The Narcissist's Daughter

When I first started reading this book, I wasn't sure I would like it. It has long run on sentences in the first person, which could initially seemed rambling. But, just a few pages in I could see that his style really worked well. I was very quickly engrossed in the story, the characters and enjoyed how beautifully it was written. It held many surprises and plot twists that were unusual and entertaining. I look forward to reading Holden's other books.

Reading this book is like settling down at your neighborhood bar next to a stranger who maybe past his limit and needs to tell you a story. At first you don't want to listen, and then his insistence, and the fact that he will buy if you will only bear witness, holds you until closing time. Its 4AM, you smell like smoke, and you know a little bit more about the consequences of the choices we can make and the choices that get made for us. The plot details of this book are amply displayed elsewhere. What keeps you listening are its characters and the language in which Holden tells their story. Whether it is the wine stained face of Chloe and her young Lochinvar Donny, the primal love of Motorhead stepfather Brigman, the Doctor and his wife, yound Syd and Jessi, these people, and their story, become as real as if they are sitting next to you and staring back out the mirror setting over the backbar. You want to buy them a drink if only they tell their story to its terrible and human end. This book is about love and the things we do, don't do, and get done to us for its sake. I bought this book used when it was out of print. I see it is now out as a paperback. I urge you to buy it at full value. Feeding Holden is important.

I used to wonder when I would finally find a writer who did crime and suspense fiction with the story-telling ability of Michael Connelly and the fluid, skilled prose of McGuane or Banks. And then I happened across Four Corners of Night by Craig Holden, an absolute masterpiece of a book; a police procedural, family saga and meditation on grief and loyalty all rolled into one. Holden's latest novel, The Narcissist's Daughter proves beyond a doubt that this guy can flat-out write, entertain and never tell the same story twice. Holden's fifth novel is an intelligent book that moves at a break-neck pace, which is a shame in some respects because Holden's prose is strong and as clear as morning air, and worth lingering on. The tale is narrated by Syd Redding, an intelligent, working class pre-med student with a chip on his shoulder. Syd juggles a full time job in a blood lab at night to fund his schooling during the day. Doctor Ted Kessler is Syd's supervisor and would-be mentor, a decorated Korean War vet and quietly intimidating man. Syd's family is dysfunctional and still hurting over the untimely death of Syd's mother. Holden drags the reader into the interiors of both the Reddings and the Kesslers domestic situations, weaving his tale with great balance and intrigue. As Syd gets to know the Kesslers, he becomes infatuated with Dr.Kessler's wife Joyce, and becomes involved with her. In the hands of a lesser writer, this could be the recipe for a paint-by-numbers thriller. But in The Narcissist's Daughter it's the trumpet call for a suspenseful and intricate tale of deceit and revenge. In 228 pages Holden delivers an acute character study and gripping tale that ought to find its way onto the big screen in short order. His previous novel, The Jazz Bird, based on actual events surrounding infamous bootlegger George Remus, is also a gem.

None other than Michael Ondaatji once heaped huge and unsolicited praise on a Craig Holden thriller (The River Sorrow), and one can see why. Holden's latest novel, The Narcissist's Daughter, could be the best example of a literary thriller that since Holden's last book, The Jazz Bird, or Graham Green's The Human Factor. The plot is as tight as it gets. Twenty-three year old Syd Redding is from the wrong side of the tracks, but he's trying to improve his lot. He's an intelligent guy and wants to become a doctor. While taking his pre-med courses he gets a job in a hospital run by Dr. Ted Kessler, a respected war veteran and an influential physician who could help Syd not only get into medical school, but excel in his field thereafter. At Dr. Kessler's suggestion, Syd signs on for the nightshift where he meets and soon beds the beautiful and seductive Joyce Kessler, the doctor's wife. This affair goes horribly sour and, when it does, Syd finds himself humiliated and ravaged with a desire for revenge. Jessi Kessler, Ted and Joyce's seventeen-year-old daughter, becomes the means to his enraged and obsessed end. He begins a torrid affair with young Jessi and through this affair Holden introduces the reader, at first subtly, and then with ever increasing intensity, into a world of perversity that rivals anything DeSade or Poe could conjure. Much like Chuck Palahniuk eased us into the ever-increasing psychosis of Tyler Hayden in Fight Club, Holden's skillfully honed discipline and restraint brings the perverse into sharper and sharper focus as we travel through the twists and turns of Syd Redding's appetite for revenge. Holden's rendering of Syd Redding's perversities gives credence to Freud's dictum that wherever one finds sadism; masochism isn't far behind (and vice versa). With his readers, however, Holden is neither sadistic nor masochistic-only gratifying. The Narcissist's Daughter contains some stunning prose; prose that puts Holden in the company of Ondaatji, John Fowles, and Jeffery Lent. Syd Redding's description of waking, as an adult, in his childhood house before taking a run serves as an example. "The workday sunlight and empty house I woke into later on the weekdays I didn't have early classes felt like a place I'd only come to visit yet I found some peace there. I began to walk through the tight neighborhoods in the afternoons, then to run-I'd once been a halfback and a sprinter; now I came to crave what opened in me only after a couple of miles. When you start, the legs ache and the chest burns from the cigarettes and the chilled air, but soon the muscles relax into that state of spring-like tension and the chest opens and deepens and finally the mind stops registering pain and begins to take in the world in a way that you otherwise feel only when you are stoned or in a city you've never seen before, when the sky is clear and hard and every detail, the faces of women and the shapes of buildings and the sounds of language and traff

Holden's strength has always been his prose, and the Fitzgeraldian lyricism of his words pull the reader effortlessly through this book. There's A LOT of sex in "The Narcissist's Daughter," however, and although at first it seems appropriate for the "Graduate" meets James M. Cain plot, eventually a few too many fetishistic variations make the novel read more like "The Kinsey Report" than "The Postman Always Rings Twice." It's that overdose of perversity coupled with a less than sympathetic protagonist that may leave a bad taste in the reader's mouth even as the convoluted plot races to it's appropriately shocking ending.