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"It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people seem very, very tense. Mark Costello's funny, unsettling novel, a riff on recent history, tells the story of five Americans - bodyguards and soccer dads and campaign volunteers - longing for security in the crowd lines and in their own lives.".
"Vi Asplund and her brother, Jens, grew up in a village on New Hampshire's coast, children of an atheist insurance man. Their early memories are of morning drives to scenes of damage - a paper train derailed, a farmhand with one foot, a home burned because someone ran too many Christmas lights from the socket by the tree.".
"Upon her father's death, Vi becomes a Secret Service bodyguard ("Insurance and protection," she says, "a metaphor so obvious, it felt like destiny"). Returning home the day before the primary, jittery and strung out from a thousand crowds, Vi confronts her troubled brother, a software genius poised to make a fortune on BigIf, a state-of-the-art computer game whose monsters he designs.
Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in her fellow agents, in her brother, and in BigIf, is affluent yet anxious, and warily abuzz with vague assassination fantasies."--BOOK JACKET.
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Big if
2002, W. W. Norton & Co., W. W. Norton & Company
in English
- 1st ed.
0393051161 9780393051162
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The Secret Service agents guarding the vice president steel their nerves to a multitude of dangers every day. When he runs for the top spot on the Democratic ticket, however, their personal lives may just be the biggest obstacle to keeping him safe.
Wry, muscular Vi Asplund is the daughter of an atheist insurance adjuster who took the young Vi and her brother, Jens, to the grisly accident scenes he covered. This tolerance for the macabre follows Vi into her career as an agent, and into Jens's development as the software designer for a gorey video game. Chief-of-detail Gretchen Williams fights to keep the team in order, while Agent Tashmo, a veteran presidential guard, reflects on the glory days of the Reagan administration.
As the primary approaches, these intense men and women balance their own lives with that of the vice president. An astounding novel of survival and absurdity, Big If casts a sharp eye on America today.
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- Created April 1, 2008
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November 15, 2023 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
February 28, 2023 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
February 28, 2023 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
February 10, 2023 | Edited by BWBImportBot | Modified local IDs, source records |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |