Ratings13
Average rating3.8
Everyone Anton Waker grew up with is corrupt. His parents dealt in stolen goods, and he was a successful purveyor of forged documents until he abandoned it all in his early twenties, determined to live a normal life, complete with career, apartment, and a fiancée who knows nothing of his criminal beginnings. He’s on the verge of finally getting married when Aria—his cousin and former partner in crime—blackmails him into helping her with one last job.
Anton considers the task a small price for future freedom. But as he sets off for an Italian honeymoon, it soon becomes clear that the ghosts of his past can’t be left behind so easily, and that the task Aria requires will cost him more than he could ever imagine.
Reviews with the most likes.
I loved it. Every incomprehensible incident, every strange and slightly familiar event. It felt like part thriller (pace and suspense) and part literary memoir and part meditation on loneliness and the difficulty of connecting with other people. A pleasure, and more Mandel in my future.
I was a bit harsh in my last review, and here I've just finished another of her books just days later. Mandel's characters are flawed, but allthemore life-like for it. As readers, we still root for them, because they're human beings, and they deserve to get a happy ending. Except for Aria, of course.