Communion Town: A City in Ten Chapters

by Sam Thompson

Overview

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012, Thompson "is a new writer working out what he can do, and realizing that he can do anything” (The Telegraph).

Each of us conjures our own city, one of many incarnations; a place throbbing with so many layers, meanings, and hidden corners cannot be the same for any two citizens.
Communion Town calls to mind David Mitchell's Ghostwritten, Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and China Miéville's The City & The City, but is uniquely its own. This incandescent novel maps an imaginary city and explores the lives of its outcasts and scapegoats. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different citizen-defining the city itself as a character, both protagonist and antagonist-and each is told in a different genre, from a hardboiled detective story to steampunk to gothic horror, displaying the great range of Sam Thompson's literary ability. As the novel unfolds in different neighborhoods, we encounter a lovelorn folksinger, a repressed detective, a slaughterhouse worker, a lost tourist, a bon vivant, and a ghost. From their lonely voices we gather the many-faceted story of the city: a place imagined differently by each citizen as he or she searches for connection, transformation, or escape.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620401675
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	12/03/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Sam Thompson was born in 1978. He read English at Trinity College, Dublin, and is now a tutor at St. Anne's College, Oxford. He also writes for the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, and the Guardian. This is his first novel. He lives in Oxford with his wife and two sons.
Sam Thompson was born in 1978. He read English at Trinity College, Dublin, and is now a tutor at St Anne's College, Oxford. He also writes for the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and the Guardian. He lives in Oxford with his wife and two sons.

Editorial Reviews

It is tempting to call Communion Town a novel about a city. But neither "novel" nor "city" quite captures the eerie multi-dimensionality of Sam Thompson's dazzling debut…At the end of the book, the city remains as hazy to readers as shadows on the walls of a cave. What Communion Town renders with stunning and often heartbreaking lucidity is the complexity of consciousness itself…It is a credit to Thompson that each voice is wholly convincing and utterly distinct; he is a writer of almost freakish range…It is an elegant and hauntingly beautiful book—as expansive as a Greek chorus and as intimate as a memory.

The New York Times Book Review - Jennifer duBois

Sam Thompson’s debut, a novel of stories set in enigmatic Communion Town, landed a coveted spot on the Man Booker longlist. Like David Mitchell and Italo Calvino, Thompson has some fun trying out literary styles. One chapter is written as a noir-ish caper, another as a futuristic romance, another follows a serial killer, and there’s even a lovely childhood fable with notes of magical realism. The cumulative effect is of a world simultaneously revealed and obscured: just when you’ve gotten a grip on Communion Town, it’s transformed. Thompson’s sentences are graceful enough that he mostly pulls off these crafty fireworks—at least when it comes to miming a style. But too often, exhilarating sentences (like one describing the sea as “full of the movements of an anticipatory audience, rustling programs, shushing itself...”) are buried in descriptive layers that deaden an entire page. In the opening story, a dramatic event is obliquely mentioned over and over in the span of 20 pages. When the action is revealed, it hardly seems worth the wait. Thompson is a talented writer with a seemingly boundless interest in language and its potential; one can’t help but wish that he applied some of his energy to getting to the point. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Dazzling debut…What Communion Town renders with stunning and often heartbreaking lucidity is the complexity of consciousness itself…[Thompson] is a writer of almost freakish range . . . an elegant and hauntingly beautiful book – as expansive as a Greek chorus and as intimate as a memory.” —New York Times Book Review

“Each chapter in the novel, longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, is told by a different character, in a different genre. And each unspools like a pitch-perfect improvisation. ” —New York Times

“Thompson is a gifted storyteller, someone who can mimic voices and fashion his own, a writer who clearly appreciates the art of the tale.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Thompson expertly captures the breathless cadence of youthful passion . . . . An entertaining and densely layered pastiche of whodunits, the product of a mind steeped in the manner and method of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.” —The Boston Globe

“Thompson is a master of voice . . . as well as imagined geography . . . . Communion Town is a book for the careful reader; the stories, though they stand on their own, build to a multi-narrative that rewards attention to detail. Thompson's dexterity in this regard is the surest sign that he is a writer to watch, and the Booker listing a sign of things to come.” —The Daily Beast

“Thompson inhabits each of his narrators completely and offers acutely crafted moments of piercing clarity—even beauty—throughout.” —Denver Post

“What a place: Communion Town is a vividly depicted dystopia with a faintly steampunk air…meticulous prose…this accomplished book is quite novel indeed.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

“Graceful . . . a world simultaneously revealed and obscured: just when you've gotten a grip on Communion Town, it's transformed.” —Publishers Weekly

“If you enjoy the work of decoding, there are pleasures awaiting you here.” —Shelf Awareness

“Lyrical and suspenseful… Communion Town serves as the real protagonist, a fully realized place that Thompson—with often breathtaking prose and versatility—peoples with cynics, dangerous wanderers, and lonely outcasts. A shadowy city saturated with life and lore, and held together by human struggles.” —Booklist

“Sam Thompson's Booker longlisted novel tells the story of a city in 10 chapters—and reads like a blend of Italo Calvino and Sherwood Anderson.” —Bookish

“Long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Sam Thompson's Communion Town charts an imaginary city through the perspectives of ten of its marginalized citizens.” —Penthouse

From the Publisher

Long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Thompson's debut novel envisions an imaginary city, then portrays characters on its edges, from a lovesick folksinger to a slaughterhouse worker, in a variety of styles. A real brain twister that uses genre means for larger ends and should attract a broad range of readers.

Library Journal

2013-10-01
This debut by a British writer, touted as a novel, is in fact a collection of 10 linked stories, the link being an imaginary city. What kind of city? One that's fearful and divided against itself. In the title story, two young men, immigrants, are closely monitored after their arrival. The fear is that they might have dealings with the Cynics, vicious pranksters who terrorize commuters, or the so-called monsters, ostracized vagrants with hearts of gold. The class divisions are stark in "The Song of Serelight Fair." A poor rickshaw puller is taken in by a rich girl, who buys him a guitar and encourages his songwriting, all the while manipulating him. These are broad strokes. They establish a framework but little else. One story ("Three Translations") has a fascinating reference to a city ritual, a festival for its unmarried men, but fails to exploit it. There is also a boogeyman loose in the city's gritty neighborhoods. Sometimes he's a serial killer, as in "Good Slaughter," the collection's dramatic high point. Elsewhere, in "The Rose Tree" and "A Way to Leave," which rework the same material, he's a pitiful thing with a secret so terrible that, once heard, it will turn one into a zombie. Both stories lean heavily on innuendo, as does "Outside the Days," in which a young libertine, a contemporary Dorian Gray, falls into a pit of depravity. "I'd be more specific if I could," says the narrator lamely. Two others inhabit rarefied worlds with literary echoes. "Gallathea" turns the world of a private investigator inside out; it's served with a big dollop of Chandler, a splash of Burgess and a twist of classical mythology. In "The Significant City of Lazarus Glass," an investigator-turned–criminal mastermind battles four former colleagues; it's an elaborate spoof of Holmes-ian deductive techniques. A versatile writer struggles to find his voice in this scattershot collection.

Kirkus Reviews