The Suicide Collectors
by
David Oppegaard (Goodreads Author)
The Despair has plagued the earth for five years. Most of the world’s population has inexplicably died by its own hand, and the few survivors struggle to remain alive. A mysterious, shadowy group called the Collectors has emerged, inevitably appearing to remove the bodies of the dead. But in the crumbling state of Florida, a man named Norman takes an unprecedented stand ag...more
Hardcover, 304 pages
Published
December 9th 2008
by St. Martin's Press
(first published January 1st 2008)
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Some time in the not-too-distant future, everyone in a popular night club in Tokyo committed suicide. Not long after, suicide rates around the world started climbing. Tokyo was only the beginning of a world-wide Despair. Depression, hopelessness: it sends people hurtling from the tops of buildings, dashing in front of trains, swallowing pills, slashing wrists. Your friends, your family - at first people are constantly calling each other, checking that their still alive. After five years, there'r...more
There are some good things about this book and some really irritating things. I’ll start with the good because David Oppegaard is on Goodreads and will undoubtedly read this review. I think it’s well written, it flows well and it kept me interested. I wanted to know what happened next. The characters were believable and fairly fleshed out. Although post-apocalyptic novels are common and most involve journeys, I felt he handled it well. The premise is different and thought-provoking. I really app...more
The Suicide Collectors is a good book full of horrible things. I mulled it over, and that's really the only way to describe it.
In Oppegaard's dystopian world, the entire planet has been gripped by an epidemic called The Despair. Ninety percent of the Earth's population has committed suicide in the past five years since the "disease" started to spread, leaving the remaining survivors left to deal with the crumbling society and the most ominous force of all -- the Suicide Collectors, shrouded figu...more
In Oppegaard's dystopian world, the entire planet has been gripped by an epidemic called The Despair. Ninety percent of the Earth's population has committed suicide in the past five years since the "disease" started to spread, leaving the remaining survivors left to deal with the crumbling society and the most ominous force of all -- the Suicide Collectors, shrouded figu...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Aug 05, 2009
Richard
rated it
2 of 5 stars
Recommended to Richard by:
SciFi & Fantasy Group 2009-03 SciFi Selection
This was the SciFi selection for the Goodreads SciFi and Fantasy Book Club for the month of March 2009. Visit this link to see all of the discussions, group member reviews, etc.
Well, I waited too long to write this to remember all the details of my complaints, but this basically felt like a mostly-tolerable first effort.
The nature of the apocalypse is never adequately explained, and while that might be fine in some cases — allegorical, or magical realism, or somesuch — it really didn't work here...more
Well, I waited too long to write this to remember all the details of my complaints, but this basically felt like a mostly-tolerable first effort.
The nature of the apocalypse is never adequately explained, and while that might be fine in some cases — allegorical, or magical realism, or somesuch — it really didn't work here...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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When I grabbed this book off a shelf, I thought the premise was intriguing. What is the Despair? Why is it plaguing humanity? Who are the Collectors? WHAT are they? Why is it bad if they remove the bodies?
The writing was good, it made me want to keep reading. The descriptions were enough to paint a picture, but they weren't overdone and tiring. Initially I liked that the author let his readers figure things out on their own and didn't give everything away. By the end of the story, I had plenty o...more
The writing was good, it made me want to keep reading. The descriptions were enough to paint a picture, but they weren't overdone and tiring. Initially I liked that the author let his readers figure things out on their own and didn't give everything away. By the end of the story, I had plenty o...more
One of the oddest of the recent avalanche of apocalyptic novels, and one of the most imaginative. It's written with the lightness of a children's book. It has a remote, dreamlike tone, an introspective softness, a refusal to strike a dramatic pose. Despite a horrific premise and events, there is a prevailing mood of gentle, innocent fantasy; although the world depicted is bleak and full of death, it's not without kindness and even subtle whimsy.
Refreshingly, the author does not feel obliged to...more
Refreshingly, the author does not feel obliged to...more
I was really disappointed in this book. I read the back cover and expected a really amazing story. The book isn't very long, a little shy of three hundred pages, but it looked intriguing. The story is about the end of days basically. People are committing suicide and cloaked individuals are collecting the bodies of the dead. Most of the population has died off and only a few remain. This seemed like a great tale but it left me feeling clueless in some areas.
It felt like there were a few continui...more
It felt like there were a few continui...more
What a book. David Oppegaard takes the dystopian novel and manages to create something new and horrifying. In the not-so-distant future, few people are left in the world due to wide spread epidemic called the Despair. There is no cure and no known reason why the majority of the human race succumbs to the Despair which results in suicide. To add to the creepy factor, Suicide Collectors show up to retrieve any body that died from a result of a suicide. How the Suicide Collectors know about the sui...more
Feeling a bit too optimistic as of late? Thinking that nothing can get you down? Try David Oppegaard’s THE SUICIDE COLLECTORS on for size! It’ll get you back to earth like the rest of us.
It’s set in a future in which the apocalypse took the form of “The Despair,” an overwhelming urge among 90 percent of the world’s population to commit suicide. Our hero, Norman, and his wife are managing to survive in a slowly dwindling Florida community, when she finally gives into the suicidal despair that’s...more
It’s set in a future in which the apocalypse took the form of “The Despair,” an overwhelming urge among 90 percent of the world’s population to commit suicide. Our hero, Norman, and his wife are managing to survive in a slowly dwindling Florida community, when she finally gives into the suicidal despair that’s...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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What a disappointment; I was all looking forward to my first GoodReads author read of the month too. So, just to cover the basics, this is a book about a future where the Despair "plagued" people and almost everyone started offing themselves, and then this One Man who was resistant and his buddy went on this journey across the Country, after hearing a rumor about some doctor who was working on The Cure. It's got a nice post-apocalyptic, dystopian feeling to it, at least for the first half of the...more
Sometimes a book's premise is enough to warrant reading and so it was for me with this particular book. The characters are engaging enough and there are some descriptions that invoked in me a sense of horror and despair that made the book engaging, thought provoking, and above all else a very human story. The book works on the level of character alone and that carries the book sufficiently for me to recommend it to those who enjoy dystopian fiction or apocalyptic worlds.
As others have said, how...more
As others have said, how...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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This was another book read for genre-expanding.
The basics of the plot: There's this great sadness, almost like a disease, spreading over the world and causing people to commit suicide. A lot of people. Like 90% of the world. Of course, there are some survivors, and they make a pilgrimage of sorts.
The story clips along, and it's like reading a good zombie book or post-apocalypse story. What's nice and different is that the author doesn't make every person into a complete asshole, which is unusual...more
The basics of the plot: There's this great sadness, almost like a disease, spreading over the world and causing people to commit suicide. A lot of people. Like 90% of the world. Of course, there are some survivors, and they make a pilgrimage of sorts.
The story clips along, and it's like reading a good zombie book or post-apocalypse story. What's nice and different is that the author doesn't make every person into a complete asshole, which is unusual...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
The despair has taken over the world, starting in Tokyo with a mass nightclub suicide. In the corner of Florida Norman has just lost his wife, who like countless others has succumbed to the despair and chose a way to end it. Coming to clear away all the bodies are people called The Collectors. Instead of allowing them to take her body, like everyone else did who was left behind, Norman out of anger takes a shotgun and blows one of the Collectors away. He teams up with an aged old friend who has...more
Great idea, very thought provoking. Decently believable characters, except for Zero, don't think author has spent much time with 11 year olds. Not terribly well fleshed out, except for the end - not sure why people here complain so much about the ending, I was really hoping the end would make the beginning more retrospectively tolerable, and it did.
I was a little disappointed by how the prose tried to make the author's voice seem weak or diminished. By this I mean that anybody can tell he cared...more
I was a little disappointed by how the prose tried to make the author's voice seem weak or diminished. By this I mean that anybody can tell he cared...more
The Road meets I am Legend meets It, but with weaker writing. Despite being thematically similar to these monsters of fiction, the "badness" in the book was definitely unique, if not too ambiguous and a bit disappointing in the end. But, the book was at least engaging enough to get me there, and pretty quickly since it's just under 300 pages in length and a smallish hardcover. Perhaps the weakest part of the writing was the fact that things were set up a bit too conveniently for the protagonist....more
Full review at my blog!
The Suicide Collectors, David Oppegaard’s debut novel, is set in a near future world decimated by mass suicide via a plague dubbed The Despair. In the ashes of this future world enigmatic men and women have begun collecting the suicide victims for unknown purpose. Feared and rivaled by the remaining populous only one man, Florida native Norman, makes a stand to protect the body of his dead wife, killing one of the Collectors in the process. What follows is a whirlwind trip...more
The Suicide Collectors, David Oppegaard’s debut novel, is set in a near future world decimated by mass suicide via a plague dubbed The Despair. In the ashes of this future world enigmatic men and women have begun collecting the suicide victims for unknown purpose. Feared and rivaled by the remaining populous only one man, Florida native Norman, makes a stand to protect the body of his dead wife, killing one of the Collectors in the process. What follows is a whirlwind trip...more
Reviewers were intrigued by the setup of Oppegaard's story and reasonably satisfied with the conclusion. The device of the Despair, they wrote, allows the author to use the best element of the postapocalyptic genre while keeping the story fresh. Critics were also clearly affected by the images that populate Oppegaard's sorrowful world: not just the grim gallery of ways people kill themselves but the many strategies they develop to deal with the aftermath. While no reviewer was completely happy w
...more
This novel is kind of like Stephen King light, with juxtaposition of every day horror of dealing with the suicide of a loved one with the supernatural horror of mass suicides brought about by an unknown evil force. This novel is well written and mercifully short unlike the more famous Stephen King knock-off, the ultra-turgid work, "The Passage" by Justine Cronin.
In terms of exposition as to what is actually going on in this novel is kind of comic-bookish, but it would have gotten five stars fro...more
In terms of exposition as to what is actually going on in this novel is kind of comic-bookish, but it would have gotten five stars fro...more
In a near future in which 90% of the population has killed themselves, Norman and his last remaining friend set out on a journey across what's left of the country in search of a cure for the Despair. Not a bad debut novel for Oppegaard - some interesting scenes and vivid details (he seems to take extra delight in describing smells), though there were a few hamfisted elements as well. The author's detached writing style seemed to serve the story well early on, but as the plot unfolded I felt like...more
I won't go into plot summary because you can find that somewhere else.
This book had potential from the start, but a distorted ending ruined it for me. I can usually take a average or bad ending but this book goes beyond my limits of acceptance. I give it three stars for the start of the book where we can see ideas about relationships and society as well as the human desire and we see Norman grow as a person but I would have to agree with others in saying that the authors seemed to get tired of...more
This book had potential from the start, but a distorted ending ruined it for me. I can usually take a average or bad ending but this book goes beyond my limits of acceptance. I give it three stars for the start of the book where we can see ideas about relationships and society as well as the human desire and we see Norman grow as a person but I would have to agree with others in saying that the authors seemed to get tired of...more
This was really good for a first novel and quite excellent for a random grab off of a library shelf. I do enjoy post apocalyptic/dystopian fiction and this was an interesting entry into the genre dealing with, as the title states, suicides. Strong characters drive the story across the country as we witness the devastation that 5 years can being in the world that lost hope and desire to live. There are definitely some interesting ruminations on the phenomenon of suicide and the power of human spi...more
Good post-apocalyptic fiction; but as with lots of other horror and speculative fiction pieces with unexplained phenomena, the ending is too vague and unsatisfying.
Premise: Suicides become a seemingly contagious afflication, ultimately decimating the world population to about ten percent, or less, of its former number. The Collectors are a mysterious cloaked collective of people who come by foot, car, plane, heliocopter, and boat to remove the bodies of the dead. Why did the suicide outbreak occ...more
Premise: Suicides become a seemingly contagious afflication, ultimately decimating the world population to about ten percent, or less, of its former number. The Collectors are a mysterious cloaked collective of people who come by foot, car, plane, heliocopter, and boat to remove the bodies of the dead. Why did the suicide outbreak occ...more
The Suicide Collectors portrays a dark, not-so-distant future world in which a phenomenon called the Despair contributes to the suicides of most of the population. The bodies are then taken by mysterious robed figures called the Collectors. After his wife takes her own life, a Florida man named Norman takes out one of the Collectors. He goes on the run with Doc, his only remaining neighbor, trying to get to Seattle, where civilization might be rebuilding itself and a cure might be in the works....more
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David Oppegaard is the author of the Bram Stoker-nominated The Suicide Collectors (St. Martin’s Press), Wormwood, Nevada (St. Martin’s Press), and The Ragged Mountains (Last Call Books). David’s work is a blend of science fiction, literary fiction, horror, and dark fantasy. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Hamline University and a B.A. in English from St. Olaf College. He teaches at Hamline Univ...more
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Mar 29, 2009 12:20am
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