Big IfBig If
Title rated 4 out of 5 stars, based on 3 ratings(3 ratings)
Book, 2002
Current format, Book, 2002, 1st ed, Available .Book, 2002
Current format, Book, 2002, 1st ed, Available . Offered in 0 more formatsIn the wake of her father's death and the vice president's campaign for the presidency, Secret Service agent Vi Asplund returns home to her computer genius brother, who is poised to make a fortune on a nihilistic video game.
In the wake of her father's death and the vice president's campaign for the presidency, young Secret Service agent Vi Asplund returns to her New Hampshire home to the side of her eccentric computer genius brother, who is poised to make a fortune on a nihilistic video game. 20,000 first printing.
It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people seem very, very tense. Mark Costello's funny, unsettling novel, a riff on recent history, tells the story of five Americans - bodyguards and soccer dads and campaign volunteers - longing for security in the crowd lines and in their own lives.
Vi Asplund and her brother, Jens, grew up in a village on New Hampshire's coast, children of an atheist insurance man. Their early memories are of morning drives to scenes of damage - a paper train derailed, a farmhand with one foot, a home burned because someone ran too many Christmas lights from the socket by the tree.
Upon her father's death, Vi becomes a Secret Service bodyguard ("Insurance and protection," she says, "a metaphor so obvious, it felt like destiny"). Returning home the day before the primary, jittery and strung out from a thousand crowds, Vi confronts her troubled brother, a software genius poised to make a fortune on BigIf, a state-of-the-art computer game whose monsters he designs. Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in her fellow agents, in her brother, and in BigIf, is affluent yet anxious, and warily abuzz with vague assassination fantasies.
It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people are very, very tense.Meet Vi Asplund, a young Secret Service agent mourning her dead father. She goes home to New Hampshire to see her brother Jens, a computer genius who just might be going mad—and is poised to make a fortune on Big If, a viciously nihilistic computer game aimed at teenagers. Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in her brother, and in her fellow agents, is affluent, anxious, and abuzz with vague fantasies of violence.Through a gallery of vivid characters—heroic, ignoble, or desperate—Mark Costello's hilarious novel limns the strategies, both sound and absurd, that we conjure to survive in daily life.
A scary, funny novel—a riff on recent history and the American obsession with assassination.
In the wake of her father's death and the vice president's campaign for the presidency, young Secret Service agent Vi Asplund returns to her New Hampshire home to the side of her eccentric computer genius brother, who is poised to make a fortune on a nihilistic video game. 20,000 first printing.
It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people seem very, very tense. Mark Costello's funny, unsettling novel, a riff on recent history, tells the story of five Americans - bodyguards and soccer dads and campaign volunteers - longing for security in the crowd lines and in their own lives.
Vi Asplund and her brother, Jens, grew up in a village on New Hampshire's coast, children of an atheist insurance man. Their early memories are of morning drives to scenes of damage - a paper train derailed, a farmhand with one foot, a home burned because someone ran too many Christmas lights from the socket by the tree.
Upon her father's death, Vi becomes a Secret Service bodyguard ("Insurance and protection," she says, "a metaphor so obvious, it felt like destiny"). Returning home the day before the primary, jittery and strung out from a thousand crowds, Vi confronts her troubled brother, a software genius poised to make a fortune on BigIf, a state-of-the-art computer game whose monsters he designs. Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in her fellow agents, in her brother, and in BigIf, is affluent yet anxious, and warily abuzz with vague assassination fantasies.
It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people are very, very tense.Meet Vi Asplund, a young Secret Service agent mourning her dead father. She goes home to New Hampshire to see her brother Jens, a computer genius who just might be going mad—and is poised to make a fortune on Big If, a viciously nihilistic computer game aimed at teenagers. Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in her brother, and in her fellow agents, is affluent, anxious, and abuzz with vague fantasies of violence.Through a gallery of vivid characters—heroic, ignoble, or desperate—Mark Costello's hilarious novel limns the strategies, both sound and absurd, that we conjure to survive in daily life.
A scary, funny novel—a riff on recent history and the American obsession with assassination.
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- New York : W. W. Norton & Co., c2002.
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