This novel’s themes are echt Shepard: fathers and sons; shifting identities and competing versions of reality; a sense that there are watchers and there are watchees in this world of dusty gravitas. “They gave me all these tests,” the man says. All kinds of blood tests testing my white corpuscles, testing my red corpuscles, testing one against the other.”This catalog of medical tests continues. Sometimes, in “Spy of the First Person,” the words do not reverberate so much as hiccup and free-associate. If this is the sort of thing you like, this novel will definitely be the sort of thing you will like.

Source: New York Times December 06, 2017 19:07 UTC