The Resurrectionist

by Jack O'Connell Narrated by Holter Graham

Overview

Gritty noir fiction, mind-bending fantasy, and medical thriller combine in a new novel by an author dubbed the "cyberpunk Dashiell Hammett."



Sweeney is a druggist by trade; Danny, his son, is in a persistent coma, the victim of an accident. Hoping for a miracle, they have come to the Peck Clinic, a fortresslike haven in a post-industrial city overrun by gangs. Doctors there claim to have resurrected two patients who were similarly lost in the void.



Gradually, Sweeney realizes that the cure for his son's condition may lie in "Limbo," a fantasy comicbook world into which Danny had been drawn at the time of his accident. Plunged into the intrigue that surrounds the clinic, Sweeney searches for answers and instead finds sinister back alleys, brutal dead ends, and terrifying rabbit holes of mystery.



Full of puzzles and surprises, The Resurrectionist is a surreal, gothic meditation on identity, the nature of consciousness, the power of stories, love, mad scientists, circus freaks, and ultimately forgiveness-both giving and receiving.

Editorial Reviews

Marilyn Stasio

…Sweeney buys time to spend at Danny's bedside, reading aloud from the boy's beloved Limbo comics. The band of heroes in this sadomasochistic series, the Goldfaden Freaks, have been abandoned by their carnival owner, cast adrift in a hostile world. As Sweeney recounts the bizarre adventures of Chick the chicken boy, Jeta the skeleton, Antoinette the pinhead and the rest of their forlorn troupe, O'Connell introduces us to the "real" freaks in Quinsigamond—notably the Abominations, renegade bikers trafficking in human tissue, and Dr. Peck, who needs this contraband for resurrecting the brain-dead patients he calls "sleepers." Before long, the two sets of characters are interacting, and their respective genres are melding into a meta-narrative with common themes: love and loss, death and redemption, and the eternal devotion of fathers for their sons. Despite the fabulist flair of his surreal style, O'Connell is just retelling the old story every boy wants to hear.
—The New York Times

Kirkus Reviews

A father struggles to reclaim his son from a long-standing coma in O'Connell's dark, wildly inventive fantasy. The years Danny Sweeney has spent at St. Joseph's Hospital in Cleveland have done nothing to awaken him from his persistent vegetative state. Now his pharmacist father has brought him to the Peck Clinic in Quinsigamond, Mass., where Sweeney Senior is to take charge of the clinic's drug room. The move is disruptive and the job means a pay cut, but the stakes are high: Dr. Micah Peck claims to have brought back two equally hopeless patients with experimental treatments. As Sweeney settles into his new routine, he becomes intent on collecting back issues of Limbo Comics, a series that had fascinated Danny before his accident. The comics relate the adventures of the Goldfaden Freaks, a sideshow troupe including a protective strongman, a fat lady, a dwarf, a skeleton, a bearded lady, a pinhead, a human torso, a lobster girl, a hermaphrodite, a pair of conjoined twins and a chicken boy who serves as their "conscience and spirit." When Chick incurs the wrath of the murderous Shoshone McGee, the freaks are forced into a perilous odyssey. Although their comic-book travails apparently couldn't be more removed from the antiseptic orbit of the Peck Clinic, the two worlds soon begin to bleed into one another, especially once Sweeney takes up with Nadia Rey, Danny's nurse, and the Abominations, a gang of bikers who seem to straddle the frontier between Chick and Dr. Peck. Can Danny somehow be recalled to his father's world, or can Sweeney join his son in Danny's twilight world? The question won't be answered until Sweeney is taught by Limbo Comics to see himself and his son in ways that demanda monstrous leap of faith. The shadow world of comic books provides O'Connell (Word Made Flesh, 1999, etc.) with material for a nightmarish story that's hallucinatory, tightly structured and ultimately redemptive.

From the Publisher

A "dark, wildly inventive fantasy. . . . A nightmarish story that’s hallucinatory, tightly structured and ultimately redemptive."—Kirkus

"The Resurrectionist is a brilliant, wild, heartfelt novel. It seems, like all of O’Connell’s work, at once to bear tribute to its predecessors and to come out of nowhere, a stew whose various lumps, gristles, fillers, and spices have long since cooked down to a single, amazing richness. O’Connell’s books are one of a kind — again and again."—The New York Times Book Review

"O'Connell's gift for building tension within a scene is equaled by his ability to create wonderfully dark and elaborate stage sets upon which to play out his dramas . . . [He] is wilder, edgier, more far-ranging and extravagant than his fellow genre-jumpers.” —The Boston Globe


—Booklist

"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 New York Times Book Review


"A wild, surreal and thought-provoking ride." —San Francisco Chronicle


“Reed's performance is effortless . . .”
—AudioFile

“'Graham’s measured reading steers a course through nagging crossroads of perception, allowing layers of reality and fantasy to wash over us in a very effective, if nonlinear, listening experience.”
—Booklist

Booklist

"O'Connell's gift for building tension within a scene is equaled by his ability to create wonderfully dark and elaborate stage sets upon which to play out his dramas . . . [He] is wilder, edgier, more far-ranging and extravagant than his fellow genre-jumpers.” —The Boston Globe

The New York Times Book Review

"The Resurrectionist is a brilliant, wild, heartfelt novel. It seems, like all of O’Connell’s work, at once to bear tribute to its predecessors and to come out of nowhere, a stew whose various lumps, gristles, fillers, and spices have long since cooked down to a single, amazing richness. O’Connell’s books are one of a kind — again and again."

Booklist

"O'Connell's gift for building tension within a scene is equaled by his ability to create wonderfully dark and elaborate stage sets upon which to play out his dramas . . . [He] is wilder, edgier, more far-ranging and extravagant than his fellow genre-jumpers.” —The Boston Globe

San Francisco Chronicle

"A wild, surreal and thought-provoking ride." —San Francisco Chronicle

Boston Globe

"O'Connell's gift for building tension within a scene is equaled by his ability to create wonderfully dark and elaborate stage sets upon which to play out his dramas . . . [He] is wilder, edgier, more far-ranging and extravagant than his fellow genre-jumpers.” —The Boston Globe

Fantasy & Science Fiction

"The Resurrectionist is a brilliant, wild, heartfelt novel. It seems, like all of O’Connell’s work, at once to bear tribute to its predecessors and to come out of nowhere, a stew whose various lumps, gristles, fillers, and spices have long since cooked down to a single, amazing richness. O’Connell’s books are one of a kind — again and again."

The Strand Magazine

"A masterpiece, O'Connell's tour de force has a dose of the uncertainty of Kafka, the fantasy of Bradbury, the crisp prose of Greene, and the noir of Chandler." - The Strand Magazine

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"O'Connell is a mesmerizing storyteller."—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Washington Post

"Unfailingly sly. . . . O'Connell is skilled at walking his particular tightrope between reality and surreality."—The Washington Post

Audiofile

Reed's performance is effortless . . .”
—AudioFile

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170009824
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	04/08/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

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