Back in October we posted about not being able to get our grubby little eyes on Jonathan Raban's new novel until January. The month has come and, now, gone, and the book is available at all your favorite retail outlets - Tonight Jonathan's reading from it at Queen Anne Books. If you've never heard Jonathan Raban speak you're nearly as impoverished as if you'd never read any of his books. He seems to write out loud like he just can't turn it off. He can't stop this volume and density of ideas and observations from flowing out of himself, and then there's a way about his voice that's so conspiratorial, so peculiarly British, so charmingly agile in tone and inflection that... Uhm, we're fans.

And what to expect from the book Surveillance? It's an odd book. It's a political novel that contains just as much political content as your everyday life, which isn't really all that much. But on the other hand it's all political. The positions of the characters aren't easy to describe by assigning them places in this camp or another. It's easier to say that they're for this or against that, but none of their supports or oppositions dictate the remainder of their character. The same is true for the relationships the characters have to one another - They generally aren't as black and white as "wife" or "friend" or "rightwing wacko subject." There's the journalist Alida who lives with her daughter and, across the hall in a condo of his own, the daughter's gay father figure, Tad. There's Augie Vanags, the best-selling author and subject of an article Alida's writing. She could nail him to the wall, James Frey style, and politically she would, but her daughter is somewhat enamored and so might she be. The only characters who play their part straight up are Chick from Waxwings who continues what he started in that book, although not necessarily along the same arc as we would have guessed for him, and Raban himself, who makes an appearance in the Central Library's Writer's Room to snoop through Alida's materials when she steps out of the room. He's a snooper, this guy Raban. No one is under more surveillance than us by him.

Queen Anne Books
6:30pm
free (ticket req. - Stop by beforehand)