New Book about Books and Book People - The Forger by Bradford Morrow
The Forger, Author Bradford Morrow
Contemporary rare book dealers, antiquarian book fairs, forgers… this book satisfies your craving for an authentic, engaging biblio-mystery. I found myself unable to put it down until It was finished. This is an excellent story told by an excellent storyteller. Enjoy!!!
A rather lengthy quote from The Forger that sums up my thoughts on book collecting very well. I finished the book. It is well worth the read...
"Especially poignant to him was a book that looked just it did on publication day decades or centuries before. Looked just as it did when the author held it in his or her hands for the first time. To possess a pristine copy was to share the author's experience, to virtually exist in another era as a time traveler might, and to join in communion with all those owners down the years who had protected it against time's depravities. That to him was the virtue of condition. Nor did his love of signed or inscribed copies have much to do with ordinary fetishism or pure market investment value, although he was both a good investor and surely a fetishist of sorts. Again, it had to do with the proximity of the author. That the writer's flesh-and-blood hand had touched this title page or that piece of foolscap brought an immeasurable significance to the whole object. Made it distinctive and exceptional, yes, but, perhaps even more important, personal and even intimate. Authorial DNA, the inscribed phrases and tender inscriptions, lifted even the commonest works into a higher category of value, not just monetary but, if you will, spiritual."
Review
One of Amazon's Top 100 Books of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
An Indie Next Pick for November
A LibraryReads Selection for November
A Library Journal Editors' Pick for Fall
“From its provocative opening line . . . Bradford Morrow’s latest novel takes on a knowing, noirish tone, like a crime movie by the Coen brothers. . . . The pleasure of reading The Forgers comes not only from trying to figure out what happened to Diehl but also in deciding, chapter by chapter, how much trust to grant the narrator, who is our only source.”—Miami Herald
“The Forgers is quintessential Bradford Morrow. Brilliantly written as a suspense novel, lethally enthralling to read, and filled with arcane, fascinating information—in this case, the rarified world of high-level literary forgery.”—Joyce Carol Oates
“Bradford Morrow’s The Forgers is a bibliophile’s dream, an existential thriller set in the world of rare book collecting that is also a powerfully moving exposé of the forger's dangerous skill: what happens when you lie so well that you lose touch with what is real? In beautifully controlled prose, Morrow traces the shaky line between paranoia and gut-intuition, memory and self-delusive fiction, hollow and real love. It's perfect all-night flashlight reading—Bradford Morrow at his lyrical, surprising, suspenseful, genre-bending best.”—Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Swamplandia!
“The Forgers is remarkable. Bradford Morrow is remarkable. The Real Thing, which is rare on this earthly plane.”—Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and The Snow Queen
“Delightful to read.”—NPR.com
“Bradford Morrow illuminates the seamy side of the rare-book trade in The Forgers.”—Vanity Fair
“In The Forgers, Bradford Morrow hits the sweet spot at the juncture of genre crime fiction and the mainstream novel with an almost mystical perfection. Readers of either form will be gratified and impressed, and those who are readers of both will be thrilled. In its deep knowledge of books and those who trade in them, and in its thousand vivid, unexpected turns of phrase—its depth of both subject and language—The Forgers could have been written only by Morrow and at only the rare and striking level of mastery he has now achieved.”—Peter Straub, author of A Dark Matter and Ghost Story
“[A] consistently unnerving mystery. . . . The best moments in The Forgers come . . . from its intimate knowledge of books, details about signatures, ink, bindings, the slant of Arthur Conan Doyle’s handwriting . . . creating an ambience of old-fashioned gothic suspense that bibliophiles in particular will enjoy.”—USA Today
“With The Forgers, Bradford Morrow has masterfully combined an exquisitely thickening plot, an informed appreciation of the antiquarian book world, and a deep understanding of what makes the obsessive people who inhabit this quirky community do the sort of impassioned things they sometimes do, up to and including the commission of horrific crimes. Morrow has hit the ball out of the park—The Forgers is a grand slam, in the bottom of the ninth, to boot. This is a bibliomystery you will want to inhale in one sitting.”—Nicholas Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness and On Paper
“The Forgers . . . stuns from its first line. . . . Morrow offers a suspenseful plot that coexists with gritty characters and ominous imagery.”—Fine Books Magazine
“[An] artfully limned suspense novel. . . . The insights Morrow offers into the lure of collecting, the rush of forgery as a potentially creative act, and underlying questions of authenticity render the whodunit one of the lesser mysteries of this sly puzzler.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The Forgers is a reader’s dream: intelligently written, with beautiful details paid to the use of inks and stationary, pen pressures and hand flourishes. Bradford Morrow has created in Will a character rich in criminal indignation.”—Bookreporter
“As Morrow pulls back the curtain to reveal the murky world of book sellers and buyers and ushers readers into the mind of a forger for whom falsifying the perfect signature is a thrill, he also draws us deeper into the puzzle . . . Morrow writes with a sure, clear voice, and his prose is lush and detailed. . . . Recommended for readers who enjoy atmospheric literary thrillers such as Caleb Carr’s The Alienist.”—Library Journal
“Will, the narrator of Morrow’s seventh novel, is a fine creation. . . . A pleasurable study of the lives of book dealers. . . . Morrow’s well-researched passages on the collector’s art meshes well with Will’s romantic longueurs about the life of fakery he left behind.”—Kirkus Reviews
“So well written, The Forgers will take some time to finish as readers might want to reread every sentence.”—Jean-Paul Adriaansen, Water Street Books, Indie Next selection
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