Speculative Fiction Junkie

Jack O'Connell

No matter how great a book is, I almost always look forward to my next read. And when I've finished a book I usually grab another one immediately and start reading. But after finishing The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell, I found myself unable to proceed as I normally do. Instead, I put The Resurrectionist back on my bookshelf and just stood there staring at it for a second before walking away.

The only explanation I can provide is that this book left me with so much to process intellectually, and so much to digest emotionally, that I was simply blown away and not ready to start reading something else right away.

At the beginning of the book, Sweeney and his comatose son Danny have just moved from Cleveland to the dilapidated city of Quinsigamond so that Danny can be treated at the prestigious Peck Clinic. The Peck has been operated by the same family of doctors for generations and in two cases its doctors have successfully awakened patients that had been in persistent comas for years. Sweeney, who works at the Clinic as a druggist, is hopeful that Danny will be the third patient to be awakened by the Peck Clinic doctors. In his spare moments, Sweeney reads to his comatose son from Danny's favorite comic book, Limbo, which features the travels and travails of a group of circus freaks. Sweeney also meets an itinerant biker gang, the Abominations, who attempt to befriend him.

The problem with the description in the preceding paragraph is that it makes the book sound like it contains a pastiche of disparate elements that don't cohere around the main story. I assure you that this is not the case. Instead, Mr. O'Connell takes these seemingly disparate elements and interweaves them, so that the events in one thread of the story parallel, and contrast with, the other threads. In addition to presenting different perspectives, these separate threads increasingly offer the protagonists with different choices about how they are going to treat the persistence of Danny's coma. The odyssey that results is a journey so strange, so tortured, that I can't imagine it done better than this.

The Resurrectionist has so many strengths I'm not even sure where to begin. O'Connell is an exceptional writer. He has that Gaimanesque ability to make even mundane details interesting. More importantly, though, he possesses one of the surest signs of a master of the craft: the power to say just as much with what is left unsaid as one does with what is said. This is true for every aspect of the book. For example, the words used to describe the setting of the Clinic adequately account for the way I perceive the Clinic, but they don't adequately account for how I feel about it. Similarly, if you were to ask me to pinpoint the words that are the source of the work's heavy emotional impact I could not. That impact is something new and apart from the story itself that emerges out of O'Connell's power as a writer. The result is that The Resurrectionist packs more of a punch than it's mere 300 pages would seem to allow.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the story of the Limbo comic books was interesting as a standalone story. I'm going to be honest: I don't like comic books. So I wasn't looking forward to that part of The Resurrectionist too much. Thankfully, Limbo isn't anything like a real comic book and instead resembles a short story more than anything else. The content is different as well. The story of Limbo is jarringly violent, macabre, tragic, and fascinating. I did not like the Abominations (i.e., biker gang) thread of the story as much but it was still very good (although I have to admit that I'm still grappling with trying to fully understand the Steppenwolf-like trip that the bikers took towards the end of the novel).

The promotional blurb for this book says that it is "part noir thriller, part mind-bending fantasy" and, for once, I agree with the blurb. That Mr. O'Connell can write a book with these qualities that is ultimately about how a family deals with tragedy is nothing short of amazing. Not only am I going to read The Resurrectionist again, I'm going to read everything this man has ever written. This one will stay with me.

Rating: 10/10

The True First

The Resurrectionist was first published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in April 2008. I am constantly annoyed that none of the authors I review here ever seem to come anywhere near my North Carolina abode. Since Algonquin is based here, perhaps they can get Mr. O'Connell to make an appearance in the area.

[This review was not based on a review copy]