Reader’s Den, Biblio File

Reader's Den: Tigerman by Nick Harkaway (Week 2)

Welcome back to our online book discussion of Nick Harkaway's Tigerman as part of Reader's Den at New York Public Library.

This week, we will be discussing the first six chapters of the novel. Please see below for the full schedule:

Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Chapters 1-6
Week 3: Chapters 7-21

Tigerman is driven by its vivid characters. In the opening chapters, we are introduced first to a local Mancreu boy, nicknamed Robin, whose worldview is shaped by Star Wars, comic books (particularly those penned by Brian Michael Bendis, Grant Morrison, and Warren Ellis), and online interactions:

"The boy's English was self-taught and uneven, peppered with guest appearances from movies and TV, from online games whose players were in America, Europe and China. When he spoke he could shift in one moment from the manner of a too-serious Harvard freshman to that of a teenaged Shanghai goldfarmer sweating in a vast warehouse of machines" (p. 4).

His companion is Sergeant Lester Ferris, a British officer who is approaching middle age and has been stationed on the island in a purely perfunctory role, three years after the official withdrawal of Great Britain from Mancreu:

"The man was of medium height and craggy. he was still six months shy of forty, but he looked fatigued and even a little lost. His face was leathered by a life of actual soldiering in inclement places, and he had scars, about which he was self-conscious. Scars were supposed to be narrow, white lines which looked raffish, not puckered worms slithering forever across your shoulder nad itching abominably. They should be discreet, so that a man could boast about them to girls. He was thicksetand some of that was this recent bout of soft living, he had to concede, even if the rest was working heftbut he seemed to move carefully, as if the world was fragile and he didn't want to break it" (p. 5).

Beyond the two central protagonists of the novel, we meet a wide cast of striking characters, including: the mysterious trickster figure of Bad Jack, the albino scrivener White Raoul and his famously beautiful daughter Sandrine, the brilliant Japanese xenobiologist Kaiko Inoue, and the crass but endearing American Jed Kerhsaw.

And this is not even to mention supporting characters such as: Dirac the Frenchman, the Ukranian Pechorin, The Witch, and the cafe proprieter Shola. The narrative is a sprawling yarn, bursting with memorable faces and incorporating elements of science fiction, detective novels, and superhero comics. Perhaps what is most interesting, though, is the way in which these genre tropes are balanced by prose which is often brutal, unflinching, and realist in its depiction of the action. A sudden and seemingly senseless murder in Chapter 3 captures this blending of pulp and realism and serves as a sort of origin story for the hero who will become Tigerman.

Some discussion questions:

  1. Was there a specific character's description you enjoyed or with whom you identified?
  2. How would you describe this novel to a friend in terms of genre?
  3. What was your reaction to the violent events in Chapter 3 and the invention of the Tigerman persona?