Dorfman's clever, thought-provoking premise serves as the medium for a probing examination of power—as well as a daring...
Complex and challenging thriller from the Chilean-born playwright and novelist (Konfidenz, 1995, etc).
Graham Blake’s unusual therapy treatment serves as both allegory and as demonstration of the permeability of plotting in this ever-shifting story. Blake owns the conglomerate Clean Earth Company, an ecofriendly producer of everything from herbal teas to healing holidays. He should be pleased at his good-conscience success, but is instead plagued by insomnia and doubt. Off to Dr. Tolgate's institute he goes, to cure what is deemed his confusion about identity. For one month, Blake is locked in a Philadelphia apartment with a sophisticated surveillance system whose monitors show him the intimate life of the family next door, employees at his local factory. He can determine their fate, Blake is told: Would he be interested in a crippling accident for the older brother, perhaps a rape of the mother, or a fortune found for them all? No problem. The institute's henchmen will arrange everything. The therapy allows Blake to play God, erasing all doubts as to who he is when given ultimate power. The irony, of course, is that he already has this power as employer to thousands around the globe. Blake begins his therapy and along the way becomes besotted with the family’s grown daughter Roxanna, a holistic healer, who prays right in front of the camera, as if she were praying to him. When plans go astray and he has to save Roxanna from suicide, Dr. Tolgate reveals that the whole last month has been a drama with hired actors. Cured, Blake returns to life with new vigor . . . except that he is now compelled to spy on and videotape his friends, lover, and workers. When he discovers the actual Philadelphia workers who were prototypes for his therapy “family,” he infiltrates their lives with cameras and again tries to play God, this time for real. Or is it?
Dorfman's clever, thought-provoking premise serves as the medium for a probing examination of power—as well as a daring attempt to distill the nature of good and evil.Pub Date: May 8, 2001
ISBN: 1-58322-070-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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