Is this the definitive book on pre-9/11 Seattle? Of that time just before the 2000 dot.com crash, the years of the first startups and the WTO riots? To one who was there, it sure seems that way. I've never read a book with so many spot-on topical references, all perfectly chosen to act either as background color or foreground illustration, whichever is needed; and I've rarely read one whose characters and situations serve so well to make vivid a particular cultural moment. And I should say right away that it's also an easy reading, fun novel, frequently funny in a dry yet somehow warm way, convincing in its plot and fair to its characters. Maybe the fact that it was published in 2003, just a few short years from the time in which it's set, accounts for the vividness and lack of falsifying nostalgia, but it's a rare feat to be so clear-eyed about one's own time, to see accurately without the perspective of distance. Read it if you were there, or if you weren't. ( )

Early in the book there is reference to a box that Tom keeps full of scraps that one day he might turn into a novel. I think that this book is from Raban's scrap-box. - Different stories roughly overlapped. The book didn't finish. It just stopped. I didn't really understand the Waxwing reference (I'd bought the book for old times sake remembering Pale Fire). I enjoyed the trip of reading it tho'. ( )

Slow at first, but then I really enjoyed it-- and although I'm not sure why the author ended it the way he did (in terms of the last few paragraphs), somehow, it was just right. ( )

Novel about the immigrant experience set in Seattle. ( )

Set very solidly in Seattle, about a guy with an ordinary life who gets falsely accused, and his growing relationship with a Chinese guy fixing his house, and lessening relationship with his wife. Much better than I've made it sound - great characters. ( )