The Wisdom Of Crocodiles

What strikes me most about this book is its complexity and its extraordinary look at mundane life, the economics of relationships, and the emotional agony the average person endures as they acquire the knowledge and wisdom that comes with mid-life. The cast of characters are extraordinary in their every day ordinariness: Winicott, an emotional repressed middle aged man, promoted to the level of his perceived incompetence, suffering the slow decay of his marriage, he receives an accidental blow on the head and becomes possessed by a female alien entity who claims to know the secret of human existence - a case study boon for his therapist, obviously. Healy, the good cop, estranged from his wife, is forced reluctantly to investigate a missing persons case as a favour he cannot refuse. And Healy's wife, who finds herself smack in the middle of a fraud situation while doing an audit at a well respected banking institution: should she reveal her findings and possibly implicate herself? Then there is Dr. Levells, computer scientist, she seems to think that she has cracked the human emotion code, resulting in artificial intelligence more human than we might like it to be ... or is it? Of course, there is the porn shop owner, whose philosophies on life make more sense than the structure of the English banking system. Even the character Steen Grlscz who we assume straight away to be the conceptual ringer of the story: the oddly placed inhuman creature whose only purpose is to add spice to a rather mundane cast of characters. Well this assumption couldn't be further from the truth ... metaphorically speaking. Yes, Grlscz likes to dissect women: sad, lonely, pathetic, angry women who are loathe to free themselves from their own misery. With the meticulous precision of a surgeon, he dissects every facet of the man/woman romantic relationship, for Grlscz is not merely the rogue character of the story, he is the lesson. A Vampire who feeds on pure emotion, sustained by love yet is starving to death. Now that is a profound statement on Humanity's ills. We poison ourselves from within not from without. As if the complexity of the characters weren't enough to set your head spinning, we have the leaning tower of Pisa; pornography; parachuting; banking; economics and financial fraud; terrorist bombings; infidelity; murder; psychoanalysis; and the hardest crossword clue in the world. How are all these interconnected? Mr. Hoffman draws parallels even a genius mathematician wouldn't contrive to propose, for they are all interconnected in such a profound way, proving Carl Jung's theory: In all chaos there is a cosmos. In all disorder, a secret order. This story might very well hold the key to the meaning of human existence, though reading this book will only leave you with more questions and theories to ponder, and in that is the beauty of this work: the drive and determination of the human mind, relentlessly seeking meaning in everything that s