Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books - Posts Tagged "architecture"

When I opened Ronald De Feo’s Calling Mr. King I was convinced I wasn’t going to read more than a few pages. I had received a free copy at the BEA from the publisher, Other Press, and since I normally don’t read novels about hit men, I thought I would just take a quick look at the hit man’s travels between Paris, London, New York and Barcelona, and get some vicarious tourist enjoyment this way. And then…I couldn’t stop reading. This novel turned out to be a faux thriller written in a minimalist, witty style, in the voice of a man who, after having worked as a hit man for all his adult life, starts to wonder one day about the life and the world inhabited by his “marks.” He begins to do research on Georgian style houses because one of his targets lived in such a house, and eventually, becomes fascinated with art and architecture. The hit man goes through some Sartrian moments of existential nausea, and even begins to change by the end, but the change is credible and not at all moralizing—that is, the author is smart enough not to tell us a story of “redemption” (though one may frame it this way). A very entertaining and witty novel.