JULY 2020 - AudioFile
Narrator Tim Gerard Reynolds portrays E.A.Smithe, a hard-boiled detective with a soft spot or two for a child who is trying to discover if her father is dead. Smithe is a clone who has the voice of a deceased mystery writer. In a future hundreds of years from the present, Smithe and two fellow clones, a cookbook writer and a romance writer, forge a complex relationship. Reynolds captures Smithe’s moments of tenderness but always maintains the clone’s crusty exterior. As usual, Reynolds is particularly adept with adult female characters, creating expressive personalities without strain or awkwardness. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
04/13/2020
With this wily, witty work, SFWA Grand Master Wolfe (1931–2019) takes readers on a final trip to the far future world of 2015’s A Borrowed Man, in which clones of long-dead writers can be borrowed from the library. Ern A. Smithe, a library clone of a deceased mystery author, is on loan to little girl Chandra Fevre and her bedridden mother, Adah, who hope for his help in deciphering a treasure map and recovering Chandra’s missing father, Dr. Fevre. Smithe, together with the clones of a cookbook author and a romance writer, moves into their haunted mansion, plans an expedition to follow the map to the mysterious Cadaver Island, and succeeds in bringing home Dr. Fevre, a scientist with grandiose dreams. But all is not as it seems, and soon Smithe has to solve Fevre’s murder. This devious, often difficult series ender pushes its Gothic aesthetic to an extreme until the plot becomes a surreal fever dream. Throughout, Wolfe raises questions about the agency of the clones, challenging whether Smithe is really any less human than his borrowers. It’s a sardonic view of human relationships on offer, leavened with a droll, punny narrative voice. Complex and clever, this last offering from Wolfe is sure to please sci-fi readers. (June)
From the Publisher
Wolfe, a celebrated science-fiction writer who died in 2019, stretched the genre’s boundaries in his rich and allusive work … Wolfe deploys sci-fi and gothic elements—an interplanetary portal, a sentient house that builds itself—to explore the question that lies at the heart of many of his novels: What does it mean to be human and alive?”—The New Yorker
“Wolfe fans will spend a lot of time discussing this. All the best detective stories have clues buried deep in them. You need to look back and check for the ones you missed. It’s an enigmatic final note from sci-fi’s most enigmatic author.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Ambitious, imaginative, and packed with twists and turns, Interlibrary Loan is a major achievement from a legendary writer gone too soon.”—Esquire.com
“Complex and clever, this last offering from Wolfe is sure to please sci-fi readers.”—Publishers Weekly
“A winding tale... that will have readers going back looking for details they missed the first time around. This posthumous sequel to A Borrowed Man blends a hard-boiled mystery style with a sf future.”—Library Journal
Additional praise for Gene Wolfe
“Wolfe is our Melville.”—Ursula K. Le Guin
“If any writer from within genre fiction ever merited the designation Great Author, it is surely Wolfe . . . [who] reads like Dickens, Proust, Kipling, Chesterton, Borges, and Nabokov rolled into one.”—The Washington Post Book World
“One of the literary giants of science fiction.”—The Denver Post
“Gene Wolfe is as good a writer as there is today...I feel a little bit like a musical contemporary attempting to tell people what's good about Mozart.”—The Chicago Sun-Times
“Wolfe is sf’s greatest novelist, and overall one of America’s finest.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Wolfe is a sophisticated stylist, and has more in common with writers such as Jorge Luis Borges than almost any science fiction writer both in terms of craft and themes.”—The Boston Globe
“Quite possibly the most important writer in the sf field.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Library Journal
06/01/2020
E.A. Smithe is a reclone, imbued with the personality and memories of a dead mystery writer. Available to borrow from libraries, Smithe is sent off to the library branch of Polly's Cove, along with reclones Millie Baumgartner, a renowned cookbook author, and Rose Romain, a romance novelist. When the three arrive at Polly's Cove Public Library, Smithe is borrowed by a young girl who hopes to bring her mother back into reality, a dead father who may have been dabbling in strange dealings with Millie and Rose, and another E.A. Smithe, who turns up dead. Nothing a mystery writer cannot solve—maybe. A winding tale, essentially Smithe's train of thought as he writes the adventure in retrospect, with an abrupt ending that will have readers going back looking for details they missed the first time around. VERDICT Wolfe died in 2019 at age 87; this posthumous sequel to A Borrowed Man blends a hard-boiled mystery style with a sf future and is mostly successfully. While this can be read as a stand-alone, familiarity with the main character's background story may bring more clarity for readers.—Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton
JULY 2020 - AudioFile
Narrator Tim Gerard Reynolds portrays E.A.Smithe, a hard-boiled detective with a soft spot or two for a child who is trying to discover if her father is dead. Smithe is a clone who has the voice of a deceased mystery writer. In a future hundreds of years from the present, Smithe and two fellow clones, a cookbook writer and a romance writer, forge a complex relationship. Reynolds captures Smithe’s moments of tenderness but always maintains the clone’s crusty exterior. As usual, Reynolds is particularly adept with adult female characters, creating expressive personalities without strain or awkwardness. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
