Author: Jack O’Connell
Algonquin Books, 2008
Best ebook deal: Kindle only
| C4 Ratings.....out of | 10 |
|---|---|
| Language..... | 5 |
| Entertainment..... | 5 |
| Depth..... | 5 |
The Ressurectionist is a decidedly average book. It is neither gripping nor boring; neither written well nor poorly. The characters are full and rendered nicely, though none are particularly memorable, and the plot shows a fair degree of creativity but ultimately lacks in execution. Though cliche, the mad scientist grotesqueries blend nicely with the father son story (not unlike Cormac McCarthy’s The Road injected with cartoons) For these reasons the book is worth reading for those readers in search of a quick adventure story distraction to include in their mindless summer reading, but otherwise probably isn’t.
The story features two plotlines, which it manages to weave, with some mixed and messy success, as the book progresses. The main narrative concerns a pharmacist, Sweeny, who takes a night shift job in an oddball coma clinic in order to procure free treatment for his comatose son. The Peck, as it is known, is a place of renown in the apparently large world of experimental coma clinics, and Sweeny desperately latches onto the idea that just maybe his son can be awakened. Yet when the Abominations, a biker gang with a more-or-less nonsensical penchant for helping families of the comatose in exchange for the mind-bending shunt discharge (which they cook, a la meth, into a concotion known as soup, and shoot up in order to enter another dimension) enter the fray, Sweeny becomes caught in a seesawing battle with his son’s soul/consciousness as the fulcrum.
The second plotline occurs in the world of a comic book, Limbo, which was Sweeny’s son’s obsession when wakeful. The comic book concerns a band of fugitive circus freaks as they search for the father of the psychic Chicken Boy, who is, perhaps obviousy, a boy who looks like a chicken (complete with beak and feathers). Chicken Boy can see the future by having seizures. It’s a pretty dark story line (not lacking in vulgar language, dismemberment, murder, and sodomy) for a comic supposedly for children, but when you get past the logic of that the freak troupe story does much fore the mood and pace of the book. And the oft ambling dialogue is much easier to forgive in this comic book world.
As the books gets on, O’Connell attempts to blend the realities between the two worlds, resulting in the aformentioned seesawing battle. While the merging plotlines make sense within the parameters of the story to a certain degree, a lot of disbelief must be suspended when it comes to the sheer amount of coincidence the story assumes as foundation. If you’re one of those readers who, like me, expects a story to justify its set of rules then you may want to move on, as The Ressurectionist requires its reader to disreguard towering implausiblity for the sake of plotting. Though I didn’t wholly dislike the book, it is one of those novels that had I will probably leave on a bench somewhere.
Other books: Wolf Boy (Kuhlman), Maribou Stork Nightmares (Welsh), The Road (McCarthy), Frisco Pigeon Mambo (Payne)
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