The Book of Air and Shadows

Overview

The Washington Post called Michael Gruber's previous work "a miracle of intelligent fiction and among the essential novels of recent years." Now comes his most intellectually provocative and compulsively readable novel yet.

Tap-tapping the keys and out come the words on this little screen, and who will read them I hardly know. I could be dead by the time anyone actually gets to read them, as dead as, say, Tolstoy. Or Shakespeare. Does it matter, when you read, if the person who wrote still lives?

These are the words of Jake Mishkin, whose seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits a killer--or killers--unknown, Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for four hundred years. In a frantic race from New York to England and Switzerland, Jake finds himself matching wits with a shadowy figure who seems to anticipate his every move. What at first seems like a thrilling puzzle waiting to be deciphered soon turns into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, where no one--not family, not friends, not lovers--is to be trusted.

Moving between twenty-first-century America and seventeenth-century England, The Book of Air and Shadows is a modern thriller that brilliantly re-creates William Shakespeare's life at the turn of the seventeenth century and combines an ingenious and intricately layered plot with a devastating portrait of a contemporary man on the brink of self-discovery . . . or self-destruction.

Editorial Reviews

Starred Review. In this ingenious literary thriller from Gruber (The Witch's Boy), the lives of two men are changed forever by William Shakespeare and the letters of Richard Bracegirdle, a 16th-century English spy and soldier. Jake Mishkin, a Manhattan intellectual property attorney and a bit of a rake, goes on the run from Russian gangsters. Albert Crosetti, an aspiring filmmaker working for an antiquarian bookstore, finds that life is more exciting than movies--perhaps too exciting. Together, Mishkin and Crosetti travel to England in search of a previously unknown Shakespeare manuscript mentioned by Bracegirdle. Though the pace sometimes slows to allow Mishkin, Crosetti and Bracegirdle to divulge interesting aspects of their personal lives, these digressions only make the story more engaging. The suspense created around the double-crosses and triple-crosses works because of the close connection readers forge with Crosetti in particular. The mysterious murder of a Shakespearean scholar, shootouts in the streets of Queens and an unlikely romance all combine to make for a gripping, satisfying read. (Apr.) Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Michael Gruber

Michael Gruber has a Ph.D. in marine biology from the University of Miami. He lives in Seattle, Washington, and is currently at work on another novel.

Customer Reviews

• Substance and illusion

  Posted June 16, 2007 by Dan Clarke, Reno, NV

  The old question, "what is real?" is examined from several perspectives, but mainly from the perspective of the law and from a playwriter.
  
  The lawyer says that what the law is about is creating fictions to present to the court. The prosecuting attorney presents one fiction and the defense attorney presents another. The judge and jury get to decide who has the best fiction.
  
  The playwrite sees reality through the lens of a play that is unfolding in his mind. If this becomes too obsessive, which it often does, he has difficulty separating what is really happening from the play he is orchestrating.
  
  In fact, both the lawyer and writer suffer from a form of psychosis in which their stories become so strong in their minds that the reality no longer matters.
  
  In this book, the reality (or fiction) of a newly discovered manuscript is at issue. Part of the manuscript is in clear text, although written in the Jacobian style of the 17th century. The remainder of the manuscript is encrypted using a method far ahead of its time. At issue in the manuscript is the claim of one Richard Bracegirdle, a contemporary of William Shakespeare, who says that he was set to spy of W.S. by an English lord.
  
  In the process of spying, Bracegirdle discovers that Shakespeare is writing a new play, which turns out to have never been published.
  
  Thus, we have air and light, or rather, which do we have? Is it a fraud or is it real? The playwrite desparately wants to believe it is real, while the lawyer is, predictably, skeptical.
  
  All this is raised to a new level when the Russian mafia become involved and attempt to capture the Bracegirdle document.
  
  WIthout revealing too much of the well-crafted story, just let me say that the reader is confronted with the conundrum of reality vs. fantasy. Is it air? Is it light?
  
  At is an interesting read and one in which the reader, as a bonus, learns much about Shakespeare and the scholarly community that feeds off his work as well as encryption and how computers can be applied to assist in breaking codes.
  
  I enjoyed the book because I enjoy puzzles and have the patience to watch the solution to the puzzle unfold. Other readers may not have the same interest or patience and, hence, may not enjoy the book as much as I.

Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

1.35 MB

Number of Pages

0

eBook ISBN

9780061290398