carui parinti sunt un munte si o masina de spalat, caci asta reiese deja de pe coperta. Parintii doar sunt mentionati in treacat, nu prea conteaza, sunt absenti practic si din vietile copiilor de la varsta de sugari, iar povestea fratilor pana cand devin adulti e partea excelenta si foarte profunda a cartii, la fel ca povestea copilariei celuilalt personaj fantastic, o fata cu aripi de inger, careia pana la urma nu i-am gasit insa rostul.

A doua poveste este despre fratele cel mare care pleaca din munte si incearca sa se integreze la oras, in Toronto mai precis, unde se apuca sa creeze o retea wifi accesibila la liber pentru toata lumea. Libera circulatie a cuvantului. Ei, la partea asta e multa pisalogeala. Mai intai si intai isi renoveaza o casa. Si rascheteaza parchetul pret de 20 de pagini sau asa ceva. Cat pe ce sa ma piarda de clienta. Iar apoi bate apa in piua despre cat de buna ar fi reteaua asta. L-am crezut din prima, restul a fost risipire de cuvinte degeaba.

Alte observatii:

Sistemul de acordare a numelor e excelent. Personajul principal poate avea orice nume care incepe cu A. Fratele al doilea tot asa cu B. Al treilea, sporadic, e C, etc. A rezolvat problema de memorie legata de numele personajelor pe care am tot avut-o in ultima vreme. :D

Taman ceea ce le munceste pe personajele astea neobsnuite, care e rostul lor pe lume, de ce sunt ele altfel, ramane neclarificat pana la final. M-am simtit fix ca ele. Mi-a venit sa las cartea balta si sa plec in lume.

Partea cu copilaria fratilor mi-a creat o accentuata impresie de copil traumatizat (de absenta parintilor, de viata grea, de povara cresterii fratilor), care pentru a face totul suportabil, isi inventeaza un tata munte, gnomi care le aduc de mancare, o lume fantastica, chestii care il fac pe el special.

E plina cartea de copii ai strazii. Copii abuzati. M-am intrebat de ce. Cory Doctorow s-a nascut intr-o familie fericita, iar mai apoi si-a facut o familie fericita. Cel putin asa se lauda.

[Steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a strange and interesting novel! I've never read anying by Doctorow before, but I'd kept hearing how good he was. So when this audiobook became avaialable at my library, I snapped it up. I mean, how can you pass up a blurb about a dude who's father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine, and three of his brothers are Russian nesting dolls...? You cannot.
Well, this book has this weird duality with the two storylines that don't quite work out. I loved the parts about A's childhood and siblings, and their troubles (which is putting it mildly). But the other part about giving everyone free wireless internet was good, and almost as interesting...and yet it didn't seem to mesh well with the other part. But I liked it quirky characters and wanted to know what happened at the big ending scene, so I kept on.
Then the big ending scene happened, and it just kind of.....fell apart, and went no where. Everyone walked away, it was really weird. I'm not even sure what all happened, and I will have to go back and listen to the last chapter again to make sure. What I do know is that the trip to the ending was well worth the read. Very interesting, and very different and singular from anything else I've read.

If the two storylines had been better formulated and meshed together, and if the ending would have coalesced into something solid, and made one feel......this would have been a higher review. But since it didn't have those things, I'm going to have to give this novel 3.5 stars, and recommend it to people who don't mind the fizzle at the end.
By the way, some Bronson Pinchot narrates this audiobook. I have no idea if it's the actor from the 80's sitcom or his weird redecorating show from a few years ago, or not, because this narrator doesn't sound like the actor at all.

[Patrick O'Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Title: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Author: Cory Doctrow
Fiction/Non-Fiction: Fiction
Genre: Science Fiction
Date Started Book: 7-15-2008
Date Finished Book:7-23-2008

Before Reading:

What do I expect to gain from reading this?
Knowledge of a new science fiction writer who is supposed to be good, entertainment.

During/After Reading:

Brief Overall Summary of the Book:

Spoilers below

Allen's (or Al, or Albert, or any other name that starts with an "A") father was a mountain, and his mother was a washing machine. He has several brothers; Brian (or any "B" name) can tell the future, Craig ("C") is an island, Davey ("D") is a sociopath, and Edward, Franklin, George ("E," "F," "G,") are stacking dolls. He is the most "normal" of his family. He left at around age 19 or 20, to start a life in the city, and since then has run a series of successful shops -- antique, used bookstores, etc. Despite this, he has never felt that he quite fit in in the world.

When Davey was a kid, Allen and his brothers murdered him. All of the brothers helped, because Davey was a monster, and had killed Allen's first girlfriend. After several years of happiness, Davey returned from the dead, a rotting monster.

Now, after many years, EFG have come to Allen's new house, which he has restored in order to write a novel. They are scared, because George is gone, and if he is not inside of them, they can't eat. They think that Davey has taken and possibly killed him.

Over the next few days Allen tries to help them, though E and F disappear too. During this time, one of the college-aged kids next door, Krisha, begins to taunt Allen, and implies that he knows where Allen's brothers are.

Allen generally likes the kids who live next door; there is Natalie, a skinny little punk girl who gets along with Allen, Link, her brother, Krisha, who Allen does not like, and who does not like him, and Mimi, who allen is very attracted to, and who we discover has wings.

Shortly after EFG have all gone missing, Allen is trying to find them, and he meets Kurt, a local cyber-punk. Kurt is attempting to set-up a mesh-network, which is a large-scale Wi-fi network. This network would give everyone in the city free internet connectivity. Kurt builds most of his equipment with old components he gets dumpster diving; in fact, he makes his living by dumpster diving and having the local street-kids sell what he finds on E-Bay.

Davey continues to hunt and torment Allen, gradually taking away everything and everyone he loves. We discover that Kurt is Davey's "Renfield," the character from Dracula who worships the vampire. Link is also drawn into Davey's plan, becoming a "Renfield" to Krishna.

At the climax of the book, Davey attempts to burn down Kurt's home, but Allen saves him - only to realize that his own house is on fire. He rushes home, and with the help of Brian and Kurt, makes it in time to find Krisha beating Link with a hammer, and Davey there as well. Natalie shows up and attacks Krishna, taking the claw-end of the hammer to the head, just above her eye. This gives Allen time to attach Krishna, however, and Allen beats him handily. He tells Krishna that he picked the wrong man to Renfield for, as Allen is a monster as well -- he just doesn't look it. Krishna runs off, as Allen is attacked by Davey. Brian tries to egg Allen on, just as he did in the first murder (his part in the first murder was to tell Allen how his brother killed Allen's girlfriend, so that Allen would have the courage to kill him.) In this case, Brian tries to egg Allen on by telling him how Mimi, who Allen has fallen in love with, is burning to death right then in the house. Davey counters by telling Allen that Brian always egged him on, telling him where Allen and his girlfriend were, and what they were doing, teaching young Davey curse words, etc. Allen realizes that Brian was as bad as Davey all along. Just then Mimi crashes through the upstairs window, her wings (which she normally cut off) big enough to actually fly with. She grabs Allen and flies him to safety, leaving Allen and Davey to run away below.

Mimi and Allen begin a new happy life on Craig, Allen's brother/island. Kurt survives the encounter, and goes on to realize his dream of networking the city. Natalie survives and takes over a video store where she has been working. They all live happily, but Davey and Brian are still at large when the book ends...

Interesting things about the book's structure:
The author makes use of a lot of jumping around in time and space; he usually does this without much preamble -- sometimes simply skipping backwards or forwards in time 20 years, with only a little whitespace between paragraphs. The trick here is that he also uses the whitespace when he is simply ending a "chapter" or "section" of the book, so you never know for a few sentences exactly where or when you are.

Doctrow also uses a device where he writes a sentence, then in parentheses tells how the character is feeling. He then repeats the same sentence, then in parentheses expands on how the character is feeling. Kind of like this: I am hungry, (looking into the kitchen to see if there were any cookies on the counter.) I am hungry, (but the food that he ate most recently wasn't food at all, was it?) He sometimes repeated the sentence five or six times, and wrote several sentences in parentheses.

Recurring images/themes/other things:
The desire to be "normal," and to fit in. What "normal" is. Losing your individuality in the face of becoming normal. How technology is changing the world. Free-speech, and using the internet to exercise that freedom.

What I thought of the book:
I really liked it. It was very strange, but Doctrow was able to take a bizarre concept like this, and make you actually care about the characters, and look forward to reading what will happen to them next. It was a really cool book.

[Dawn-Lorraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

While reading this book, I wasn't sure if I actually liked it. And I felt the same way after I finished it. But it's the kind of story that draws you in because you want to find out what's really going on. It's the definition of weird fiction.

This is essentially a fish out of water tale - a man (or maybe he's not actually a man) raised under "interesting" circumstances moves to the big city and tries to fit in. Then his family arrives and there's no end to the trouble. Brothers go missing, people get killed, the dead return to enact revenge... oh, and there's this whole thing about setting up free wifi throughout Kensington Market.

This is definitely not for everybody and can be frustrating at times. But I like the writing style and oddness of it all.

[Eric T. Voigt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellently written prose. Sumptuous, really. The story's momentum slowed at points but never for long. Reminded me of Jonathan Lethem's more out-there work, which is for sure a compliment coming from a fanboy as devoted as I. For sure looking forward to trying more Doctorow.

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Because Sean Cote is evil.)

I loved the premise for the book, which was all the information I could get about it when Sean handed it to me in the midst of a barrage of props tasks for the day. I mean, who comes up with things like that? Amazing.

It started off great. I love Alan's flashbacks, detailing his life as an outsider and what it was like living at home.

But then all the technobabble entered the picture, all the stuff with the wireless access points that occupied a large proportion of the middle of the book. I thought Kurt's character was pretty cool, but I just couldn't figure out what was the point of the free wireless points. What did this have to do with a guy who didn't have a belly button? For the time, I tried to run with it, thinking that somehow Doctorow was going to pull it all back in and connect and it was going to be pretty cool and maybe a little mind-blowing.

The payoff did not live up to my expectations.

That's it? I thought. He spent all that valuable time detailing Kurt and Alan's journey setting up the wireless network and that's ALL IT HAS TO DO with the main storyline?

It wasn't even really all that interesting, either. I mean, he could've gotten a pretty good character out of Kurt, and even Lyman, but the rest just seemed like Doctorow geeking out, maybe some personal manifesto on wireless networks or something, I don't know.

I mean, I like rock'n'roll history, and I like incorporating it into my own writing, but seriously, I try not to be that tangential about it. At times it felt like Doctorow was writing two stories, this cool really different fantasy thing . . . and then a story about two guys who set up a wireless connection thing in their small Canadian town. And I don't know of many people who'd read the second story for its excitement value.

And there was something about the ending that felt a little rushed. Some very interesting information came out, but that was it and then it was over. Very shotgun wedding of an ending. I really wanted a closer look at the Benny-Davey relationship, because it kinda came out of left field at the end, and it seemed pretty important but there wasn't much information to digest, so nothing really made sense.

I also wanted to know a little more about Krishna, what it was about him that let him see Alan and Mimi for who they really were. I mean, there had to be something really interesting about Krishna that he could sense these things, because he had the potential to be a really interesting character, very sinister and unpredictable, and actually he was just kinda lame and negative.

I think there were a lot of great things in this book, and that there was some incredible potential in it, but Doctorow just didn't put that potential to the best use.

What I really did like, though, was that it's never explicitly explained what Alan is, what it is that makes him so different from humanity, his own little specialty among his brothers, but by the end you have a pretty good idea of what he might be and could have been.

I also really liked when Mimi and Alan told each other stories, how they start three times and you catch a glimpse of what's happening while they tell the story. Really great.

But the best part of this book is this:

"All secrets become deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets."

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected this novel to be weird, and I like weird novels, but for the most part it just baffled me. The main character is a guy from a very unusual family; his father is a mountain and his mother a washing machine. He has six brothers, one of whom is an island. This is all on the back cover, so I was expecting Doctorow to do something like a modern iteration of ancient mythology. Nothing like that really materialised, though. In that case, perhaps the rock formation relatives were meant to be a metaphor for alienation and misunderstanding within families? At times that seemed to be the case. Ultimately, though, I never felt like enough was explained for the family upheavals to be meaningful. What I did find effective, though, was the fact that none of the brothers had a steady name. Between themselves and within the narrative, each is called be a constant rotation of different names with the same first letter. A for the eldest brother, B for the next, and so on. It was interesting how quickly I got used to this.

Fitting incongruously with the bizarre backstory, the narrating character Alan/Adam/Andrew/etc has several of what seem to be usual preoccupations of Cory Doctorow novels. He obsessively catalogues all his possessions in a manner that suggests fetishistic materialism (cf 'Makers'), uses DIY technological means to promote free speech (cf 'Little Brother), and meets a quirky woman who inevitably becomes his girlfriend (cf both). I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with using repeat motifs, however I think they mesh less effectively here. Moreover, I'm somewhat unhappy about the treatment of female characters; the implication of Mimi's storyline seems to be that a woman need a man to save her from domestic violence. I also hate that scene, found in too many novels, when a woman has been abused, flees, is comforted by another man who has pined after her for a while, then they have magically healing sex. It recurs here, although at least the magical healing powers of sex are less evident than is often the case.

Cory Doctorow novels always have an infectious enthusiasm about technology, in this case wireless internet. It's rather interesting in retrospect, as Doctorow was arguing for decentralised, free wireless for everyone in 2005. Although to me that doesn't seem that long ago, it was before smartphones became a thing, and before laptops fully usurped PCs or had much of a battery life unless you paid thousands for them. So Doctorow foresaw the immense importance wireless would have. The novel does make the good point, even truer in 2013, that if everyone just took the security off their wireless urban areas would be awash with free connectivity.

When I picked up this novel, I expected an interesting twist on fantasy from a writer I knew for writing distinctive, technophilic science fiction. 'Somebody Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town' doesn't really match up to that. The fantasy elements are oddly abstract and meaningless, whilst the most interesting moments relate to much more mundane happenings. The characters and motivations of Alan/Adam/Andrew's brothers weren't explored enough for their actions to engage or move me. This book seemed to have missing parts. It was a bit of a disappointment, unfortunately.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aldus's dad is a mountain and his mom is a washing-machine. He has six brothers. One can see into the future. One is an island. Another was evil, and is dead now. The final three can fit inside of each other like Russian nesting dolls.

As the story begins, he's moving into a new place where he plans on writing a story, although he has no idea what the story will be. He meets his neighbors, a bunch of punks who think he's extremely strange. Because he is. He's very interested in one of the girls that lives there, and one night when he's out with her, he finds out she has wings which her boyfriend saws off for her so she can seem normal.

All of this is well and good, and interesting. As you can probably tell from this overview, this is a story about not fitting in, but trying very hard to do so. As a metaphor, the whole thing is very interesting. This is magical realism, and I like it. What this book lacks is a compelling plot.

There IS a plot, it's just not compelling. The dead brother has apparently come back, and is lurking around being creepy. And Alfie (the main character's name is different every time, but always begins with an A) meets an anarchist sort of dude who wants to create a wireless network that gives all of Toronto free wireless internet. This also functions as part of the metaphor. . . Abraham wants to be connected with all the "normal" people out there. . .but it just ain't interesting.

Here we have an unusual, if not especially likeable, character, and he has a fascinating family, and struggles with issues that we all struggle with. But, every time he starts talking about the fucking internet, I get REALLY bored. And, every time Davie (the evil brother) does something creepy, I just wonder why ol' Dallas (his name also changes) is even in the book. At the end, I still don't know. Nor do I understand why I was supposed to give a fuck about wireless internet. Or the girl with the wings. Or Doyle.

I might have harsher feelings about this book because it took months to finish; Joy and I read it out loud before bed whenever the mood struck us. So, this 300-pager seemed to drag on forever. But, it might be a sign about the compellingness of the plot that we weren't tempted to read it frequently at all. After finishing it, Joy shrugged, and I said, "Well, that's that." We're very ready to move on to something else.

I'm still undecided about Cory Doctorow: I really liked Little Brother, and I still want to read some more of his stuff. But this book, which I was really excited about beforehand, really seemed to fall on its ass.

[Lis Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even after my disappointment with Eastern Standard Tribe, this still looked really interesting, and this time I wasn't disappointed.

Alan (Andy, Adrian) is the son of a mountain and a washing machine, and he has seven brothers. Alan (Alex, Andreas) is the oldest, and also the one who can pass for human the most easily and comfortably. In fact, only gradually do we learn that there's anything unusual about him at all, except for his parentage and his casual attitude about what name he gives people—as long as it starts with "A". Billy (Bob, Ben) can see the future, Carlo is an island, Doug (Danny,) was a perfectly human-appearing monster until his brothers killed him (which hasn't slowed down his career much), and Ed, Fred, and George are nesting dolls. Alan got his early-childhood care and education from the golems provided by his father, the mountain, and then discovered school and the library. After a childhood attempting to raise his brothers (except for Carlo) with decent educations and the ability to blend in to human society, and after a truly horrific experience ending in the death of Doug, Alan takes off on his own. When we meet him, he's a middle-aged, semi-retired entrepreneur living in Toronto, renovating the house he just bought and getting acquainted with the college-age neighbors next door.

His illusions of normality are about to take a nasty hit.

On the one hand, he's getting sucked into a new project, making free wireless internet access available to the neighborhood, the city, and eventually the world. On the other hand, his brothers, Ed, Fred, and George come to visit, with the news that Doug, whom they thought was safely dead, is back and coming after them. And on the third hand, the kids next door aren't as normal as they look, either. As his brothers start dying and Doug starts collecting allies, Alan clings to his version of normality and pitches free wireless internet access to Bell Canada and tiny city merchants and anarchist bookstore operators, and tries to convince the girl next door that wings aren't a handicap. (Silly Alan; Mimi wants to be normal, too!)

All of this could be a recipe for a disaster of a book, and occasionally it does seem to almost spin out of Doctorow's control—but not quite. Somehow it all gels. These characters are fleshed out and interesting, and the story, alternating in time between Alan's strange childhood and his not-quite-normal middle age, is fully developed and absorbing. I'm never going to be Cory Doctorow's biggest fan, but I recommend this one to anyone who enjoys quirky fantasy.

[Patrick H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cory Doctorow is somewhat famous on the Internet.

A journalist, blogger, sci-fi writer, and liberal-copyright proponent, Doctorow should know better than to write a book that makes no sense.

The main character--who is called "Alan" initially but answers to and is referred to by any masculine name beginning with A--and his siblings are all children of a mountain and a washing machine.

One of Alan's sibling is prophetic, one is undead, one is an island, and three are Russian nesting dolls.

And that's just the backstory. Alan has moved into a house in Toronto (coincidentally Doctorow's hometown) and meets a punk named Kurt trying to blanket Toronto in free WiFi. Alan strikes up a quick friendship with him and helps him try to achieve a network-ed Toronto while dealing with the layabouts who live next door.

One of whom happens to have wings.

At the same time, Alan is fending off assaults from his undead brother who is randomly kidnapping the Russian-nesting-doll brothers who have come to take shelter at his house.

Have I mentioned that this book is weird?

While a great many of the plot points seem to come out of nowhere or strain suspension of disbelief, this seems to be more a case of writing imitating life than sheer randomosity.

Just like life, the book isn't just a drama, or a fantasy, or a romance, and Doctorow's writing reflects that. The comedic moments are written wittily, the erotic moments sexily, the pensive moments solemnly, and so on.

In real life we don't always get closure. We don't always know why what happens happens. We frequently have no idea who the hell we're talking to, really.

Doctorow seems to be trying to illustrate this universal truth with his plot...which features the child of a mountain and a washing machine, and a girl with wings. Go figure.

The only thing that I really couldn't digest was the conclusion, which seemed a complete departure from Alan's character. I'd elaborate, but spoilers and the fact that my nitpick occurs over less than two pages dissuade me.

In sum: This is a really surprisingly engrossing speculative fiction novel that would've been terrible and torturous if written by any but a select few authors. Doctorow doesn't manage to pull it off perfectly, but it's definitely worth reading.

Rating: 3.8/5

[Christina · Rating 1 out of 5]

January Assignment for the Booksquirm Book Club: Read to the scene break on p. 25

Is anyone else as utterly confused as I am with this book? His mother is a washing machine, his father is a mountain – he has siblings that are Russian nesting dolls? At first I was thinking this was symbolism, but later it seems like his parents really ARE a mountain and a washing machine. Also, a little confused why “Alan” goes by seemingly any name beginning with the letter “A.” Hopefully that will be explained later. This book is W-E-I-R-D, and unfortunately I’m just not getting it! Don't get me wrong, I like the style - and having heard Doctorow speak at ALA... twice... I was really interested in reading one of his books. But I just don't get it....

February Assignment: Read to the scene break on p. 48

Yep, still a "meh" to me. While I liked it a little more than I did the last go round, I just am not into the story as much as I want to be. I understand what he is doing with the names (A,B,C,D) I'm just not being able to keep the ever-changing character names in my head as to what wacky and ridiculous character-type they link to. This is making it hard, as a reader, to be able to follow the plot when you are constantly trying to figure out who/what these characters are.

March Assignment: Read to the scene break on p. 72

I know that some members of the book club think this book is great, but I have to admit that I am hopelessly lost and keep forgetting who is a nesting doll and who/what Davie is. And now it's more characters with the same first letter of the name to make things even more confusing. Yeah, I'm just not a fan, even tho I really want to like it.

April Assignment: Read to the scene break on p. 101

For the love of all things holy, as if the perpetual name changing isn't enough, we have seemingly ranndom timeline shifts! I'm hopelessly loss and have resigned myself to slogging through until this book is blissfully voted off.

Blissfully, this book was voted off in April!

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine modern fantasy from up and coming sf writer and happening web editor at boingboing.net, with the potential to please both sf and mainstream readers.

This chimera of a novel combines a plot with the geek appeal of a Neal Stephenson novel with a touching family story built out of absudist elements that might have come from Italo Calvino or Kurt Vonnegutt. We first meet Alan in Toronto, after he has made some money running a series of vaguely bohemian enterprises—-bookstores; used clothing stores; etc.. He has painstakingly renovated a house in the student district to be the perfect setting for writing. He is distracted by his neighbors; primarily the sadistic punk Krishna, who is immediately hostile, and Krishna’s girlfriend, Mimi, an attractive young woman who is revealed to have a set of wings, which Krishna regularly hacks off so that Mimi might pass among us. Both recognize Alan as something other than normal, and in the story’s other thread, they’re proven right. His mother was a washing machine, his father the mountain in which he grew up. Among his brothers are an island and three nesting doll-like creatures, all of whom help Alan murder their resentful and dangerous brother, David. Alan is further distracted when he meets Kurt, a techno-punk slowly installing wireless access points throughout the city to provide universal free internet, a scheme that immediately engages Alan, who becomes the co-mastermind. Crisis blossoms when, with Krishna as his Renfrew, decomposing brother David returns seeking revenge, first by murdering the brothers, and then targeting Mimi, now with Alan, and Kurt.

Smart, clever, delightful stuff; it falls short of perfect—-for some reason, alone in the book, the otherwise convincing Mimi tells her story in a distractingly written manner—-but it still stands to be one of the better non-magic-and-dragon fantasies this year.

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doctorow's a really interesting person – editor of the "blog" BoingBoing.net (which always has links to really cool stuff on a regular basis), college dropout and professor at the University of California, Locus & Campbell Award winner & Nebula nominee, pro-Creative Commons activist, and all-around emblem of geek-cool.
"Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" is Doctorow's third novel, but the first I've read. Stylistically and thematically, it reminded me of Will Shetterly-meets-Neil Gaiman-meets-Neal Stephenson...
It's a hard book to describe... because it's very odd. The ‘someone' is Alan (or at least, his name starts with an ‘A.') He knows he's not human. Or is he? His father is a mountain, and his mother, a washing machine. (Literally. However, the book isn't as absurdist as that fact would make you guess.) He has brothers... all at least as strange as he... and some of them much more sinister.
Alan is the one who can most easily ‘pass' – and when the book opens, he has moved into town, fixed up a house, and is planning to write something great, for posterity. However, events may have something else in mind... all too soon, he's mixed up with the girl next door (who has her own bizarre secrets), and is also drawn into the schemes of a new friend, a punk rocker with dreams of free wireless access for all...
I do think the structure of the book would have been improved if its ideas (which Doctorow shows obvious enthusiasm for) had more strongly intersected with or been more relevant to the fantastic elements – but still, this was a strikingly original and entertaining book.
As with all of Doctorow's works, he has made the entire text of the novel downloadable for free – it's at: http://craphound.com/someone/download....