Lexicon: A Novel

This book explores how language structures our thought and compels our actions, which is an endlessly fascinating topic in psycholinguistics, analytic philosophy, and evolutionary biology, but ultimately disappoints because after opening these topics, falls back on tired cliches like Love Conquers All. As a preliminary note, while the book is only 380 pages, it feels like 780, and its signal to noise ratio is not as streamlined as its pithy title would suggest. Since I cut my teeth on Atlas Shrugged, Schopenhauer, and The Instructions, long books don't scare me, but I do expect some pay-off commensurate w/the investment, and this book didn't provide it. The idea is that a group of highly educated and strictly trained Poets learn to categorize people into several hundred psychological types, and develop/discover specific imaginary words which compel immediate mindless compliance from each type. This is basically the idea of the unknown true name of god, which no one today knows how to pronounce and that's why we transmogrify it as Jehovah. While the notion of subdividing humans into distinct psychological types in order to understand and/or control them is hardly new (see zodiac & every pop psychology book ever written), the idea that simple sounds, disconnected from meaning, can automatically and instantly achieve such total "compromise" of individuality and free will is an interesting twist. However, accepting all these premises as true, why would such highly trained Poets, when faced with the opportunity to instantly liquidate their one true nemesis, dilly-dally w/pointless conversation (which just reveals their true type, making them predictably vulnerable to psychological attack from aforementioned EXPERT mind-control masters) instead of deploy their hard-won lethal lexicon promptly? This happens 3 times in the book, and lo & behold, each time the long-pursued target escapes! That is just cheap storytelling. Another premise is that there is one master Poet, who can control every single person on earth (except ONE who is immune and coincidentally happens to be the master Poet's worst enemy's one true love [i ask u]) and when given a golden opportunity to eradicate this girl -- who is the ONLY threat against him -- chooses to enslave her (partially) to serve him instead of terminate her with extreme prejudice. Why? For the disappointingly banal reason of world domination. Why that? Not only is that boring, simplistic, & predictable, but it is also irritatingly pointless considering that he has a lethal brain tumor. And even if Pinky & The Brain's World Domination is the best the author could come up with, why would this master poet need this girl at all? What could she possibly give him that he doesn't already have? Plot just doesn't hang together. Also, the lead character, the aforementioned girl who becomes the master poet's nemesis, is incredibly unlikeable. I don't mean that she is not the embodiment of Christian charity, as there is a long line of magnificent villains from Mephistopheles' Lucifer to the more recent but equally brilliant Cabal, whom I adore. Its just that this girl is totally empty, uninteresting, narrowly selfish, and lacks any discernible qualities that would evoke the kind of undying passion which causes her immune boyfriend to save her life at great personal risk, repeatedly. Again, just doesn't stick. Finally, and this is important, the themes explored in this book are ancient and deep. Why not refer to other explorations of these timeless themes? Like the unknown name of god. Like "In the beginning was the Word." Like protolanguage. Like why, in speakers of certain languages, certain ideologies are more prevalent than in speakers of other languages, regardless of culture and social context. All these are fascinating concepts, well worth exploring, and having invested (what feels like 800) pages, I am at a loss of why the author side-stepped these ideas. Surely anyone who buys and reads this book is not going to be turned off by some context and history. So as written this book deserves 3.5 stars, which is a shame bc the author could have made it 5.

I have always believed in the power of words. They can inspire and illuminate. Words can also maim and hurt. In Lexicon, they can control and kill. Author Barry has imagined an X-Men-like academy whereby certain gifted people, though broken, can find purpose and fulfillment (albeit with a certain subjugation). This organization and its minions know people and know the lexicon that can manipulate them to almost any action, “The most fundamental thing about a person is desire. It defines them. Tell me what a person wants, truly wants, and I'll tell you who they are, and how to persuade them.”Throughout this engrossing and thrilling novel, I saw aspects of my wife's profession...psychotherapy and my own...branding and marketing, "What we're doing, or, I should say, what you're doing, since no one has taught me any good words, is dropping recipes into people's brains to cause a neurochemical reaction to knock out the filters. Tie them up just long enough to slip an instruction past. And you do that by speaking a string of words crafted for the person's psychographic segment. Probably words that were crafted decades ago and have been strengthened ever since. And it's a string of words because the brain has layers of defenses, and for the instruction to get through, they all have to be disabled at once."This is both a thriller and thinker of a book. It moves with speed, engages with credible characters, and entertains by presenting a shadowy world that exists just below society's surface. The conspiracy element is accentuated by the breaks in between chapters that draw on social media conventions and questionable traditional media reporting. In the end, Barry gets us thinking about power and control, "All empires fall, eventually. But why? It’s not for lack of power. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else. Who have no comprehension of the need to rise above base desires.”There was no need for me to be eleemosynary towards this work as I found it coruscating. The writing is chrysostomatic without being orotund. It was a pulchritudinous read and one I greatly recommend.

Someone mentioned this story on a forum and I was curious enough to come and read the Look Inside on the Amazon page. As soon as I read it, I bought the book - which doesn't happen very often but I had to know what happened next. I think it has one of the most powerful openings I have ever read.I'm not sure I can even attempt to explain what this book is about without a) the explanation becoming overly convoluted or b) giving away too much of the plot and ruining the story but I will give it a go.The story opens with Will (one of our protagonists) apparently being assaulted in an airport bathroom. The men who are attacking him want information but Will doesn't know what they are after - or has he just forgotten? The other thread of the story follows Emily a homeless girl who is taken to a school where she learns about the power of words. At some point you (as the reader) know the stories will mesh or interlink in some way but what you don't know is how that is going to happen.I think that is about as far as I can go plot-wise without risking a spoiler. I will say that I think the middle had a lot to do, to hold the rollercoaster beginning together with the climax of the story and it didn't quite work for me but that is the only niggle I have with the book.This is a story about the literal power of words and the evolution of language. It also considers the myth(s) of The Tower and episodes where languages have (d)evolved from a common tongue to different forms. I found it absolutely fascinating in that aspect. We know from the outset that the stakes are high, mystery men have no problem with attacking Will in a public place and something terrible has happened but we don't know what it is.Character-wise I thought Will worked slightly better than Emily or maybe I liked him more? Will is very direct (almost obtuse in a way) with his thinking and actions and Emily is sinous and working on multiple levels. I loved that things didn't go as I was predicting. I read a lot and almost can't help guessing how things are going to go and I didn't quite get it, I was surprised.It is a book where you need to concentrate on the story to understand what is going on. I did find myself scratching my head at one point, though I worked out what was happening after it had happened. It's a story that will stand up well to a re-read as you will see where the inter-twined plots are going and appreciate more what is happening the second time through.Overall - if you're a fan of science fiction and have a love of language I highly recommend this book.

I liked the premise upon which this story appeared to be based namely the essential part that language has always played in human evolution progress and development. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. We have the power to make language a tool for Good and Evil. Words can kill , and Max Barry does quite a good job in exploring the way in which if controlled at a kind of supernatural level untold mayhem and destruction can result.I found it a bit too disconnected and difficult to keep up at times with what was happening to whom, and when, but I think I might be coming back for more of the words of Max Barry.

Like another reviewer, I couldn't immediately make my mind up about how I felt about this book after I'd finished it. I thought I needed a couple of days of reflection before I finally rated it.The synopsis of Lexicon has been explained rather well in a number of reviews, so I'll just briefly give my take on this high-concept thriller by Max Barry. Although it has science fiction elements to it, the story is set in the present-day and, on the surface, the world pretty much operates as it does in real-life. However, beneath this perceived normality there lurks a shadowy organisation. It comprises folk who are able to conjure up superhuman persuasive powers via their use of words. These abilities can be used to subvert free will and compel law-abiding citizens to actually carry out foul deeds - even kill. The individuals who are capable of these manipulations are known as 'poets' - each one given a code name that relates to an actual dead poet. Their 'skills' are learned at an exclusive school which is located on the fringes of Washington DC. As our American friends would say "enough already" - yep, that's as much of the plot as I think I need to divulge.The author obviously has an amazing imagination and has come up with some really interesting concepts which I thought he explained very well throughout the narrative. For two hundred or so pages I was totally captivated by this intriguing story and was excited about where the diverging plots were going to take me. At this stage in the proceedings, I was already primed for giving Lexicon a solid 5 star rating and thinking to myself that this could be my favourite book of 2016. So, it was a shame that, for me, the second half of the book didn't live up to its initial promise. It was as though the author had all these great ideas but then ultimately didn't know how to bring them all together in order to provide the reader with a cohesive, satisfactory conclusion. That said, this was a fun ride and I liked Max Berry's inventiveness and would still like to read further works by him. I'm going to give this one 4 stars because, regardless of certain reservations, it's a book that has left a positive, lasting impression on me.

Wow!I really loved this book.I am not the fastest of readers but I started this book in the morning and have just finished at 1 o’clock the following morning. I stopped to make coffee and dinner and nothing else!The characters and their development are great. The plot is mesmerising. The story told in narrative, memo’s, emails, news reports and the like. It was gripping from the first chapter. And the way what seems like 2 stories come together is wonderful.There’s nothing I didn’t like about this book and I would highly recommend it.

Max Barry is an ideas man. He has previously written of a kind of government/corporate interface full of conspiracies and rules. His works have a Brave New World feel to them.In Lexicon, we find a society where people fall, unknown to themselves, into various categories of personality, each persuadable through the use of keywords that bypass the critical thinking parts of the brain and get straight into the core. Sort of. Max Barry explains it better.From a bizarre opening, we rapidly fall into a Men In Black/Bourne Identity type world where a small group of people control the world through access to secrets. They also have access to unlimited wealth allowing world travel in first class, swanky offices and labyrinths of laboratories staffed by technicians who have no idea of the significance of what they are working on. Those inductees into this glamorous, dangerous world carry the names of semi-famous poets.The novel is divided into four sections, each addressing a quite distinct episode, place and time period. The first three work well and hold the ideas together. We find two opposing storylines, one featuring Tom and Wil, strangers who are thrown together to defeat the greater evil. And the other featuring Emily, a street scammer who is inducted into the organisation. The stories converge – after a fashion – in Broken Hill, a remote mining town in New South Wales. The true awfulness of Broken Hill – previously seen in Priscilla Queen of the Desert – is conveyed well and there is plenty of intrigue in terms of what happened and what will happen. The story, you see, is quite non-linear. As the story lines develop, so too does the reader’s understanding of the science-fiction behind the words of persuasion. The gaps get filled in.And Lexicon poses interesting questions about the nature of communication and language. It also makes one wonder whether anything can have value if it can be had simply by asking. These questions are highlighted further in snippets of e-mails, news reports and reference sources (presumably all fictitious) that bookend the chapters.Sadly, Lexicon unravels in the fourth section and descends into a wide-ranging, chaotic riot – everyone shooting each other and being evil or heroic for no obvious reason. It’s a poor way to end a book that is more reminiscent of Police Academy than the Bourne films. But this shouldn’t detract too much from the really excellent build-up. Ending books can be tricky and it does seem to be a skill that Max Barry does not have, but the endings seldom linger long in the memory anyway. Readers tend to remember scenes in the build up. So, on balance, a rather generous four stars.