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Quinsigamond #5
The Resurrectionist
The Resurrectionist is a wild ride into a territory where nothing is as it appears. Part classic noir thriller, part fabulist fable, it is the story of Sweeney and his comatose son, Danny. Hoping for a miracle, Sweeney has brought Danny to the fortresslike Peck Clinic, whose doctors claim to have "resurrected" patients who were similarly lost in the void. but the real cure for his son's condition may lie in Limbo, a comic book world beloved by Danny before he slipped into a coma. O'Connell has crafted a spellbinding novel about stories and what they can do for and to those who create them and those who consume them. About the nature of consciousness and the power of the unknown. And, ultimately, about forgiveness and the depth of our need to extend it and receive it.
325 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
96 people are currently reading
556 people want to read
About the author
Jack O'Connell
38 books51 followersPart classic noir thriller, part mind-bending fantasy, The Resurrectionist is a wild ride into a territory where nothing is as it appears. It is the story of Sweeney, a druggist by trade, and his son, Danny, the victim of an accident that has left him in a persistent coma. Hoping for a miracle, they have come to the fortress-like Peck Clinic, whose doctors claim to have resurrected two patients who were lost in the void, hoping for a miracle. What Sweeney comes to realize, though, is that the real cure to his sons condition may lie in Limbo, a fantasy comic book world into which his son had been drawn at the time of his accident. Plunged into the intrigue that envelops the clinic, Sweeneys search for answers leads to sinister back alleys, brutal dead ends, and terrifying rabbit holes of darkness and mystery.
McConnell has crafted a mesmerizing novel about stories and what they can do for and to those who create them and those who consume them. About the nature of consciousness and the power of the unknown. About psychotic bikers, mad neurologists, and wandering circus freaks. About loss and grief and rage. And, ultimately, about forgiveness and the depth of our need to extend it and receive it.
"
McConnell has crafted a mesmerizing novel about stories and what they can do for and to those who create them and those who consume them. About the nature of consciousness and the power of the unknown. About psychotic bikers, mad neurologists, and wandering circus freaks. About loss and grief and rage. And, ultimately, about forgiveness and the depth of our need to extend it and receive it.
"
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 190 reviews
July 25, 2008
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
As some of you already know, I have been a twenty-year fan and student now of the related 20th-century art movements Dadaism and Surrealism, ever since first getting exposed to them as an undergraduate in the '80s, and in fact is the closest I arguably come to being legitimately "scholarly" on any topic, in terms of the amount of knowledge I have about the movements. And as I've talked about here before (most famously during my review of the DVD compilation The Short Films of David Lynch), one of the things I've learned through such study is that what we in the general culture think of these days as "Surrealist" is a far cry from how the original Surrealists defined it; because when these original cutting-edge artists of the 1910s, '20s and '30s, the ones being equally defined by the new fields of Modernism and Freudian psychoanalysis, declared that they were trying to "capture the essence of a dream" in their artistic work, they actually meant that they were trying to capture the elusive pattern and rhythm of a dream itself, the simultaneous logic and illogic that within a dream we so easily accept, that is so hard for us to accept when in a conscious state. As the decades have progressed, though, as early Modernism turned into late Modernism, Pop Art, and finally Postmodernism, the entire concept of Surrealism has been sorta co-opted by the advertising industry and Hollywood, to now mostly mean "Hey, look! Weird sh-t!"
What this means, then, is that there's actually two kinds of Surrealism out there now, and with discerning fans being able to tell the difference immediately: there is the pure, old-school Surrealism of the original movement, authors like Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell, who construct elaborate experiments in actually reproducing the logic and emotions of a dreamlike state; and then there is the cartoonish, Hollywoodized version of Surrealism, where an author simply writes about strange crap, hoping that the distraction of the crap itself will hide the fact that there's nothing really compelling behind it. And which of these, I hear you asking, best describes the book under review today, the 2008 cult hit and so-called contemporary Surrealist tale The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell? Well, I won't keep you in suspense anymore; it's the second, the second, oh Lord it's the second, an infinitely frustrating collection of random unexplained weird horsesh-t whipped at the reader's face at breakneck speed, none of it making any sense and none of it connecting to the other weird random parts, basically the equivalent of handing a person a box full of Christmas ornaments and yelling, "Shake it! It's pretty! Shake it! It's pretty!" That might be, but it certainly doesn't make it good literature, nor does it make it an accurate reflection of what a dream is actually like; and that's the difference between someone like O'Connell and an actual Surrealist, because O'Connell ultimately hopes that you'll be distracted by the shiny ornaments being shaken about, and not notice that there's no actual tree.
In fact, O'Connell starts throwing out the random crap early and quick in The Resurrectionist; it is the story of sad-sack pharmacist Sweeney, caretaker of a son named Danny who is in a persistent coma, through an accident he still silently blames on his ex-wife. His life a shambles, dealing unsuccessfully with anger issues, Sweeney has been lured to a little town called Quinsigamond in order to work for the mysterious private Peck Clinic, mostly as a way of getting his son accepted into their secretive yet widely admired coma-care program. But see, right here is where O'Connell already starts going wrong with this story, by making even the details of the clinic itself inconsistent; although our story is set in the modern world, for some reason the nurses all have old-fashioned '50s uniforms, out there at the forbidding Victorian mansion in the middle of nowhere that serves as the clinic's campus. Plus, for this being a bizarre, private, family-funded organization, one that doesn't share its results or even have a clear mission, the entire rest of the contemporary medical community seems to be big-enough fans; this is what took Sweeney out there in the first place, after all, is from having his boring ol' "real-world" doctors in Ohio recommend the clinic to him, despite the clinic itself literally being like something ripped out of an old Frankenstein movie.
Now, fans will say that this is exactly how it should be, that The Resurrectionist is supposed to be filled with weird crap that makes no sense because that's what Surrealism is; but that's not what Surrealism is, at least how the original Surrealists who came up with the term defined it. Actual Surrealism is supposed to make sense, just the kind of twisted, illogical sense that we can only accept while in a dream state; the details of the environment, though, for just one good example, are supposed to actually relate to each other within a Surrealist tale, not just exist in their own hermetically weird states alongside all the other bizarre details. And that's exactly how this book feels, especially the further you get into it, that O'Connell simply wrote down a bunch of random stuff that popped into his head and sounded "weird" to him, without bothering to relate any of it to each other or even adhere to the most basic precepts of those concepts. Like, one of the running ideas in The Ressurectionist is that Danny had been a big fan of this giant children's media empire called "Limbo," consisting of a hit TV show and action figures and merchandise and a long-running comic book, and O'Connell even includes a number of issues of the comic in the actual manuscript of the book; but why call it a comic, I wonder, when they're actually fully narrative short stories? And what hit children's TV show in the 2000s is possibly going to be about a group of eastern European circus freaks in the 1920s, who wander aimlessly through a fictional foreign land named after the Yiddish word for Hell, living a bleak and torture-filled life and spouting existentialist dialogue more appropriate for a Beckett play than any Japanimation children's show in existence?
Sure, it's weird and random, I'll give you that; but if all I want is weird and random, I can sit at home whenever I want, flipping through television channels and watching two seconds at a time of each, for two or three hours in a row. Like so much of The Resurrectionist, that too is weird and random; and like so much of The Resurrectionist, that too is not nearly what I'd call an entertaining artistic experience. What I want from a Surrealist project is a world that almost makes complete sense, but with just a whiff of strangeness around its corners, a fleeting glimpse of something moving just on the edge of my vision. What I want from a Surrealist project is something that makes me feel the way I do when I'm actually dreaming, a moment for example where a friend flaps his arms in the middle of a conversation and flies away, and I don't even think twice about it; what I don't want is a collection of random details that all draw undue attention to themselves, each of them standing in the corner of the room and waving their arms and screaming, "Look at me! Look at me! I'M WEIRD!" And unfortunately, that's mostly what The Resurrectionist consists of, with certainly there not being a compelling story holding it all together, nor compelling characters, nor even a consistent personal style.
In fact, here's the simple insulting truth of the matter; that by the time I had reached the end, I cared about the story and was invested in the characters so little that I didn't even bother reading the last ten pages, simply because I could no longer even follow whatever the hell was going on with the castle and the devil and the chicken-boy or whatever the f-ck it all was. And that's a terrible, terrible thing to say about a novel -- that after reading 300 pages of it, you didn't care enough to bother with what's supposed to be the most important ten pages of all -- and I think says more about my opinion of this book than probably anything else I might be tempted to write. (And I'm tempted to write a whole lot more about just how frustrated this book made me, starting with the fact that the entire town of Quinsigamond made no sense whatsoever. Is it...in the cyberpunk future? No, wait, our story's set in the modern day; so why is there this whole district made up of fully-stocked warehouses that were all abandoned at a moment's notice for no explainable reason, that have all been illegally turned into "world of tomorrow" neon-covered homemade pubs? And what's with the cartoonishly evil bikers? And why do they all keep saying "Bangkok" when referring to the city? UGH, THIS F-CKING BOOK!) In fact, you know what? I think I'm just going to cut my losses at this point, stop writing this review, and just walk away from the entire trainwreck known as The Resurrectionist for good. See you later.
Out of 10:
Story: 0.9
Characters: 1.4
Style: 6.6
Overall: 2.7
As some of you already know, I have been a twenty-year fan and student now of the related 20th-century art movements Dadaism and Surrealism, ever since first getting exposed to them as an undergraduate in the '80s, and in fact is the closest I arguably come to being legitimately "scholarly" on any topic, in terms of the amount of knowledge I have about the movements. And as I've talked about here before (most famously during my review of the DVD compilation The Short Films of David Lynch), one of the things I've learned through such study is that what we in the general culture think of these days as "Surrealist" is a far cry from how the original Surrealists defined it; because when these original cutting-edge artists of the 1910s, '20s and '30s, the ones being equally defined by the new fields of Modernism and Freudian psychoanalysis, declared that they were trying to "capture the essence of a dream" in their artistic work, they actually meant that they were trying to capture the elusive pattern and rhythm of a dream itself, the simultaneous logic and illogic that within a dream we so easily accept, that is so hard for us to accept when in a conscious state. As the decades have progressed, though, as early Modernism turned into late Modernism, Pop Art, and finally Postmodernism, the entire concept of Surrealism has been sorta co-opted by the advertising industry and Hollywood, to now mostly mean "Hey, look! Weird sh-t!"
What this means, then, is that there's actually two kinds of Surrealism out there now, and with discerning fans being able to tell the difference immediately: there is the pure, old-school Surrealism of the original movement, authors like Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell, who construct elaborate experiments in actually reproducing the logic and emotions of a dreamlike state; and then there is the cartoonish, Hollywoodized version of Surrealism, where an author simply writes about strange crap, hoping that the distraction of the crap itself will hide the fact that there's nothing really compelling behind it. And which of these, I hear you asking, best describes the book under review today, the 2008 cult hit and so-called contemporary Surrealist tale The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell? Well, I won't keep you in suspense anymore; it's the second, the second, oh Lord it's the second, an infinitely frustrating collection of random unexplained weird horsesh-t whipped at the reader's face at breakneck speed, none of it making any sense and none of it connecting to the other weird random parts, basically the equivalent of handing a person a box full of Christmas ornaments and yelling, "Shake it! It's pretty! Shake it! It's pretty!" That might be, but it certainly doesn't make it good literature, nor does it make it an accurate reflection of what a dream is actually like; and that's the difference between someone like O'Connell and an actual Surrealist, because O'Connell ultimately hopes that you'll be distracted by the shiny ornaments being shaken about, and not notice that there's no actual tree.
In fact, O'Connell starts throwing out the random crap early and quick in The Resurrectionist; it is the story of sad-sack pharmacist Sweeney, caretaker of a son named Danny who is in a persistent coma, through an accident he still silently blames on his ex-wife. His life a shambles, dealing unsuccessfully with anger issues, Sweeney has been lured to a little town called Quinsigamond in order to work for the mysterious private Peck Clinic, mostly as a way of getting his son accepted into their secretive yet widely admired coma-care program. But see, right here is where O'Connell already starts going wrong with this story, by making even the details of the clinic itself inconsistent; although our story is set in the modern world, for some reason the nurses all have old-fashioned '50s uniforms, out there at the forbidding Victorian mansion in the middle of nowhere that serves as the clinic's campus. Plus, for this being a bizarre, private, family-funded organization, one that doesn't share its results or even have a clear mission, the entire rest of the contemporary medical community seems to be big-enough fans; this is what took Sweeney out there in the first place, after all, is from having his boring ol' "real-world" doctors in Ohio recommend the clinic to him, despite the clinic itself literally being like something ripped out of an old Frankenstein movie.
Now, fans will say that this is exactly how it should be, that The Resurrectionist is supposed to be filled with weird crap that makes no sense because that's what Surrealism is; but that's not what Surrealism is, at least how the original Surrealists who came up with the term defined it. Actual Surrealism is supposed to make sense, just the kind of twisted, illogical sense that we can only accept while in a dream state; the details of the environment, though, for just one good example, are supposed to actually relate to each other within a Surrealist tale, not just exist in their own hermetically weird states alongside all the other bizarre details. And that's exactly how this book feels, especially the further you get into it, that O'Connell simply wrote down a bunch of random stuff that popped into his head and sounded "weird" to him, without bothering to relate any of it to each other or even adhere to the most basic precepts of those concepts. Like, one of the running ideas in The Ressurectionist is that Danny had been a big fan of this giant children's media empire called "Limbo," consisting of a hit TV show and action figures and merchandise and a long-running comic book, and O'Connell even includes a number of issues of the comic in the actual manuscript of the book; but why call it a comic, I wonder, when they're actually fully narrative short stories? And what hit children's TV show in the 2000s is possibly going to be about a group of eastern European circus freaks in the 1920s, who wander aimlessly through a fictional foreign land named after the Yiddish word for Hell, living a bleak and torture-filled life and spouting existentialist dialogue more appropriate for a Beckett play than any Japanimation children's show in existence?
Sure, it's weird and random, I'll give you that; but if all I want is weird and random, I can sit at home whenever I want, flipping through television channels and watching two seconds at a time of each, for two or three hours in a row. Like so much of The Resurrectionist, that too is weird and random; and like so much of The Resurrectionist, that too is not nearly what I'd call an entertaining artistic experience. What I want from a Surrealist project is a world that almost makes complete sense, but with just a whiff of strangeness around its corners, a fleeting glimpse of something moving just on the edge of my vision. What I want from a Surrealist project is something that makes me feel the way I do when I'm actually dreaming, a moment for example where a friend flaps his arms in the middle of a conversation and flies away, and I don't even think twice about it; what I don't want is a collection of random details that all draw undue attention to themselves, each of them standing in the corner of the room and waving their arms and screaming, "Look at me! Look at me! I'M WEIRD!" And unfortunately, that's mostly what The Resurrectionist consists of, with certainly there not being a compelling story holding it all together, nor compelling characters, nor even a consistent personal style.
In fact, here's the simple insulting truth of the matter; that by the time I had reached the end, I cared about the story and was invested in the characters so little that I didn't even bother reading the last ten pages, simply because I could no longer even follow whatever the hell was going on with the castle and the devil and the chicken-boy or whatever the f-ck it all was. And that's a terrible, terrible thing to say about a novel -- that after reading 300 pages of it, you didn't care enough to bother with what's supposed to be the most important ten pages of all -- and I think says more about my opinion of this book than probably anything else I might be tempted to write. (And I'm tempted to write a whole lot more about just how frustrated this book made me, starting with the fact that the entire town of Quinsigamond made no sense whatsoever. Is it...in the cyberpunk future? No, wait, our story's set in the modern day; so why is there this whole district made up of fully-stocked warehouses that were all abandoned at a moment's notice for no explainable reason, that have all been illegally turned into "world of tomorrow" neon-covered homemade pubs? And what's with the cartoonishly evil bikers? And why do they all keep saying "Bangkok" when referring to the city? UGH, THIS F-CKING BOOK!) In fact, you know what? I think I'm just going to cut my losses at this point, stop writing this review, and just walk away from the entire trainwreck known as The Resurrectionist for good. See you later.
Out of 10:
Story: 0.9
Characters: 1.4
Style: 6.6
Overall: 2.7
March 30, 2020
It's an absorbing novel with interesting characters, an intriguing mystery, but a weak ending. It seemed like he just didn't know how to end it. There were other problems that seemed to crop up around page 225 now that I think about it: the use of the serum by the (stereotypical) bikers and how it took the story from realism to pseudo-fantasy; a nagging belief that certain characters who had received a lot of focus before would be forgotten, and my wondering about what the point of Spider's chapter was. This book would have been a lot better if it had 100 more pages and the supporting characters were fleshed out. Some characters, like Alice, just seemed to drop out of the picture after an intriguing back story had been created for them and others, like Nadia, were never given proper exposition. I guess my biggest problem with this novel was that the prose was so well done that I didn't notice all the major flaws with the plot and characters until I finished it. And now I feel tricked! Treachery!
The freak side-story was well-worth my retrospective annoyance though, and it's a pity that the author couldn't have crafted it into a novel of its own.
The freak side-story was well-worth my retrospective annoyance though, and it's a pity that the author couldn't have crafted it into a novel of its own.
April 28, 2008
well, i am not really sure what the hell this was about. I think it was a very strange story,... it involves a lot of suspension of disbelief, there are a lot of characters that seem important that never flesh out, there's a few hairy instances that turn into nothing. I don't think i got it. I would have given it a two-star review but there was enough good writing and creativity in it to merit a three-star review, but i will not be recommending this book to anyone ever...
April 20, 2008
I can describe this story succinctly; a shambles. If there was an plotline, it might have benefitted the reader if the author had actually provided it.
Some might argue the style is surreal and the reader has to suspend belief. Dream sequences and comic book realities are fine tools to use in storytelling, but they must be hung on something if they are to be bought by the reader.
Characters are built up only to never be heard from again, a bit of foreshadowing is cast only to be left adrift in the void of dropped threads.
The only salvageable component in this novel were the chapters about a troupe of circus freaks on the run from a horrific crime they didn't commit. The author should have stayed with this.
Some might argue the style is surreal and the reader has to suspend belief. Dream sequences and comic book realities are fine tools to use in storytelling, but they must be hung on something if they are to be bought by the reader.
Characters are built up only to never be heard from again, a bit of foreshadowing is cast only to be left adrift in the void of dropped threads.
The only salvageable component in this novel were the chapters about a troupe of circus freaks on the run from a horrific crime they didn't commit. The author should have stayed with this.
May 16, 2008
Every parent's worst nightmare. Literally, figuratively, and everything in between.
Not badly told (and I got used to the reader on the audio CD fairly quickly -- he handled a lot of voices well), but for what purpose? I've read The Magus, the Shining, and, more recently, The Keep, and they covered similar ground (the nature of consciousness and reality, gothic and/or classical horror, Dads running around yelling "Danny!") but with a bit more payoff. Early on I asked another reader if there was going to be a payoff and was assured there was -- only to find out that this other reader was hoping I'd be able to translate the unsatisfactory ending. Sneaky.
I hope that's not a spoiler.
Not badly told (and I got used to the reader on the audio CD fairly quickly -- he handled a lot of voices well), but for what purpose? I've read The Magus, the Shining, and, more recently, The Keep, and they covered similar ground (the nature of consciousness and reality, gothic and/or classical horror, Dads running around yelling "Danny!") but with a bit more payoff. Early on I asked another reader if there was going to be a payoff and was assured there was -- only to find out that this other reader was hoping I'd be able to translate the unsatisfactory ending. Sneaky.
I hope that's not a spoiler.
June 26, 2008
I am a big fan of Jack O'Connell, and I usually love his books. I liked this one, but didn't love it, probably because its emotional center is a father/son relationship. That said, I still think O'Connell has one of the best twisted imaginations out there right now.
June 11, 2008
Rated R for language. Strange story. I couldn't get past the fact that a 6 year old was allowed to read a "comic book" that had such strange characters and language.
March 7, 2021
Okay... there are a lot of things not to love about this book. There's a pervading, hypermasculine, jaded, sexually-cringey, gratuitously-violent overtone that smothered any pleasure I was getting from the storyline and characters. The characters were pretty flat and unlikable. BUT. I came out of this book liking it a lot more than I expected. I hated the biker gang initially, but as the narrative pieces coalesced with the progressive dialogue between Limbo and reality, I understood them. There are some beautiful passages. The ending was deeply satisfying, like a conversation that comes full circle. Would I recommend this book? Probably never. Did I enjoy it, in the end? Absolutely I did.
November 1, 2025
I was confused throughout this book and the ending seemed so predictably weak. What disappointed me most was the writing being so brilliant, so I really wanted to be given more. If only there wasn't the constant switching between reality and limbo with a predictable trope. Probably wouldn't recommend.
March 17, 2012
This book came to me used, along with a bundle of promotional material dating from the book's original release, tucked inside the dust jacket. I'd already read and admired O'Connell's Word Made Flesh, and read this one earlier in a library edition, so I made haste to snatch this copy up from the table where it was languishing.
The Resurrectionist is a very different book, though, from Word Made Flesh, despite being set in (or rather near) the same old New World city of Quinsigamond that figures so prominently in that earlier novel that it's almost another character, and despite the reappearance of the Old World city of Maisel in Old Bohemia, whose ghosts inhabited Word Made Flesh, and which here is the setting for the comic book-within-the-book, Daniel's favorite story, Limbo.
Daniel Sweeney, that is. He and his father are the central characters here, despite Danny being in a coma, uncommunicative and bedridden, as he has been for quite some time following an accidental head trauma. The elder Sweeney (I don't think we ever find out his first name) is a pharmacist and a widower; his wife Kerry killed herself a year or so after Danny failed to wake up from "the incident."
So Danny and Sweeney have moved from Cleveland, Ohio to the Peck Clinic in the rusty American Northeast, somewhere outside the decaying city of Quinsigamond, because Dr. Peck is—or may be—a miracle worker, a literal resurrectionist. He has roused two patients from extended comas; Sweeney hopes that Daniel will be the third. And Sweeney is lucky; the Peck Clinic needs a pharmacist anyway.
But the Peck itself turns out to be an isolated, macabre pile of Victorian architecture, more like a haunted house than a medical facility. The staff are oddly confrontational and reclusive, their professionalism questionable. The Doctors Peck—father W. Micah and daughter Alice—often seem more like mad scientists than like the sober researchers Sweeney heard about while he was back in Cleveland. Both Dr. Alice Peck and the darkly beautiful nurse Nadia Rey seem to be interested in Sweeney as more than just a new coworker. And Sweeney himself feels unstable, prone to sudden rage, constantly questioning his own behavior and that of the people around him, while remaining fiercely loyal to Danny and ready to take umbrage at the slightest... slight.
And then there's the motorcycle gang—the Abominations—who've taken over the abandoned Harmony Prosthetics factory at the edge of town. It's hard to tell where they fit into things.
And speaking of people who have a hard time fitting in: what, exactly, do the circus freaks (O'Connell's word) who inhabit the world of Limbo, Danny's favorite books, have to contribute to the story? Their own picaresque tale, vividly described in chapters set off by both typeface and language from the ones Sweeney himself inhabits, seems to have little to do with Danny's plight, at least at first... but you know it has to fit in somewhere. (It seems appropriate to mention here that one of the authors who contributed a glowing blurb to this book is Katherine Dunn, whose own Geek Love has garnered much praise and admiration, including my own.)
In my opinion, this book doesn't quite rise to the level of surreal intensity achieved by Word Made Flesh... but it does come pretty close. Despite the mundane trappings Sweeney brings from Cleveland, Ohio—the Honda Accord that belches black smoke, primarily—the isolated environment of the Peck contributes to a feeling of dislocation that echoes Sweeney's own unsettled mind. And the stories of Limbo and of Daniel Sweeney do eventually begin to intersect, as an astute reader might hope and fear they might.
The resurrection Sweeney is after, the resurrection Dr. Peck plans for Danny, end up seeming less important than Sweeney's own choices, his own decisions about his son's fate, and his own resurrection. The Resurrectionist may not be quite the work Word Made Flesh was, but I think it'll end up (sorry, I can't resist) getting a rise out of you.
The Resurrectionist is a very different book, though, from Word Made Flesh, despite being set in (or rather near) the same old New World city of Quinsigamond that figures so prominently in that earlier novel that it's almost another character, and despite the reappearance of the Old World city of Maisel in Old Bohemia, whose ghosts inhabited Word Made Flesh, and which here is the setting for the comic book-within-the-book, Daniel's favorite story, Limbo.
Daniel Sweeney, that is. He and his father are the central characters here, despite Danny being in a coma, uncommunicative and bedridden, as he has been for quite some time following an accidental head trauma. The elder Sweeney (I don't think we ever find out his first name) is a pharmacist and a widower; his wife Kerry killed herself a year or so after Danny failed to wake up from "the incident."
So Danny and Sweeney have moved from Cleveland, Ohio to the Peck Clinic in the rusty American Northeast, somewhere outside the decaying city of Quinsigamond, because Dr. Peck is—or may be—a miracle worker, a literal resurrectionist. He has roused two patients from extended comas; Sweeney hopes that Daniel will be the third. And Sweeney is lucky; the Peck Clinic needs a pharmacist anyway.
But the Peck itself turns out to be an isolated, macabre pile of Victorian architecture, more like a haunted house than a medical facility. The staff are oddly confrontational and reclusive, their professionalism questionable. The Doctors Peck—father W. Micah and daughter Alice—often seem more like mad scientists than like the sober researchers Sweeney heard about while he was back in Cleveland. Both Dr. Alice Peck and the darkly beautiful nurse Nadia Rey seem to be interested in Sweeney as more than just a new coworker. And Sweeney himself feels unstable, prone to sudden rage, constantly questioning his own behavior and that of the people around him, while remaining fiercely loyal to Danny and ready to take umbrage at the slightest... slight.
And then there's the motorcycle gang—the Abominations—who've taken over the abandoned Harmony Prosthetics factory at the edge of town. It's hard to tell where they fit into things.
And speaking of people who have a hard time fitting in: what, exactly, do the circus freaks (O'Connell's word) who inhabit the world of Limbo, Danny's favorite books, have to contribute to the story? Their own picaresque tale, vividly described in chapters set off by both typeface and language from the ones Sweeney himself inhabits, seems to have little to do with Danny's plight, at least at first... but you know it has to fit in somewhere. (It seems appropriate to mention here that one of the authors who contributed a glowing blurb to this book is Katherine Dunn, whose own Geek Love has garnered much praise and admiration, including my own.)
In my opinion, this book doesn't quite rise to the level of surreal intensity achieved by Word Made Flesh... but it does come pretty close. Despite the mundane trappings Sweeney brings from Cleveland, Ohio—the Honda Accord that belches black smoke, primarily—the isolated environment of the Peck contributes to a feeling of dislocation that echoes Sweeney's own unsettled mind. And the stories of Limbo and of Daniel Sweeney do eventually begin to intersect, as an astute reader might hope and fear they might.
The resurrection Sweeney is after, the resurrection Dr. Peck plans for Danny, end up seeming less important than Sweeney's own choices, his own decisions about his son's fate, and his own resurrection. The Resurrectionist may not be quite the work Word Made Flesh was, but I think it'll end up (sorry, I can't resist) getting a rise out of you.
March 12, 2017
So disappointed. I think I understand where the author was going with the storyline but failed miserably.
June 30, 2018
Not exactly sure what I just read. At first glance, it appeared to be a story of a man whose son is in a coma. They are trying a new clinic, which has had minimal success in re-awakening coma patients. Tying the father & son together is a comic series that the son enjoyed called Limbo. The story of the father & son is interspersed with the story of Limbo. Both stories have promise, although the Limbo story-line is more engaging, if almost grotesque. Then the whole thing just gets weirdly confusing, which would have been OK if there was a more stable ending. Unfortunately, the story just seems to go all Hunter S. Thompson on you and they all ride off into a drug induced sunset.
November 24, 2009
I don't generally abandon books (though Pride and Prejudice and Zombies escaped by a hair), but I was compelled to make an exception here. The prose, when it occasionally manages to rise above hackneyed, is awkward and contrived; the characters are two-dimensional; and, from what my wife told me, the plot quickly dissolves into a mess of incohesive improbabilities. I wanted to like it because the Limbo story-within-a-story reminded me of the wonderful Geek Love and the cover of Carter Beats the Devil, but six chapters in, I decided to cut my losses.
Read
February 5, 2009Although it has its strengths, The Resurrectionist is not for everyone. The novel slips imperfectly between grim reality and dark fantasy, and for some critics, the intense drama, imaginative scenery, and significant themes did not overcome frustrating structural difficulties. O'Connell has embedded a touching father-son story within the work; however, to reach this dramatic core, the reader must be patient and willing to overlook the novel's difficult framework. Still, critics praised many of the book's sections, including the compellingly written Limbo sections. Despite these weaknesses, aficionados of dark and surreal fiction will enjoy the bumpy ride into Quinsigamond; other readers may want to steer clear
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
May 2, 2009
I read an interview with James Ellroy where he admitted that he doesn't actually read most of the books that carry his blurbs. That's probably the case here because this holy mess ain't worthy of Ellroy's praise. If O'Connell had hooked up with a comic book artist and done the "Limbo" chapters as little shortform comics within the novel, rather than just describing what happens in the comics with regular prose, then he might've had something. As it is, the book is ambitious and fitfully compelling, but never connects its various ideas into something coherent or tangible.
August 11, 2009
Holy Crap!!
I'm sorry that I forget who recommended this book to me, but, whoever did...Thank You!!
Now this is where I'm supposed to say: "This book is a combination of [Author A} & [Author B:]" but I won't.
This book is about forgiveness of yourself, comas, a comic written by the The Love Child of Warren Ellis & Alan Moore (Oh shit! I just mentioned an Author A & an Author B! Fuckin' sue me.).
I found myself waking up an hour or two before my alarm went off so I could read one more chapter.
Now read it and tell me your story.
I'm sorry that I forget who recommended this book to me, but, whoever did...Thank You!!
Now this is where I'm supposed to say: "This book is a combination of [Author A} & [Author B:]" but I won't.
This book is about forgiveness of yourself, comas, a comic written by the The Love Child of Warren Ellis & Alan Moore (Oh shit! I just mentioned an Author A & an Author B! Fuckin' sue me.).
I found myself waking up an hour or two before my alarm went off so I could read one more chapter.
Now read it and tell me your story.
May 31, 2014
"Part classic noir thriller, part mind-bending fantasy, The Resurrectionist is a wild ride into a territory where nothing is as it appears."
The back of the book description is pretty deceptive. There's nothing noir about this, nor is it mind-bending. It's odd, pretty engaging in the beginning, and the side story from the comic about the freaks is pretty dang cool.
Unfortunately, none of these cool facets lead anywhere, characters and secondary plots just drop away into nothing and it turns into an A#1 cheesefest. Jack O'Connell can write; there just wasn't a story here.
The back of the book description is pretty deceptive. There's nothing noir about this, nor is it mind-bending. It's odd, pretty engaging in the beginning, and the side story from the comic about the freaks is pretty dang cool.
Unfortunately, none of these cool facets lead anywhere, characters and secondary plots just drop away into nothing and it turns into an A#1 cheesefest. Jack O'Connell can write; there just wasn't a story here.
April 19, 2009
Another book that I checked out on reviews/award news with the hope that it will be one of the rare ones of its kind that will appeal to me; and it wasn't, just nothing in there to excite me
So try it, since I guess if you like the noir psychological thriller with a touch of the fantastic - which as mentioned I rarely do - it may be for you; for me it did not transcend its genre so not of real interest
So try it, since I guess if you like the noir psychological thriller with a touch of the fantastic - which as mentioned I rarely do - it may be for you; for me it did not transcend its genre so not of real interest
June 4, 2009
The imagination that went into this book is staggering. I very much enjoyed the exploration of consciousness/unconsciousness, the blurring of the "real" and the "fantastic," and the examination of "abominations." That said, some of the novel's foreshadowing was too transparent (if I pick up on it, it's incredibly evident), and the violence, especially near the end, turned my stomach. All in all, though, I'm glad that I read the book, and I'll be looking for more by O'Connell.
Read
June 9, 2009I hated this book. I do admit the author has a spectacular imagination but that's all I admit. Why two characters with the same name? What happened to the circus resurrectionist? What happened in the end? I guess I am too concrete in my thinking. This just made me feel bad throughout. How do you enjoy a book full of bad luck and terrible acts from the hands of other people? Yuck. I have never read Jack O'Connell before and I am so disappointed in this effort.
April 11, 2008
I've got to mull this one over some more. Very weird premise of a father trying to connect to his comatose son through the fantasy world of his favorite comic. I wanted to love it, and I did enjoy the noir/fantasy mash-up aspects, but there were places were it didn't seem as fully realized a concept as it could have been. Still, pretty cool.
April 15, 2008
It started out good and weird - and I'm a sucker for circus freaks. About 3/4 of the way through it got really trippy, and I was like "Circus freaks rule! Bikers rule!" And then the last page transformed every ounce of weirdness into saccharine treacle.
May 23, 2009
The Resurrectionist sounds more interesting than it really is.
I suppose this book proves it's possible for a story to be so odd that it fails as fantasy, while being so fundamentally this-worldly that it also fails as fantasy.
Just move along; nothing to see here.
I suppose this book proves it's possible for a story to be so odd that it fails as fantasy, while being so fundamentally this-worldly that it also fails as fantasy.
Just move along; nothing to see here.
May 30, 2008
it was ok. nothing too special. an interesting way to tell a story though. a mix of fanatsy/comic book fiction and real life.
July 31, 2013
I enjoyed the comic book segments of this book, but if the plot as a whole had a point, I'm clearly too stupid to get it.
April 11, 2021
The beginnings of The Resurrectionist drew me in. Something about this story hits a nerve although it is far from perfect and maybe that is the point. All the different threads of the story were equally engrossing and I was really feeling with the freaks. I love it when wise Chicken Boy says (I think it was Chicken Boy) that when you are a freak, not just bad luck comes to you, but that you will attract "outrageous" catastrophic bad fortune. I like that there is this bid to embrace the white trash side of life--those unfortunate beings that just have no luck and are poor. Money supports the mad scientist, and they are no better than the biker gang at best. There is wickedness all around in the doctor's, Sweeney's and the biker's story line. I am not sure the white trash side is much better, but it is humbler and grittier and maybe marked for more change because of this. Like Jesus said, a rich man can no easier get into heaven than a camel can get through the eye of a needle. In this time of vaccines and a pandemic the mad scientists tend to really get my back up, (give me some horse ivermectin and herbs) so again I was relating to this story. Chicken Boy is a kind of failed savior. Or is he? The resurrectionisms take on an evil cast. I guess "born agains" can really be annoying. Maybe we need to get away from that and learn something new. In the gospels of the KJV Matt 12. Jesus prophesizes a Queen (Nadia?) will come from the uttermost parts of the earth, not that he, himself, will come again. And we are all down in the soup of human miscreation in all walks of life. I guess Chicken Boy's message is that we are all failed so don't bother trying to fake it and the story goes on. . . I was a little annoyed that in the very end of the book, the writer went out of character, so to speak, and into "dear reader" mode and talked about the making or writing of stories. But in the end when taken as a whole, The Ressurrectionist was satifying if I ignored that some. When some of that outrageous catastrophic fortune hits you, and you are laid up somewhere sick or homeless you will have plenty of time to think, read, and make up new stories. Good luck.
May 22, 2021
Really more like 2.5 stars. I'm not sure what to say. No one recommended the book; I randomly saw it while browsing an online library and was interested in the storyline. It reminded me at first of The Crying of Lot 49...meets The Master and Margarita...meets The Interior Castle all in an hallucinatory fashion. I kept reading to find out what was going to happen...and, bummer, what happened was a bit too realistic and a bit too weird at the same time. There's not a happy end...except...it's sort of kind of redemptive about forgiveness...and thought provoking while cringe worthy in the sex, violence, and language category...with overlays of "possibly this is religious allegory like The Pilgrim's Progress on drugs?" I know, I know, why did I read it? Why did I finish reading it? I don't know; I guess because I didn't hate some of it (hated a lot of it), but the not-so-cringey parts were actually thought-provoking. (I don't mind weird, but the sex, language, concoctions made...were the stuff of nightmares.) I did wind up bookmarking two quotes:
"Life will throw catastrophe into your path. Not conflicts. Not challenges. Out and out catastrophes. And it's during those catastrophic moments, when we're at our most terrified and grief stricken and enraged, that anyone can turn into a real monster. We all trip over catastrophe, Bruno. But some people turn into monsters and some don't." Issue #8 Limbo comic "To Flee the Rising Moon"
"...to live forever with a grief that deforms the heart is unacceptable" Issue #9 Limbo "The Castle on the Cliff"
I picked up the book 13 times and read a total of 7 hours and 43 minutes.
"Life will throw catastrophe into your path. Not conflicts. Not challenges. Out and out catastrophes. And it's during those catastrophic moments, when we're at our most terrified and grief stricken and enraged, that anyone can turn into a real monster. We all trip over catastrophe, Bruno. But some people turn into monsters and some don't." Issue #8 Limbo comic "To Flee the Rising Moon"
"...to live forever with a grief that deforms the heart is unacceptable" Issue #9 Limbo "The Castle on the Cliff"
I picked up the book 13 times and read a total of 7 hours and 43 minutes.
April 28, 2021
So, I enjoyed reading this. I got big Chuck Pahliniuk vibes the whole time, maybe just because it was so incredibly strange. I found the prose lovely throughout, which helped me suspend a lot of my disbelief because HOLY COW plot wise was this a disaster.
Characters weave in and out of the narrative, sometimes receiving a decent amount of exposition only to never show up again. Other characters are extremely important... But we don't know their motivation. The book is named after one such character, who is summarily dispensed via truck at around the halfway mark.
Lots of this book seems to exist just to... Exist. What's the point of Spider's chapter in the beginning if the Abomination we're meant to care about is Buzz? Why skip around in the Limbo storyline? What the hell is going on with that strip mall that shows up for a chapter, is interesting, and then... Never comes up again? I think this would have been a much stronger book if it were longer, but even more so if it embraced multi modality. You lose all the snap of a graphic novel when you just write it as a normal novel anyway.
I don't mind the suspension of disbelief as much as some people, but the novel takes a hard left turn into magical realism seemingly out of nowhere and pretty late in the game. Is it explained? You bet it is not.
Who is Menlo? Does it matter? It feels like it wants to matter, but, like almost everything in this book, the reader is left wondering if *they're* the crazy one.
Characters weave in and out of the narrative, sometimes receiving a decent amount of exposition only to never show up again. Other characters are extremely important... But we don't know their motivation. The book is named after one such character, who is summarily dispensed via truck at around the halfway mark.
Lots of this book seems to exist just to... Exist. What's the point of Spider's chapter in the beginning if the Abomination we're meant to care about is Buzz? Why skip around in the Limbo storyline? What the hell is going on with that strip mall that shows up for a chapter, is interesting, and then... Never comes up again? I think this would have been a much stronger book if it were longer, but even more so if it embraced multi modality. You lose all the snap of a graphic novel when you just write it as a normal novel anyway.
I don't mind the suspension of disbelief as much as some people, but the novel takes a hard left turn into magical realism seemingly out of nowhere and pretty late in the game. Is it explained? You bet it is not.
Who is Menlo? Does it matter? It feels like it wants to matter, but, like almost everything in this book, the reader is left wondering if *they're* the crazy one.
October 18, 2021
This novel was a romp! The stories within stories are exhilarating and compelling. Like the protagonists, the reader sometimes gets lost in the twists and turns of the intertwining narratives, but the disorientation itself is pleasurable because in all cases, throughout the whole book, love is at the center. By the end of the book, the author had aroused my compassion and admiration for characters I would normally avoid on city streets or gawk at in a circus. And I felt a bit ashamed at how, in our culture, we so quickly assess others based on their surface presentations, their "images" if you will.
There's a lot of Biblical symbolism, references, and mythology throughout the book. The characters are outcasts and sinners of every sort—there's an amazing imagination at play here. One can read the story on many levels. At one level, it's a wild, roving, messy story. At a deeper level, it deals with some truly existential issues—normalcy vs. freakishness; status and power and their use and misuse; pride and humility; the victimization of the most vulnerable in human societies; outsiders vs. insiders; mob violence; so many things in play throughout human history and certainly still relevant today.
So far, in my opinion, this book stands the test of time, and will continue to do so into the future!
There's a lot of Biblical symbolism, references, and mythology throughout the book. The characters are outcasts and sinners of every sort—there's an amazing imagination at play here. One can read the story on many levels. At one level, it's a wild, roving, messy story. At a deeper level, it deals with some truly existential issues—normalcy vs. freakishness; status and power and their use and misuse; pride and humility; the victimization of the most vulnerable in human societies; outsiders vs. insiders; mob violence; so many things in play throughout human history and certainly still relevant today.
So far, in my opinion, this book stands the test of time, and will continue to do so into the future!
January 7, 2021
I was looking forward to this one, but it quickly became apparent that the synopsis did not prepare me for what I was getting into. The synopsis, in fact, calls this "part classic noir thriller, part fabulist fable". I saw none of that. What I did see was the following: an incredibly unlikable main character who hits his wife, the physical and sexual abuse of a hermaphrodite as well as the same for a person referred to as a dwarf, the most over-the-top, stereotypical villain of all time, and a lot of unnecessary negativity towards transvestites that offers absolutely nothing to the story.
A quick look at some of my reviews will show that I have no aversion to messed-up, uncomfortable reads. That said, those uncomfortable and upsetting moments need a purpose. The Resurrectionist did not have that purpose. The Resurrectionist also lacked a single empathetic, decent human being.
A quick look at some of my reviews will show that I have no aversion to messed-up, uncomfortable reads. That said, those uncomfortable and upsetting moments need a purpose. The Resurrectionist did not have that purpose. The Resurrectionist also lacked a single empathetic, decent human being.
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