The Resurrectionist

It intrigues me that two people can read one book and have such stunningly different experiences. While I would be the first to admit that The Resurrectionist is a roller-coaster pot pouri of styles and characters I would take that as a blessing rather than a curse. To be sure, in his four previous novels O'Connell has been guilty of flaying a man alive in visceral prose and a bout of dwarf throwing. He has also brought us some of the most riveting prose in contemporary American literature, managing to combine highly cerebral ideas with riveting narrative structures. I have recently read three blog critiques which have left me wondering about the Giordian knot that O'Connell has entangled himself in by simply being ambitious. They have also left me wondering about the cognitive abilities of certain readers. Thus this missive is directed at G.B.H. Hornswoggler (who, just via his/her presumed pseudonym is probably not to be taken too seriously), Carrie Laben and Mike Meginnis (who, in his blog, admits that "I'm not writing in order to be a productive critic..."). All three have taken a sledgehammer to The Resurrectionist and all three, I believe, read a very different book to the one I have now delved into twice with total relish. It is more than a little difficult to contextualize O'Connell's writings. He's become, deservedly, something of a cult [and sadly I have to stress cult] favourite via his first four books, The Skin Palace, Box Nine, Wireless and Word Made Flesh - all of which I can heartily recommend as well. These were all categorized as `crime' novels, which didn't even start to encompass their bizarre depths. With The Resurrectionist he has made categorization even more impossible by blending psychology, comic book culture, crime, 50s noir and parental despair. The New York Times Book Review stated that: "To call Jack O'Connell's novels imaginative, or even original, doesn't begin to say it... There's something both exciting and unnerving about [his] kind of hallucinatory writing." The Los Angeles Times claimed that: "O'Connell [is a] cackling genius. . . . Fans of his previous novels, the cult favorites The Skin Palace, Box Nine and Wireless, will be glad to hear that The Resurrectionist is just as demented and deeply enjoyable." Meanwhile the Minneapolis Star-Tribune claims that: "It blends the out-there mysticism of H.P. Lovecraft, the dark corridors and femme fatales of Dashiell Hammett, and the pulpy, lurid qualities of '50s comic books." I read this book some months ago and find every morning that I am sipping a coffee and staring at its spine with something close to awe. Its slippery position in terms of genre is part of the intrigue - should it sit between William Gibson's Spook Country and James Ellroy's Cold Six Thousand? Or, in its clear nod to horror should it snuggle up against Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves? Or, in its' decidedly sensitive investigation into notions of loss should it sit between Steve Ericks

April 15-28, 2008 Here is the heart of "The Resurrectionist" by Jack O'Connell (page references are to the Algonquin hardbound edition): "...he understood that the universe, the fabric of reality, was composed of nothing more than particles of longing, a kind of quantum desire for absolute connection. Dr. Peck understood that, from moment to moment, we are profoundly asleep and, so, profoundly alone. ...He knew that every arousal he achieved would bring him closer to answers that had more to do with the nature of consciousness than of coma." (143) "...this was what he lived for: that instant of pure, galloping potential, that feeling of downrushing epiphany. ...But calling forth fresh thought was, like summoning demons, a precarious process. And, for Dr. Peck, it required an instinctual blending of the right amounts of whimsy, research, fatigue, daydream, alcohol, and stress. It also required the right environment.... Finally, the summoning required a marriage of humility and patience that could allow the idea to reveal itself in its own manner and time. The idea, it must be understood, is always in charge." (145-146) "...the calling to medicine -- at least the kind of visionary medicine to which he aspired -- was more than a vocation; it was destiny. And as such, it called for a radical lifestyle. Doctors, like monks, were forever at risk of infiltration by the domestic world. He concluded... that they should be solitary, if not entirely celibate, creatures. ...set apart." (146-147) As in his earlier work, "Word Made Flesh," O'Connell has staked his claim on the phenomenon of creativity and developed a glossus of images to convey his theories and exasperations. He begins Word with the closely observed vivisection of a man, a reverse process of the title, in which we watch a mind (such as it was), and instincts and feelings (such as they were) deftly divested of their mortal envelope, their "jacket" of flesh. From there, somehow, inexorably and beautifully, we are led to apples, and you know what they stand for. In "The Resurrectionist," we're given a boy in a coma, his grieving father whose wife -- the boy's mother -- died six months after the boy's "incident." We're given a creepy private hospital in O'Connell's perturbingly passé Quinsigamond (Worcester), Massachusetts, said hospital staffed by incestuous strangers in a suffocating atmosphere of endless waiting. Time is made of glass here. There's motion, but it takes years to make a single ripple. It might all be a metaphor for the giant brain we famously use only ten percent of, a brain that is "from moment to moment... profoundly asleep and, so, profoundly alone." The chief creep, Dr. Peck, is chasing "arousal" of his comatose patients, seeking that one brilliant insight -- his own arousal -- like a deep-sea diver in the murk of our still primitive sciences of mind and thought. O'Connell's work is rich with wry and mordant humor, and he has his questing doctor literally using a di

This is a strange book--a roller-coaster ride through a fun house, up and down, in and out of the light. I certainly will keep you off-balance. We have 4 basic threads woven together. First, the pharmacist Sweeney and his comatose son Danny, newly-arrived at the Peck Clinic in O'Connell's decaying city Quinsigamond. Second, and not as extensive as the other threads, is Peck himself, his daughter, and his pet salamander. Third is Buzz Cote's biker gang The Abominations, including Nadia Rey, who works at the clinic. Fourth is a comic-book (using the term loosely, since it's unlike any comic most of us will ever read) world of Limbo, Gehanna, and circus freaks. Danny was/is[??] a huge fan of Limbo, as are the Abominations. Initially, everything seems rather straightforward and distinct, but Clotho weaves these threads together so that the distinctions begin to blur, and then blur in a major way indeed. You'll find that by the end of the book, things are very different from what you thought they were, and you may have a hard time trying to separate reality (such as there is) from fantasy. But you'll also find that the ending seems to make perfect sense, in a bizarre and convoluted way. O'Connell is able to draw a picture of a fascinating world. It's a very different world--unsettling, disturbing, jugular. It's strong and effective writing, and it resembles some sort of odd underground comic without pictures. Powerful stuff!

For those readers who appreciate fine writing and wholly unique, original stories, Jack O'Connell's novels are the literary equivalent of oxygen. With four excellent novels previous to THE RESURRECTIONIST, it baffles me that O'Connell is not a steady fixture on the bestseller list. His plots operate on a multitude of levels: if you're looking for a fast-paced, provoking thriller O'Connell is your guy; if you want to read a complex yarn replete with unexpected twists and turns and complexities he's very much your guy; if your cup of tea is thrillers that must come mixed with intelligence O'Connell always delivers. O'Connell puts masters like Lehane, Connelly, and Crais to shame. With THE RESURRECTIONIST, O'Connell has surpassed his own standard of excellence, and given us a mesmerizing, impossible-to-put-down novel that transcends reality and redefines noir. Simply put, the book tells the story of a father and son newly arrived at the forbidding Peck Clinic, a neurology institute that seems designed in part by CIA mind control geeks and renegade physicians bent on rewriting the mind's secret codes. Danny, the son, a coma victim, is locked in a world all his own; his father, Sweeney, a pharmacist, wants Danny to return to his conscious state. But Danny dwells in Limbo, a comic book-like place peopled with enough rare and bizarre characters to rival Katherine Dunn's GEEK LOVE. With psychotic bikers circling the story like blood hungry vultures and vivacious neurologists tempting Sweeney, THE RESURRECTIONIST is like no other book I can think of--- O'Connell has handed us another modern masterpiece of suspense and intelligence. Read this book as quickly as you can get your hands on a copy!

WOW! What a book. I read this is less then 24 hours. I could not put it down. I was hook by the first chapter and the rest was history. The pace of the book was fast and the dialouge kept me intrigued. From Sweeney and Danny to the Cirus freaks you enter a world like one you have never seen yet by the end you realize maybe its not so different then your own! A must read, I only hope there is a sequel....