Mirror Thief (Seay)

The Mirror Thief 
Martin Seay, 2016
Melville House
592 pp.
ISBN-13: 978-1612195599


Summary
Set in three cities in three eras, The Mirror Thief calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado.

The core story is set in Venice in the sixteenth century, when the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror.

An object of glittering yet fearful fascination—was it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing?—the Venetian mirrors were state of the art technology, and subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide.

But for any of the development team to leave the island was a crime punishable by death. One man, however—a world-weary war hero with nothing to lose—has a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten . . .

Meanwhile, in two other Venices—Venice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa today—two other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret . . .

All three stories will weave together into a spell-binding tour-de-force that is impossible to put down—an old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice . . . and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of art. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1992
• Where—Katy, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Trinity University; M.A., Queens University of Charlotte
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois


Martin Seay is the author of The Mirror Thief, his debut novel, published in 2016.

Martin grew up in Katy, Texas, a suburb of Houston. He graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio and lived in Austin, Texas, for a time. When he met Kathleen Rooney, an author and poet, they married, and the two moved around the country, living in Washington, D.C., New England, and Tacoma, Washington, eventually settling in Chicago. For a number of those years, Martin worked as a bookseller for a national chain. Since 2007, he has been the executive secretary for the Village of Wheeling, a suburb of Chicago.  (Adapted from The Little Red Reviewer.)

Book Reviews
Audaciously well written...the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it.... while this novel seems on the surface to be a bit like Cloud Atlas (multiple perspectives, Russian doll structure), it’s more heartfelt, deeper, less of a pastiche. The book—in the end long, frustrating and slow—becomes a mirror....[but] does not contain [many] of... its own questions. This is not The Da Vinci Code for intellectuals. It’s more like “Howl” translated into Latin and then back again. Over 600 pages. It’s amazing.
Scarlett Thomas - New York Times Book Review


[A] wondrous debut, a deliciously intricate, centuries-spanning tripartite tale of money and mysticism.... Mr. Seay has conjured his own kind of sorcery, a sophisticated thriller that keeps the pages turning even as it teases the mind.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


Transfixing.... The Mirror Thief is a startling, beautiful gem of a book that at times approaches a masterpiece.
Michael Schaub - NPR


Compared recently to the work of David Mitchell, Seay’s big, genre-ish The Mirror Thief is actually better than most novels by that author.
Flavorwire


Hugely entertaining.
Daily Mail (UK)


A bold American debut...hypnotic.... Frequently reminiscent of the ominous historical bulletins of Don DeLillo … with a plusher, plumper register, more redolent of Umberto Eco …Seay is clearly a writer of exceptional and eclectic intelligence. The Mirror Thief is always highly admirable.
Guardian (UK)


The weirdest and most ambitious novel of 2016 thus far...a literary, speculative, mystical masterwork.
Chicago Review of Books


(Starred review.) A true delight, a big, beautiful cabinet of wonders that is by turns an ominous modern thriller, a supernatural mystery, and an enchanting historical adventure story.... A splendid masterpiece, to be loved like a long-lost friend, an epic with near-universal appeal.
Publishers Weekly


A 600-page thrill ride across three centuries and two continents.... Part crime thriller and part meditation on poetry, with unexpected plot twists and references to famous figures as diverse as the French dramatist Antonin Artaud and Jay Leno.... An impressive feat of imagination.
Bookpage


(Starred review.) Grandly entrancing.... Shimmering with intimations of Hermann Hesse, Umberto Eco, and David Mitchell, Sheay’s house-of-mirrors novel is spectacularly accomplished and exciting.
Bookbrowse


Seay’s great challenge is ...[met with] varying degrees of success; often the story seems an exercise in stringing together index-card notes on various arcane subjects, and while the book is well-written...it still feels undercooked.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
The publishers have yet to issue discussion questions, so use our LitLovers talking points to help kick off a discussion for The Mirror Thief...then take off on your own:

1. The Mirror Thief contains three separate stories in three distinct time periods. Which of the stories most engaged you—and which characters? Which least engaged you?

2. Discuss how the three plot strands come together at the end. Does the author succeed in weaving the them seamlessly? Does he tie all the knots or leave some loose ends, questions that remain unanswered? Can you explain how the three sections finally link up?

3. How do mirrors function in this complicated novel, both as a metaphor and as a structuring device? An easy one, for instance—in a book with "mirror" in the title, one of the main characters is named Glass.

4. Stanley sees Adrian Welles's book of poetry as perhaps somewhat "goofy" with a hint of "Dungeons & Dragons about it." Stanley, on the other hand, is obsessed with it; for him it is a "map that will take him [to another world], a password that will unfasten the locks. How do each man's views reflect the essence of who he is? What do you think of the book?

5. Do you find the author's philosophizing a bit heavy? Does it bog the book down? Or do his ideas enhance the book for you and lend it intellectual heft?

6. Why is Bingo a fascist game?

7. One of the book's characters makes this observation about books and authors:

[B]ooks always know more than their authors do. They are always wiser. This is strange to say, but it's true. Once they are in the world, they develop their own peculiar ideas.

What might he mean by that remark? And does it pertain to The Mirror Thief—both versions: the book within the book, as well as the book in you hands.

8. Another character remarks:

It is a rare rhetorical gift that permits a man to speak knowledgeably about a topic and still deliver his audience into a state of enriched confusion. At times I think this skill chiefly defines the profession of magus.

Is the Martin Seay, the author, taking a sly poke at his own book? Does The Mirror Thief leave you in a "state of enriched confusion"?

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)

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