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Title: The Resurrectionists: A Novel by Michael Collins ISBN: 0-7432-2904-5 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 24 September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.78 (32 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Creepy Mystery Pays Off
Comment: It's hard to like Frank Cassidy at the beginning of The Resurrectionist. He's sardonic, broke, a loser, and pseudo-philospher all rolled into one. His only redeeming quality is his love for his child, Ernie. It took me and all in my reading group forty pages before we could sympathize with Frank. This in retropsect is a tribute to the book. Collins has crafted a slice of American that we wince at, or try to avoid. The sense of desperation Frank felt was discussed in terms of our present day economy, a man, finding himself in economic ruination, can turn violent. We see it on the news so often. Here we come face to face with that psychopathic undercurrent that may run through most of us, when cornered.
It's not pretty, but so true to life. The hostage scene with Melvin stands as one of the truly great set pieces we've read in years, an approximation of horror and then reconciliation. How Frank changes and saves Melvin works so cinematically. It is the turning point on an odyssey that is becomes both suspenseful and human. The resolution to the mystery element was totally unseen, but worked brilliantly.
This was truly a creepy yet satisfying novel, one that crossed many different genres, yet somehow held together. However, it's not for the feint of heart.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Cold War
Comment: Taking the apparent simplicity of a small town murder as its hook, Collins subverts the murder mystery genre in this highly unusual, psychological novel. Signposted with cultural references, we are transported back first to the late seventies, then further back to the fifties, wherein lies the secret to unraveling the plot. The sheer level of detail, both physical and psychological, the mood of the novel is done brilliantly. The Resurrectionists is a form of time travel.
Peppered with a host of surreal characters, from Frank's wife Honey to their two children, Robert Lee and Ernie, we share the foibles and fears of a family. We witness the interplay of nurture vs. nature as the two kids are exposed to the manic wandering and searching of its two main characters. We see life weigh down on the children with such moments of bone chilling realism that it reminded me of seeing people at stores who attack their children, or abuse them. The instinct is to protect them. However, the relationship with the children is far more complex, abuse, love and ultimately acceptance comes through. There are no easy answers in this novel. It's complex, often disorienting, given we are dealing with a narrator who is unreliable, a victim of shock treatment. What makes this novel stand apart are the moments of poignancy, bone chilling realism, and at times horror of real life. It holds no punches. It depicts a side of life and people we are at times wont to turn our backs on.... Highly recommended.
Rating: 3
Summary: Nothing special
Comment: ~ Frank Cassidy learns in a newspaper of the death - possibly, murder - of his uncle, and goes back to North America to investigate any possibility of inheritance; to find out why his uncle died; and to sort out loose ends left in his head from a fire at his family farm in his childhood...
This book starts off quite promisingly. The writer evidently knows the mechanics of how to write well. But the book lacks sufficient plot after about the first hundred pages (of a 360-page book) to keep the reader very interested in continuing with it. The journey to the end of the book becomes boring, too unstimulating, too slow, too drawn out, with too much description and detail just for the sake of giving description and detail, too much describing of humdrum life, with the reader wondering if the book is going to go anywhere sufficiently interesting to be worth going on turning the pages. The characters in the book aren't made particularly interesting in themselves. The story ceases to be interesting. The reader is left in the dark for too long as to where the book is heading to, or why all the details are supposed to be interesting, or what the point of the book is supposed to be. Whilst what really happened many years before, in Frank's childhood, is revealed to us in the last fifteen pages of the book, by the time the reader gets there, he will probably have lost interest in the tale anyway.
A few specifics in the plot that didn't really seem to fit together well:
1. It seemed odd for Frank just to dump Juniper, the family pet, in someone else's car, and for that action then just to be accepted by the rest of the family.
2. It seemed odd for Frank to go back home with specific personal missions in his mind, but yet then never actually to get round to meeting up with Norman and Martha face to face for the whole time he was up there.
3. It seemed odd for Norman and Martha just to run away without saying more to anyone, after their herd was slaughtered.
4. Why Chester Green was suddenly being referred to as 'the Sleeper' didn't seem to be explained.
5. It seemed odd for Frank, not rich, not to want to salvage any possessions from either house before they were bulldozed.
6. It seemed odd and too convenient for Frank suddenly to be interrogating Baxter, his new co-worker, for information, which was forthcoming, as soon as he met him.
7. It seemed odd for Frank just to be allowed to be left alone with Chester Green in a hospital unsupervised, particularly in later visits after he had already been suspected of trying to harm or interfere with Chester Green earlier on.
8. Why Baxter suddenly ended up in the sanatorium following the window-smashing incident and ended up getting ECT treatment wasn't very clear.
9. Frank suddenly realising his mother had died in a fall many years ago, by listening to tapes, didn't really ring very true.
10. The detail at the end of the book (page 357), of Frank killing the paralysed 'Chester Green' in the sanatorium, seemed to be a detail borrowed straight out of 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest', where the huge red indian suffocates the comitose Jack Nicholson at the end of that film. That conclusion seems to be borne out by a reference to 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' in this book, just a page later (page 358).
All in all, this was not a very satisfying book, for a variety of reasons - mainly lack of interesting plot and lack of interesting characters.
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Title: Desert Burial: A Novel by Brian Littlefair ISBN: B0000C7BNA Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 11 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Keepers of Truth: A Novel by Michael Collins ISBN: 0743218035 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 25 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: High Water: A Novel by Lynn Hightower ISBN: B0000C7BMU Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 02 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: City of Dreams: A Novel of Early Manhattan by Beverly Swerling ISBN: B0000C37E7 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Ring of Truth by Nancy Pickard ISBN: B000066TQ3 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: June, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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