When I began reading Trader, I honestly wasn’t sure what to think. Most people I’ve spoken with about de Lint’s writing tell me that he’s urban fantasy, so I was waiting for werewolves lurking in the hedges or vampires tromping down the sidewalks, interspersed with more sexual encounters than one could shake a stick at. De Lint does none of this, and I must say: I am so much happier for it. Unlike other novels I’ve read in the urban fantasy genre, de Lint creates a town that is seemingly normal, and changes only thing about it: he takes one man’s soul, and swaps it with another. Trader, the man the book is named after, is a luthier (that is, he crafts guitars). One morning he wakes up and finds that’s he’s not quite himself. On the contrary, he is now in someone else’s body; the body of Johnny Devlin, low-life and lady killer. Trader doesn’t quite know what to believe, and the people around him only see Devlin; while some notice the change in his behavior, they think it’s Devlin’s way of swindling them out of something. Now a man no one trusts, Trader is on his own. This story really struck a chord with me (oh, see what I did there?). Trader at first feels lost, confused, and upset; emotions that, more than likely, any person has felt. Trader evokes a sympathy within the reader; before being body snatched, he had a good, quiet life, making beautiful guitars. After the switch with Devlin, Trader’s life is turned on it’s head; he’s made to clean up the mess this man has made of his existence. In turn, Devlin uses his slippery wiles to attempt to ruin Trader’s life. The book bounces back and forth between character points of view: Trader and Devlin; Nia and her mother, Lisa, who are Trader’s upstairs neighbors; Zeffy and her roommate, Tanya, who are two women Devlin knows. The switching of the souls touches all of these lives, and a few others that we don’t hear from directly, and changes them. All in all, I definitely enjoyed this story. De Lint doesn’t wait to get into the action; by the end of the first chapter, the souls of Devlin and Trader have been switched, and things are starting to fall apart. I was intrigued right from the beginning, and the book didn’t let me go until the very end. I was told by a good friend that this book is a good introduction to de Lint, and I couldn’t agree more. This book has whetted my appetite for the city of Newford, and I do believe I’ll be returning soon.
I was casually browsing the book sale table at the library when this title caught my eye. "Trader" -- my first thought was that it might be about trading stocks or futures. Picking it up, I realized it was a fantasy -- way over at the other end of the spectrum, although on second thought the ambitions of your average trader probably do border on fantasy. But never mind that. I bought it anyway. Nominally about Max Trader, a renowned but introverted maker of fine guitars, the story shows what happens when, inexplicably, he wakes up one morning in a stranger's body, having somehow traded places overnight with an unsavory guy who is about to be evicted from his apartment.The tale of Max's quest to get back what used to be his, and what he learns along the way, amounts to a rite of passage toward a more authentic life, and I have only minor quibbles about that. However, four other main characters get essentially as much attention in the unfolding narrative as does Max, and that's where the problems lie. The author tells the story in what I think of as "basket-weaver" style, by which I mean the chapters alternate from Max to Leffy (an aspiring guitarist who dreams of playing professionally if she can overcome her shyness), Tanya (Leffy's roommate, a talented actress who has stopped acting), Nia (an alienated teenager), and Lisa (Nia's mom, who is preoccupied with the trauma of coming out of the closet). Most chapters conclude with minor cliffhangers, making the switch to another point of view somewhat irksome, but for me the book's basic flaw was that all these other characters are not very interesting. I suppose the idea is that all of them are in the process of learning to live more authentically, but even so their dialog in particular is utterly banal and put me in mind of the kind of mass-market chick-lit you see in grocery stores. I don't like to skim, but I found myself doing that every time these other characters started talking.Aside from that, De Lint is competent at what he does. (He should be, given all the titles to his credit -- nine pages on goodreads. Prolific!) It's escapism, which for me definitely serves a purpose every so often.
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This book is a sort of fantasy equivalent of Kafka's Metamorphosis: A Max Trader, a well respected instrument maker, wakes up in the body of another man. The man who's body and life Max now inhabits is Johnny, the human equivalent of a cockroach; a nasty loser who cheats, steals and treats everyone around him with contempt. An Johnny has taken over Max's body and life.The story follows Max's attempts to make sense of what happened to him and to regain his old life. He has to deal with the people who despise him, thinking he is Johnny, and face some hard truths about himself. Several people get drawn into the vortex created by Max and Johnny's struggle, complicating the story.This book has some interesting themes, such as the links between body, mind and personality. How much of who we are is determined by chance, and how much by choice? To what extent are we shaped by other people's perceptions of us?The most powerful section for me was Max's experience as a homeless person, how quickly he changed from a "citizen" to one of the invisible and ignored.
—Masha Toit
It was truly a good book. It took a bit to get into it, since it tells the story of two people switching out their lives. One is an utter jerk with no real life prospects and the other is simply detached from life. On the way to getting their lives back, they come across many other people that also end up examining and looking at their lives and starting change for the better. I loved it, since it gave a different perspective on the journeys that people need to undertake when discovering themselves and trying to figure out a life that works for them, rather than something they have just stumbled on. As always, it's a lovely and lyrical book and very realistic, despite the fantasy that creeps in once in awhile.
—Helena R-D
Charles De Lint isn't a perfect writer from a literary standpoint, and every time I read one of his books there are a few moments where I find myself restructuring his sentences in my head, or changing some wording around, to make it all flow more smoothly. Despite all of this, I adore his books. He goes so far beyond making up for slight weaknesses in his style that it seems petty to even bring them up. The characters in his books are more like real people I actually know than any other literary characters I've ever encountered, and I feel like he understands and captures the tragic beauty of the human condition in a way that art rarely achieves. His stuff is incredible, and "Trader" is no exception.This is a book about Max Trader, a luthier (that's someone who builds guitars) who wakes up one morning in the body of a good-for-nothing wasteoid. The wasteoid, Johnny Devlin, woke up in Max's body too, and now, while Max is having to deal with the fact that Johnny's broke, getting evicted, and in a lot of trouble with his ex-girlfriend, Johnny's busily seeing how quickly he can run Max's life into the ground. The story focuses on Max rather than Johnny, though, and there's a sad beauty in seeing a good person try to deal with a bad hand that he incurred through no fault of his own. There's a much larger metaphor here too, in that a lot of people go through this sort of thing in real life, without any fantastical switching of brains, and also have to pick up the pieces. It made me consider the plight of the homeless in much more detail than I ever had before.There's a lot more to the story, involving Max's teenage neighbor and her mom, Johnny's ex-girlfriend and her musician roommate, and of course, those De Lint mainstays Geordie Riddell and Jilly Coppercorn, who seem to show up in every book he writes (and thank god for that--they are both awesome characters). At the heart of it all, though, is the story of a man who has to figure out who he really is despite losing all outward signs of being that person. De Lint keeps you interested, makes you care--sometimes even about characters that shouldn't be sympathetic at all--and provides some insight about people and how they interact, insight that's well worth taking in and remembering. "Trader" is well worth your time.
—Andrew
