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Summary: Slipstream Blur of Modern Life
Review: In the ever quickening pace of modern life, time has quicken or become more dense, our mind is bombarded with so much information, so many images, that at times life is a blur, a smear across our consciousness. So reads this fascinating novel, part road novel, part psychoanalytical tract, part murder mystery, part family saga. We have Jonestown alongside Skylab, alongside the Nixon hearings, alongside the continuous reruns the family are exposed to all day. In a matter of pages one is transported into the late seventies, early eighties through these cultural touchstones, but Collins goes one better, rather than a catalog of references, he connects the cultural dots, he tells us something about ourselves.
He also poses existential questions about life and economics, about family life. At one point out on the road the main character has to get rid of the family cat... "Juniper likced my hand with his coarse tongue. I messed with his mouse and then threw it among the suitcases, and that got his back turned. It's hard to walk away from somebody who's staring at you, even a cat... Walking away, I was thinking, what if you could put your kid into someone else's car, I mean, find some luxurious car and just put your kid in it with a note? If you knew the kid was going to have a better life, would you do it?"
Later than night Frank participates in what is one of the most indelible moments of horror and compassion you'll ever read, as Frank robs a man of his savings, but gives him something far greater in return.
Always fluxing between despair and redemption, The Resurrectionists gets to the core of the human condition for these scavengers who walk amidst us, those we read about or see on the nightly news who sometimes go off the deep end. In The Resurrectionists, we get to see into their lives, into a social space becoming occupied by more and more of us. I'm thinking the horror we are now experiencing with The Sniper.
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Summary: Confronting the past
Review: In THE RESURRECTIONISTS Frank Cassidy returns to his childhood town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula with his family after he learns of the untimely death of his estranged uncle. At first his intentions rested in claiming a segment of his inheritance, but soon enough he realizes that he has returned because he cannot run from the events of his past any longer. After creating a new life in the U.P., Frank slowly delves into the mysteries surrounding the death of his parents in a house fire and the subsequent psychological testing he endured afterwards. He uncovers answers that astound him and make him question his own innocence. Set during the late 1970's, THE RESURRECTIONISTS is filled to the rim with pop culture and political references throughout the book, almost to the point of being distracting. This is a clever murder mystery that successfully transforms the reader to the harsh and snow-filled winter of the Upper Peninsula, and the anatomy of a small Midwestern town and all its secrets.
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Summary: "Like everything else in life...stories within stories."
Review: In this absorbing and multi-layered can't-put-it-downer, Collins provides the reader with innumerable vantage points from which to view the lives of Frank Cassidy and his quirky and dysfunctional family, to see life as Frank sees it, and to watch in fascination as each family member grows and changes. Stuck by circumstance and lack of opportunity at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, Frank, "a scavenger at the edge of existence," Honey, and their children leave New Jersey in a series of stolen cars for the Upper Michigan Peninsula, as soon as they discover that Frank's uncle, who raised him, has died on his farm. An inheritance, however small, could change their lives. A mystery lies at the heart of the novel. Frank's parents died in a fire when he was five, and, through hypnosis and, eventually, treatment for a breakdown, he's come to believe that he and his uncle were both involved in these deaths in some way. Returning to "a town nobody returns to unless under tragic circumstances," Frank starts digging into the past and disrupting lives. On the level of plot alone, the novel is full of excitement, enhanced by vibrant characters with whom one feels great empathy as they wrestle against the circumstances that keep them down, bending the rules, if not breaking them, whenever they can. The vividly described, remote farm environment, the mores of the local community, and the treacherous winter weather generate much of the action and interaction. Collins expands the scope of the novel well beyond plot and melodrama, however, by recreating the ambience of the 1970's and using Richard Nixon, Watergate, and Jim Jones as thematic motifs which recur throughout the novel and show parallels with his characters and story.
As the title indicates, this is also a novel with religious parallels, so well integrated that many readers may not even notice them, at first. The Prodigal Son, the Book of Job, and the story of Lot's wife are fairly obvious, while the Parable of the Loaves and Fishes (in this case a trick in which one hits a Coke machine at the right moment to get both the Coke and the money back) may be less so. References to good and evil, hope and despair, death and rebirth, and salvation and resurrection occur throughout, as Frank and his family adapt to life in a small town, try to cope with their internal conflicts, and ultimately to come out ahead. A beautifully developed novel of big ideas, The Resurrectionists is engaging and, to me, totally satisfying on every level. Though I enjoyed Collins's Keepers of Truth, I liked this novel even better--it's one of my favorites of the year. Mary Whipple
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Summary: Staring into the Abyss
Review: In this dark, twisted tale of hidden secrets and America's secret history, Collins tears assunder our idea of genre, of the crime or the literary novel, and creates a fluid masterpiece that ebbs and flows through the emotional crisis of the book's characters who react against the political landscape of the Cold War and Nixon era.
At the center of the book is a murder, the murder of man on a remote farm in Michigan. The killer awaits arrest, then hangs himself and goes into a coma. So begins the journey of the main character back home to claim the farm of the murdered man. Of course, it's not that simple, and the mired history and psychos of the main character undermine any notion that this is strictly a murder mystery, and so begins one of the most cleverly conceived socio-political novels I've ever read.
The motif of looking for salvation is an example of how rigorously Collins treads his plot and themes throughout the book. He borrows from the Loave and the fish story, Lot's wife etc., secularizing these stories, putting his characters into modern situations, but keeping the essence of the Bibical stories alive. He makes the characters sense of religious loss all the more poignant. The surreal miracle that the narrator, Frank, performs while robbing a man of his life savings, is one of the great moments in the novel. It's such a cinematic moment of revelation that treads the line between what could end up a brutal slaying or a moment of redemption. Creepy stuff... What Collins has done is taken a strain of gritty realism with its focus on violence, loss, struggle, day-to-day survival, giving us an almost documentary footage rawness of real life. These characters at their worst,are despicable, but at their best the shine with such humanity that we can, if not forgive, at least understand the stain of madness and violence that runs throughout most of the book.
What is so brilliant and unsettling is how when you put the book down, it's then that its undertone of political and social critique resurrects itself. It's like the aftertaste of a fine wine. That the book can live on these two levels, that its very structure and content always plays with the visible and the invisible, with the surface and the buried, is truly remarkable. This is a book to read twice, once for the mystery, the second time to ruminate on just how many things this book addresses.
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Summary: A Cold Winds Blows Across The American Mindscape
Review: In truly stunning, brutal, and visceral terms, The Resurrectionists goes to the heart of the American psyche. This is novel of suspense, indeed, a brilliant use of plot/mystery, but to an entirely different end that most writers use the genre.
This novel defies category. It's a novel and an intellectual rift on America, on the Cold War, on TV, on the Dead Penalty, on Regression Therapy... It's all here in a hodgepodge way that somehow works, since the narrator is a psychological disturbed man. His rift, his excesses, his rants thread a surreal journey through the America of the Nixon Years and backtracking to the birth of the Cold War.
The effect is disorienting at times, but fascinating. Collins' use of language and turn of phrase keeps you reading for the sheer enjoyment of a line by line reading.
If you want something out of the ordinary, this is it...
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Summary: Sleeper of the Year
Review: Ironically at the heart of The Resurrectionists, is a man called The Sleeper, a man who carries the buried secret at the heart of the novel. The Resurrectionists seems to be following the course of its own plot, gaining momentum by sheer word of mouth. It is the Sleeper of the Year in my books, by far the best book I've read in years.
It was recommended to me at a local bookstore. I'm always wary of being pawned books I haven't heard about. The reviews seemed culled particularly well, but what jacket isn't lavished with reviews. But with honors like shortlisted for the Booker and IMPAC, I bought the book.
Since finishing it, I've began railing against the power's that be, that such a deft, masterful work, could slip so under the current of other less accomplished books. (I won't name names). Collins is not a pretender. This is an auspicious, and authentic attempt at great literature and story telling, a novel of risks that wades through a mire of social, political and psychological quagmire. At times you are lost, confused, suffering the fate of the main character. You persist in many instances for the sheer brilliance of the descriptive passages of place and mood.
Set against a backdrop of seventies kitsch, reruns, and a murder story that casts back 30 years to the paranoia of cold war, The Resurrectionists turns, what appears to be a parochial story of murder into an allegory of the cold war. The ingenious interplay of tapes, both the Watergate and those central to the story, the tapes of the main character's hypnosis sessions in the aftermath of his parent's death, is both personally haunting, but also an ingenious twist. The personal becomes the societal. Everything rebounds and references something else in this novel. Finishing the novel, felt akin to finishing White Noise, a parablesque writing style that blow you away, a book you want to read again for the splendor of the writing, but also what it says.
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Summary: Creepy Mystery Pays Off
Review: It's hard to like Frank Cassidy at the beginning of The Resurrectionist. He's sardonic, broke, a loser, and pseudo-philospher all rolled into one. His only redeeming quality is his love for his child, Ernie. It took me and all in my reading group forty pages before we could sympathize with Frank. This in retropsect is a tribute to the book. Collins has crafted a slice of American that we wince at, or try to avoid. The sense of desperation Frank felt was discussed in terms of our present day economy, a man, finding himself in economic ruination, can turn violent. We see it on the news so often. Here we come face to face with that psychopathic undercurrent that may run through most of us, when cornered.
It's not pretty, but so true to life. The hostage scene with Melvin stands as one of the truly great set pieces we've read in years, an approximation of horror and then reconciliation. How Frank changes and saves Melvin works so cinematically. It is the turning point on an odyssey that is becomes both suspenseful and human. The resolution to the mystery element was totally unseen, but worked brilliantly.
This was truly a creepy yet satisfying novel, one that crossed many different genres, yet somehow held together. However, it's not for the feint of heart.
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Summary: Pacific Northwest Award Winner Is on the Money
Review: Lost in the shuffle of blockbusters, comes this gem of genius. thank god for prizes. We choose this book (18 in our group)strictly since it was an award winner. We knew nothing of the author's pedigree, until we read the list of honors he's won. still the books are nowhere to be found. The store we ordered from had 4 copies, even though they had a display for the book given it had won the Pacific Northwest Award.
Does anybody care about great books anymore? I also found only 6 copies of this year's Pulitzer prize winner in the store...
Anyway, that's another issue. Read this for the story, for the language, for the social critique, read it for the laughs and the tears... Without going into plot summary, let's just say that this book is our pick of the year. We are now reading Collins' The Keepers of Truth and will keep you posted.
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Summary: Reading Group Debates On Author Nationality and Rights
Review: One of the most devise debates centered on the theme or intent of the author. A foreigner writing about America, and not alway in a endearing way. The question was, does Collins have a right to critique America as he does? Of course we are all entitled to our opinions, but in these heady days, the issue of nationality figured in our treatment, not just of the work, but the author's nationality.
Collins has become somewhat of a satirist of the American way of life, often using his breathtaking realism and adding a peculiar menace. What you get is an unsettling perspective that makes you rethink your own country's dreams and goals.
Amidst the debate over nationalitiy, we moved on and found within the pages a man who deeply cares about his characters and about America. There is such pathos at the end of the book, such a genuine sense of redemption, that what Collins has created is in effect, a pray to America...
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Summary: Pacific Northwest Novel of the Year gets Thumps Up!
Review: Prizes have a way of resurrecting books, and while searching for a novel for our reading group, I was recommended The Resurrectionists, a novel I'd never heard of before. The owner of the store recommended it highly and said the buzz was this was one of the true sleepers of the year, a dark, menacing, but brilliant political novel. He said if we wanted a book that would spark controversy, this was the book to read.
Given the current climate, I didn't know if that was a good or bad thing.
This is not a review as much as an endorsement of The Resurrectionists quirky brilliance. Our group was either mesmorized or shocked and angered by the portrayal of America. Like a review I saw here from somebody else, issues of nationalism flaired, and I see why this book might have been published to no fanfare. It's political sense is amazing, scary, and maybe not always on target. But what you get is a story of a society run amock, of a world dissintegrating before our eyes. This is an America of the lower class. Never has the meance been captured so well, but equally the novel seems to turn on an optimistic pivot, offering us a way out through family and children. For all the darkness this novel is at its heart a novel of light, a novel of snow.
Highly recommended by our reading group!
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