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The Mirror Thief
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Book Cover
Average Rating
Published:
Melville House 2016
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description
A New York Times NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
An NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A Publishers Weekly BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
 
A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining masterpiece hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "Audaciously well written … the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it."
 
Set in three different eras, and in three different locations—all, coincidentally, named Venice—this “startling, beautiful gem of a book” (NPR) calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado.
 
The core story is set in sixteenth-century Venice, where, on the island of Murano, the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascinationwas it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing?the Venetian mirrors were state-of-the-art technology, subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. Thus, for the skilled craftsmen that made them, any attempt to leave the island—to steal the technology—was a crime punishable by death. One man, howevera world-weary war hero with nothing to losehas a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten . . .
 
Meanwhile, in two other VenicesVenice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa todaytwo other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret . . .
All three stories weave together into a spell-binding tour de force that is impossible to put downan old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice . . . and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of art.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
05/10/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781612195155
ASIN:
B013ZNI4FQ
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Martin Seay. (2016). The Mirror Thief. Melville House.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Martin Seay. 2016. The Mirror Thief. Melville House.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Martin Seay, The Mirror Thief. Melville House, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Martin Seay. The Mirror Thief. Melville House, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Grouped Work ID:
2aa25e1f-67a4-49d5-51ae-af2a04f38cbe
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Needs Update?:
No
Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 15:57:17
Date Updated:
Jun 12, 2018 15:57:17
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 24, 2024 07:18:38
Last Metadata Change:
Jul 17, 2023 19:58:50
Last Availability Check:
Mar 24, 2024 07:18:41
Last Availability Change:
Jan 31, 2024 11:46:56
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 29, 2024 02:17:20

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title
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fullDescription
A New York Times NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
An NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A Publishers Weekly BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
 
A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining masterpiece hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "Audaciously well written … the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it."
 
Set in three different eras, and in three different locations—all, coincidentally, named Venice—this “startling, beautiful gem of a book” (NPR) calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado.
 
The core story is set in sixteenth-century Venice, where, on the island of Murano, the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascinationwas it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing?the Venetian mirrors were state-of-the-art technology, subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. Thus, for the skilled craftsmen that made them, any attempt to leave the island—to steal the technology—was a crime punishable by death. One man, howevera world-weary war hero with nothing to losehas a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten . . .
 
Meanwhile, in two other VenicesVenice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa todaytwo other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret . . .
All three stories weave together into a spell-binding tour de force that is impossible to put downan old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice . . . and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of art.
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
      • content: "The Mirror Thief establishes Seay as an impressive new voice to watch."
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        Starred review from January 18, 2016
        Seay’s debut novel is a true delight, a big, beautiful cabinet of wonders that is by turns an ominous modern thriller, a supernatural mystery, and an enchanting historical adventure story. The first stop is present-day Las Vegas, where an ex-Marine turned manhunter named Curtis Stone descends into the Strip’s seedy underworld to track a famous gambler named Stanley Glass through the prefab canals of the Venetian-themed hotel and casino, but finds instead a mysterious book called The Mirror Thief. On that note, the narrative jumps back to 1958 in Venice Beach, at the dawn of the Beat poetry scene, where Stanley is a small-time con artist obsessed with the enigmatic Adrian Welles, author of The Mirror Thief. Finally, and most sensationally, readers are treated to the subject of Welles’s book himself, the man called Crivano, who in 1592 embarks on a dangerous mission in the Italian Venice, gorgeously rendered as a fantasia of conspirators, alchemists, and heretics caught between the dangers of plague and the Inquisition. Without realizing it, Crivano, Stanley, and Curtis are searching for the same thing: the mystery hidden behind mirrors (both literal and figurative), through which, as Welles writes, “you meet the stranger you have always been.” In sum, this is a splendid masterpiece, to be loved like a long-lost friend, an epic with near-universal appeal.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        March 1, 2016
        "What do you know about the sephiroth? Or gematria?" What, indeed? Cabala and codex, mystery and melodrama--it's all here in this debut novel. Since David Mitchell's Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, every other commercially aspiring literary novel, it seems, jumps around over continents and centuries. This is no exception, with the perhaps unfortunate nexus of the Venices of California and Italy and the Venetian hotel of Las Vegas and a time span joining the Renaissance to the present by way of the Beat era. The cast of characters is suitably broad but with three principal figures. One is a salty, hard-boiled private investigator with a quick temper and a potty mouth ("fuck it, fuck Damon for putting some sketchy shitbag onto him without giving him a heads-up") who falls into the ambit of a sometime gambler, sometime philosopher ("At any given moment, you may be certain of the cards, but the other man--your opponent, your mark--you can never be certain of what he perceives, what he thinks, what he will do") who just happens to know a little something about a book, called, of course, The Mirror Thief, one that is in demand for the odd power it enfolds. It also contains a Nicosian ne'er-do-well who, four centuries ago, sets off on a mission that will find him tap-dancing his way out of the clutches of spies and inquisitors. He's a likable rogue, and by far the most interesting fellow in the book. Seay's great challenge is to bind these talky stories together, which he does to varying degrees of success; often the story seems an exercise in stringing together index-card notes on various arcane subjects, and while the book is well-written and admirable in the ambition of its scope, it still feels undercooked. Entertaining enough, if less a hall of mirrors than a house of cards.

        COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        Starred review from April 15, 2016
        Seay's seductive debut novel is a grandly entrancing three-ring circus featuring a trio of risk-addicted main characters, three avidly depicted time frames, and an audacious mix of metaphysics and crime punctuated by tightly choreographed action scenes. Former marine Curtis, wounded in Bosnia, is now, at the start of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, reluctantly working as a hired gun in Las Vegas, attempting to track down the legendary and mysterious gambler Stanley Glass. Curtis' ever-more confounding and dangerous quest yields only Stanley's sacred text, a book of poems titled The Mirror Thief. The scene shifts to Venice Beach, California, in 1958, where young Stanley, a grifter and drifter, is searching for the poet who wrote this cryptic account of Crivano, a murderous sixteenth-century doctor on a clandestine mission in Venice, involving alchemy, the new art of mirror-making, the Ottoman court, and the Inquisition. Crivano prowls the city streets just like Curtis patrols Las Vegas' ersatz Venice as each is drawn further into a vortex of intrigue and violence. Mirrors, reflections, deceptions, reversals, and illusions multiply as Seay conjures each world with wizardly exactitude and a phenomenal gift for infusing a convoluted yet suspenseful tale with emotional authenticity, visceral immediacy, and philosophical concerns about perception and truth. Shimmering with intimations of Hermann Hesse, Umberto Eco, and David Mitchell, Sheay's house-of-mirrors novel is spectacularly accomplished and exciting.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

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A New York Times NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
An NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A Publishers Weekly BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
 
A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining masterpiece hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "Audaciously well written … the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it."
 
Set in three different eras, and in three different locations—all, coincidentally, named Venice—this “startling, beautiful gem of a book” (NPR) calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado.
 
The core story is set in sixteenth-century Venice, where, on the island of Murano, the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascinationwas it reflecting simple reality, or something more...
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