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The Keepers of Truth
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2000, The Keepers of Truth is the highly-acclaimed new novel from a rich and unpredictable talent.
297 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
65 people are currently reading
875 people want to read
About the author
Michael Collins
429 books53 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
(1)Irish Novelist
Michael Collins was born in 1964. He was educated in Belfast, Dublin and Chicago. His short stories have been awarded the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Award in Ireland and the Pushcart Prize in America.
(1)Irish Novelist
Michael Collins was born in 1964. He was educated in Belfast, Dublin and Chicago. His short stories have been awarded the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Award in Ireland and the Pushcart Prize in America.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
January 10, 2021
Meritocracy and Its Discontents
The problem with the idea of excellence is that someone has to define it. And those with power tend to define it to suit themselves and their progeny. Aristocracy therefore becomes the natural order of society. And so long as there is someone lower down on the social scale than oneself, aristocracy can be generally satisfying. But beware the wrath of those who become conscious that there is no one left to despise. They could rally around the most unlikely leaders to redress their unrecognised grievances. No, that can’t be right. Surely that can’t happen in modern democratic society which celebrates competitive excellence... Or so we thought.
“We are at war with ourselves in the greatest calamity our nation has ever faced. We kill each other in deals gone wrong, in a black market of drugs plied in the shadow of our abandoned cathedrals... What we do now is eat.” Collins nailed it in 2001. While everyone else was worried about the dotcom crash, he saw the crash of a country. And he predicted how the country would react: by punishing itself. “There’s an indignation in this country at what has happened to us. We need to exact a brutalising punishment, indiscriminate and horrific, upon ourselves. We like to see ourselves mutilated. It’s part of our psychosis of dismemberment, deregulation, downsizing, cutting things.”
What a shame that these losers in the global game didn’t wake up to the politics and economics of their situation when something could have been done about them. When their rivers burst into flame from the petroleum waste dumped into them; when their factories pushed out waste into the air and the ground; when their rural tranquility was invaded by fast food outlets, shopping malls, and box stores, these were not symptoms of wealth but of profligate inefficiency and political indifference. They realised this when the only option left was to destroy the system that let it happen. So they did just that. And they feel proud of it, even if their own condition hasn’t improved at all. At least for the moment they can feel the thrill of power, however illusory.
“It’s not hard to find casualties, what’s hard is to get people to admit they are casualties. It’s hard to get them to admit there’s a war going on.” The war these people have is with the aristocrats who run the businesses and the agencies of government. But the war they want is with the people they feel entitled to despise. They want a scapegoat not an adversary. Mobs like scapegoats; they’re surer targets than men in suits or other men with guns. And scapegoats make good press. They unify the disunited like nothing else. Scapegoats restore the illusion of power to those who think they deserve it but leave those in control untouched. This is part of the national character not an occasional aberration: “It’s maybe the greatest secret we possess as a nation, our sense of alienation from everyone else around us, our ability to have no sympathy, no empathy for others’ suffering, a decentralised philosophy of individual will, a culpability that always lands back on each of us.”
The meritocracy is grounded on formalised education. No education, then no test results; no test results, then no political traction; no political power, then the extra-political will have to do: “The political was eclipsed in our America. What you usually saw was the image of a man waving a gun, screaming at police, a bullhorn in the hand of a negotiator behind a squad car, a crack SWAT team angling for a shot, and then the sudden eruption of gunfire, the slumped potato-sack body in a pool of his own blood as the SWAT team, dressed in fatigues and visors, showed themselves from alleyways and doorways and rooftops.” The powerful are confirmed in their presumptions to power.
The irony of course is that the powerful don’t feel themselves powerful. The meritocracy is itself strictly hierarchical. Those meritoriously inferior are subject to the meritoriously superior. They do have the occasional recognition of their position as ‘the keepers of truth’, that is as the arbiters of reality for those who have no place at all in the hierarchy. These are the American untouchables, the trailer trash and migrant workers who lack not just educational credentials but also even an understanding of how entitlement is created. Perhaps their ignorance is a blessing. Pity more the poor striver at the bottom of the meritocratic pile who knows the score but can’t pass the tests.
“All we could do was wait for the cowboy Reagan to come and deliver us. But that was all in the future, beyond our scope of understanding.” And Reagan begat the Bushes, who begat 45, each of whom defined excellence to suit themselves and their progeny. Hence the plaintive cry which forms the theme of the book: “Oh God, it’s hard work dispensing with our history.” The fictional mystery centres on an ‘ancestral farm’, clearly a metaphor for the country itself which hides so much of its past through obfuscating myth.
In scanning the reviews, I see that one of the meritorious strivers commented “What right does an Irishman have to call America a failure?” That was in 2012. She probably hadn’t even heard of Donald Trump. Collins could see what she couldn’t and it frightened him. “What we’re doing is creating a culture of psychopaths, plain and simple,“ he writes. Perhaps the Irish have seen it all before; or at least they maintain an historical sense absent in America.
The problem with the idea of excellence is that someone has to define it. And those with power tend to define it to suit themselves and their progeny. Aristocracy therefore becomes the natural order of society. And so long as there is someone lower down on the social scale than oneself, aristocracy can be generally satisfying. But beware the wrath of those who become conscious that there is no one left to despise. They could rally around the most unlikely leaders to redress their unrecognised grievances. No, that can’t be right. Surely that can’t happen in modern democratic society which celebrates competitive excellence... Or so we thought.
“We are at war with ourselves in the greatest calamity our nation has ever faced. We kill each other in deals gone wrong, in a black market of drugs plied in the shadow of our abandoned cathedrals... What we do now is eat.” Collins nailed it in 2001. While everyone else was worried about the dotcom crash, he saw the crash of a country. And he predicted how the country would react: by punishing itself. “There’s an indignation in this country at what has happened to us. We need to exact a brutalising punishment, indiscriminate and horrific, upon ourselves. We like to see ourselves mutilated. It’s part of our psychosis of dismemberment, deregulation, downsizing, cutting things.”
What a shame that these losers in the global game didn’t wake up to the politics and economics of their situation when something could have been done about them. When their rivers burst into flame from the petroleum waste dumped into them; when their factories pushed out waste into the air and the ground; when their rural tranquility was invaded by fast food outlets, shopping malls, and box stores, these were not symptoms of wealth but of profligate inefficiency and political indifference. They realised this when the only option left was to destroy the system that let it happen. So they did just that. And they feel proud of it, even if their own condition hasn’t improved at all. At least for the moment they can feel the thrill of power, however illusory.
“It’s not hard to find casualties, what’s hard is to get people to admit they are casualties. It’s hard to get them to admit there’s a war going on.” The war these people have is with the aristocrats who run the businesses and the agencies of government. But the war they want is with the people they feel entitled to despise. They want a scapegoat not an adversary. Mobs like scapegoats; they’re surer targets than men in suits or other men with guns. And scapegoats make good press. They unify the disunited like nothing else. Scapegoats restore the illusion of power to those who think they deserve it but leave those in control untouched. This is part of the national character not an occasional aberration: “It’s maybe the greatest secret we possess as a nation, our sense of alienation from everyone else around us, our ability to have no sympathy, no empathy for others’ suffering, a decentralised philosophy of individual will, a culpability that always lands back on each of us.”
The meritocracy is grounded on formalised education. No education, then no test results; no test results, then no political traction; no political power, then the extra-political will have to do: “The political was eclipsed in our America. What you usually saw was the image of a man waving a gun, screaming at police, a bullhorn in the hand of a negotiator behind a squad car, a crack SWAT team angling for a shot, and then the sudden eruption of gunfire, the slumped potato-sack body in a pool of his own blood as the SWAT team, dressed in fatigues and visors, showed themselves from alleyways and doorways and rooftops.” The powerful are confirmed in their presumptions to power.
The irony of course is that the powerful don’t feel themselves powerful. The meritocracy is itself strictly hierarchical. Those meritoriously inferior are subject to the meritoriously superior. They do have the occasional recognition of their position as ‘the keepers of truth’, that is as the arbiters of reality for those who have no place at all in the hierarchy. These are the American untouchables, the trailer trash and migrant workers who lack not just educational credentials but also even an understanding of how entitlement is created. Perhaps their ignorance is a blessing. Pity more the poor striver at the bottom of the meritocratic pile who knows the score but can’t pass the tests.
“All we could do was wait for the cowboy Reagan to come and deliver us. But that was all in the future, beyond our scope of understanding.” And Reagan begat the Bushes, who begat 45, each of whom defined excellence to suit themselves and their progeny. Hence the plaintive cry which forms the theme of the book: “Oh God, it’s hard work dispensing with our history.” The fictional mystery centres on an ‘ancestral farm’, clearly a metaphor for the country itself which hides so much of its past through obfuscating myth.
In scanning the reviews, I see that one of the meritorious strivers commented “What right does an Irishman have to call America a failure?” That was in 2012. She probably hadn’t even heard of Donald Trump. Collins could see what she couldn’t and it frightened him. “What we’re doing is creating a culture of psychopaths, plain and simple,“ he writes. Perhaps the Irish have seen it all before; or at least they maintain an historical sense absent in America.
June 19, 2012
If you've read the synopsis, you'll remember: rust belt/post-industrial, small town paper, murder mystery. You can add: warped father and son relationships, bitter self-analysis and running social commentary on everything from media hysteria to body-building (and just plain body-fattening) to class consciousness. And then some.
The problem with this rich and ultimately ambitious stew is not with the mixing of the different elements or themes, but with the tone which veers from rough and earthy to ranting and pedantic to grimly humourous by way of long stretches of lethargic haze. All from a single narrator! Perhaps these jarring changes in tone are meant to correspond to the narrator's confused and rambling state(s) of mind, but the end result comes across as artless gear-shifting in lieu of direction.
Disappointing because there really are some damn good passages and the author is obviously an insightful observer but still...a tad too many false notes (like the very lame murder investigation, the 'Ronny's estranged' running joke, etc.) and overall lack of cohesion cut this novel's potential.
The problem with this rich and ultimately ambitious stew is not with the mixing of the different elements or themes, but with the tone which veers from rough and earthy to ranting and pedantic to grimly humourous by way of long stretches of lethargic haze. All from a single narrator! Perhaps these jarring changes in tone are meant to correspond to the narrator's confused and rambling state(s) of mind, but the end result comes across as artless gear-shifting in lieu of direction.
Disappointing because there really are some damn good passages and the author is obviously an insightful observer but still...a tad too many false notes (like the very lame murder investigation, the 'Ronny's estranged' running joke, etc.) and overall lack of cohesion cut this novel's potential.
December 31, 2014
„Tödliche Schlagzeilen“, so der deutsche Titel, dem leider die Ironie des Originaltitels abgeht, ist der erste und mit etlichen Geburtswehen behaftete Teil der Rustbelt-Tetralogie, der erst zum Schluss ins Deutsche übersetzt wurde. Dieser von interessierter Seite zum Mord aufgeblasene Vermisstenfall vor dem Hintergrund des wirtschaftlichen Niedergangs einer Stadt ist alles andere als ein reines literarisches vergnügen, beim Lesen ensteht der Eindruck, der Autor entwickelt beim Schreiben sein Milieu und die personellen Konstellationen, die auch in den folgenden Romanen in allerlei Variationen wieder auftauchen. Den vom persönlichen Verlust und allerlei psychischen Defekten gezeichneten Helden, der in eine Sache gerät, die eigentlich über seine Verhältnisse geht, seine zwiespältigen Gefühle für eine irgendwie in die Tat verwickelte Unterschichtbraut aus dem Trailer, den von vornherein für die Gesellschaft feststehenden Täter, der mangels anderer offensichtlicher Alternativen vorschnell zur Strecke gebracht wird.
Dieser Sozialkrimi mit Anklängen an ein Familiendrama ist sicherlich nichts für Thrillerfreunde üblichen Zuschnitts, auch wenn der Showdown, in dessen Verlauf sich Erzähler Bill selbst zur Geisel macht und damit zum Lebensretter in aussichtsloser Lage wird, das Buch auch für mich erst auf vier Sterne gezogen hat.
Bill lebt allein im großen Herrenhaus über dem sterbenden Industriestandort, denn es ist der einzige Ort, der ihn zu monatlichen Auszahlungen aus dem Treuhandvermögen seines Großvaters berechtigt,der als Einwanderer aus dem zaristischen Russland ein ganzes, inzwischen in Trümmer gegangenes Imperium, aufgebaut hat. Bills in vielerlei Hinsicht überforderter Vater, hat sich unter bizarren Umständen das Leben genommen, da er nicht dazu bereit war, irgendwo in billig Asien zu produzieren. Der Sohn war danach einige Zeit in der Psychiatrie und ist zu Beginn der Handlung jüngstes Mitglied der auf drei Mann geschrumpften Redaktion der Lokalzeitung Daily Truth. Als die Nachricht herein kommt, dass Ronny Lawton seinen Alten umgebracht haben soll, feilt der Jungjournalist, der davon träumt es ein zweites mal mit dem Eignungstest zum Jurastudium zu versuchen, an den letzten Zeilen zu einem Artikel über die Siegerin im Backwettbewerb, der für die Titelseite vorgesehen ist.
Der Mordverdacht verändert alles, denn sein hastig zusammengeschusterter Artikel über die Vorgeschichte des mutmaßlichen Mörders stellt eine Beziehung zwischen dem Jungjournalisten und dem Mann her, der so gut ins Täterprofil passt. Und da das Fernsehen in Sachen Lokalberichterstattung deutlich schneller ist und mit einer attraktiven Moderatorin aufwarten kann, die ihren Sex-Appeal bei den Berichten gezielt einsetzt, entsteht ein ungleicher Wettlauf.
Bill, auf dessen Anrufe seine Uni-Liebe nur noch antwortet, wenn er rein fachliche Fragen stellt, gerät dagegen in den Sog von Teri, der Ex-Frau von Ronny, die keinen Unterhalt für den „gemeinsamen“ Sohn bekommt und mit einem gewissen Karl in einem vollkommen verdreckten Trailer haust. Ihre erste Frage vor laufender Kamera ist denn auch, ob sie das Haus bekommt, wenn Ronnie für den Mord verurteilt wird.
Im Verlauf der weiteren Recherchen bekommt Bill heraus, dass Teri zumindest ein moralisches Recht auf das Haus und ein Motiv für einen Mord hätte. Das mutmaßliche Opfer, das nach wie vor vermisst wird, war ein ziemlich schlimmer Finger, der seinem Sohn wie seiner Schwiegertochter ziemlich übel mitgespielt hat. Mit all seinem Wissen gerät Bill, der inzwischen auch vom FBI abgehört wird, in eine mehrfache Zwickmühle, denn seine Zeitung „Daily Truth“ steht in Übernahmeverhandlungen und will den guten Draht des jüngsten Redaktionsmitglieds zum abgetauchten Hauptverdächtigen Ronny zu Geld machen.
Bill kann sich inzwischen denken, dass Teri das stärkere Motiv zum Mord hatte und bekommt auch die breite Front ihrer Unterstützerinnen zu spüren, die lieber ihren mit Steroiden vollgepumpten Ex als Täter sehen würde. Eine Konstellation, die Verzweiflungstaten geradezu begünstigt.
Aber leider gibt es auf dem Weg zum Finale ein paar Mäander oder nicht so gut motivierte Handlungsstränge zu viel. Auch der dritte Streich „Schlafende Engel“, der hierzulande am erfolgreichsten war, so ist das Buch nicht wirklich gut ausbalanciert, auch wenn er eher die Bedürfnisse von Krimi-Lesern anspricht. Wirklich großartig sind der zweite und der vierte Teil: Im Nachfolger „Nicht totzukriegen“ testet MC beziehungsmäßig eine Konstellation im Alltag aus, für die in „Tödliche Schlagzeilen“ nur wenig Spielraum blieb und liefert ein absolutes Happy End. Den einsamen Showdown mit dem übersehenen Psychopathen vom Dienst liefert der Autor im „Bestseller-Mord“ nach, seinem vielschichtigsten und auch bizarrsten Krimi. Letzteren würde ich Leuten ans Herz legen, die gern ein wenig mit ihrer Lesezeit knapsen und von daher auf exemplarische Höhepunkte fixiert sind. Lesern mit Neigung zur Kompletitis sollten lieber mit den „Tödlichen Schlagzeilen“ beginnen und sich dem Gipfel der Erzählkunst dieses Michael Collins entgegen lesen.
Eine abschließende Warnung zum Schluss, wer darauf fixiert ist, dass der Täter am Ende in Handschellen abgeführt oder anderweitig von der Staatsmacht zur Strecke gebracht wird, sollte seine Lesezeit besser in andere literarische Objekte investieren.
Dieser Sozialkrimi mit Anklängen an ein Familiendrama ist sicherlich nichts für Thrillerfreunde üblichen Zuschnitts, auch wenn der Showdown, in dessen Verlauf sich Erzähler Bill selbst zur Geisel macht und damit zum Lebensretter in aussichtsloser Lage wird, das Buch auch für mich erst auf vier Sterne gezogen hat.
Bill lebt allein im großen Herrenhaus über dem sterbenden Industriestandort, denn es ist der einzige Ort, der ihn zu monatlichen Auszahlungen aus dem Treuhandvermögen seines Großvaters berechtigt,der als Einwanderer aus dem zaristischen Russland ein ganzes, inzwischen in Trümmer gegangenes Imperium, aufgebaut hat. Bills in vielerlei Hinsicht überforderter Vater, hat sich unter bizarren Umständen das Leben genommen, da er nicht dazu bereit war, irgendwo in billig Asien zu produzieren. Der Sohn war danach einige Zeit in der Psychiatrie und ist zu Beginn der Handlung jüngstes Mitglied der auf drei Mann geschrumpften Redaktion der Lokalzeitung Daily Truth. Als die Nachricht herein kommt, dass Ronny Lawton seinen Alten umgebracht haben soll, feilt der Jungjournalist, der davon träumt es ein zweites mal mit dem Eignungstest zum Jurastudium zu versuchen, an den letzten Zeilen zu einem Artikel über die Siegerin im Backwettbewerb, der für die Titelseite vorgesehen ist.
Der Mordverdacht verändert alles, denn sein hastig zusammengeschusterter Artikel über die Vorgeschichte des mutmaßlichen Mörders stellt eine Beziehung zwischen dem Jungjournalisten und dem Mann her, der so gut ins Täterprofil passt. Und da das Fernsehen in Sachen Lokalberichterstattung deutlich schneller ist und mit einer attraktiven Moderatorin aufwarten kann, die ihren Sex-Appeal bei den Berichten gezielt einsetzt, entsteht ein ungleicher Wettlauf.
Bill, auf dessen Anrufe seine Uni-Liebe nur noch antwortet, wenn er rein fachliche Fragen stellt, gerät dagegen in den Sog von Teri, der Ex-Frau von Ronny, die keinen Unterhalt für den „gemeinsamen“ Sohn bekommt und mit einem gewissen Karl in einem vollkommen verdreckten Trailer haust. Ihre erste Frage vor laufender Kamera ist denn auch, ob sie das Haus bekommt, wenn Ronnie für den Mord verurteilt wird.
Im Verlauf der weiteren Recherchen bekommt Bill heraus, dass Teri zumindest ein moralisches Recht auf das Haus und ein Motiv für einen Mord hätte. Das mutmaßliche Opfer, das nach wie vor vermisst wird, war ein ziemlich schlimmer Finger, der seinem Sohn wie seiner Schwiegertochter ziemlich übel mitgespielt hat. Mit all seinem Wissen gerät Bill, der inzwischen auch vom FBI abgehört wird, in eine mehrfache Zwickmühle, denn seine Zeitung „Daily Truth“ steht in Übernahmeverhandlungen und will den guten Draht des jüngsten Redaktionsmitglieds zum abgetauchten Hauptverdächtigen Ronny zu Geld machen.
Bill kann sich inzwischen denken, dass Teri das stärkere Motiv zum Mord hatte und bekommt auch die breite Front ihrer Unterstützerinnen zu spüren, die lieber ihren mit Steroiden vollgepumpten Ex als Täter sehen würde. Eine Konstellation, die Verzweiflungstaten geradezu begünstigt.
Aber leider gibt es auf dem Weg zum Finale ein paar Mäander oder nicht so gut motivierte Handlungsstränge zu viel. Auch der dritte Streich „Schlafende Engel“, der hierzulande am erfolgreichsten war, so ist das Buch nicht wirklich gut ausbalanciert, auch wenn er eher die Bedürfnisse von Krimi-Lesern anspricht. Wirklich großartig sind der zweite und der vierte Teil: Im Nachfolger „Nicht totzukriegen“ testet MC beziehungsmäßig eine Konstellation im Alltag aus, für die in „Tödliche Schlagzeilen“ nur wenig Spielraum blieb und liefert ein absolutes Happy End. Den einsamen Showdown mit dem übersehenen Psychopathen vom Dienst liefert der Autor im „Bestseller-Mord“ nach, seinem vielschichtigsten und auch bizarrsten Krimi. Letzteren würde ich Leuten ans Herz legen, die gern ein wenig mit ihrer Lesezeit knapsen und von daher auf exemplarische Höhepunkte fixiert sind. Lesern mit Neigung zur Kompletitis sollten lieber mit den „Tödlichen Schlagzeilen“ beginnen und sich dem Gipfel der Erzählkunst dieses Michael Collins entgegen lesen.
Eine abschließende Warnung zum Schluss, wer darauf fixiert ist, dass der Täter am Ende in Handschellen abgeführt oder anderweitig von der Staatsmacht zur Strecke gebracht wird, sollte seine Lesezeit besser in andere literarische Objekte investieren.
October 20, 2015
Well ... I finished it, but it was definitely a struggle (the main reason I finished was that I'd moved this book with me twice, damn it, and I was determined not to give it away without reading it.) There's a lean and interesting story in here, but Bill was a character I wanted to slap upside the head constantly so the first-person narration from him, full of pseudo-philosophy, utterly overwrought metaphor, and long disquisitions on the Midwest's fall from grace were enough to turn me off of ever reading another novel by this author. It's not that I mind unpleasant first-person narrators, normally, but Bill was such a whining annoying loser that
April 19, 2017
Sometimes the most American books are written by outsiders, in this case -- an Irish author who was shortlisted for the Booker. Bill (he specifies that is the name on his birth certificate, not William) is the final limb on his family tree, living in the mansion his immigrant grandfather erected after parlaying his ice delivery business into refrigerator manufacture. But by the late '70's, the foundries are cold and dead, the town, moribund, and Bill is the lowest rung on the dying newspaper ladder at the local daily, called The Truth. He and his coworkers eat tuna melts and put the paper out, working against the increasing popularity of tv news. He does make one reference to the fact that this story is told at a remove of 30 years, noting the further decline of print news in the day of the Internet. A lurid mystery sets both entities in motion, trying to be the first to get updates public. There are this long stretches in which characters muse over the death of the American Dream, which is the point of the book. Involving and heartfelt.
July 16, 2012
Bill, a reporter for the Daily Truth, has returned home to the once-thriving town in downstate Illinois where his grandfather, an immigrant who had escaped the crushing poverty of the Russian steppes, had singlehandedly built a now-defunct refrigerator manufacturing empire. Although Bill attempts to use his position to pontificate on the decline of the American Dream, he is expected to report exclusively on local bake-offs and high school sports rivalries....Please read the rest of my review at Rust Belt Reader: http://rustbeltreader.wordpress.com/2...
October 31, 2025
Despite the fact that this is a very American novel in both subject matter and style, Michael Collins is an Irish novelist.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2000 and for the Dublin Literary Award in 2002, The Keepers of Truth is a mystery novel of sorts set in a rust belt town in mid 1980s rural America.
Bill is a journalist, with pretensions to literary greatness, working for a struggling local newspaper, The Truth. Bill mostly gets to write only about the mundane local issues that typically fill small town papers (when they still existed).
When local bad boy Ronny Lawton reports to police that his father is missing, and a severed finger is found in the house, Bill and the paper finally have something of substance to investigate and report on. Some of their work even makes it into national newspapers.
Naturally, suspicion falls on Ronny - everyone knows that he and his father had a confrontational relationship.
Bill tries to get close to Ronny at the local burger joint where he works, with some level of success.
When Bill finds out that Ronny also has an estranged wife, with a child, living locally in a van, and with a new boyfriend, Bill decides to find out what she might know.
Bill finds himself drawn to this woman, Teri, and her child, who she locks in a cage when she goes to work. (One aspect of this novel that I found moderately annoying was Bill's (as narrator) frequent references to this woman as "Ronny's estranged" instead of using her name.)
Bill receives a note, the kind with words and letters cut from a newspaper (The Truth) and assembled with glue on paper, revealing that the head of the missing man could be found at a certain location.
After a delay of a few days, Bill and his newspaper colleagues visit this place at night, to indeed find a maggot ridden, decaying human head.
The plot takes several twists and turns, with a few asides, culminating in a hostage situation, with Ronny holding Teri, her (and his) son, and Bill at gunpoint as the FBI try to negotiate his surrender.
I won't reveal what happens next, or even the final outcome of the investigation into Ronny's father's murder. That would be telling.
Overall, this was a cleverly constructed and enjoyable novel, a little different to the regular pulp fiction murder mystery novels.
On the downside, I didn't always enjoy the writing style, with its cliched references to American pop culture and some of its stereotypical character types. Collins went a little overboard in his efforts to emulate American language and mannerisms, resulting in characters and situations that were not always completely convincing.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2000 and for the Dublin Literary Award in 2002, The Keepers of Truth is a mystery novel of sorts set in a rust belt town in mid 1980s rural America.
Bill is a journalist, with pretensions to literary greatness, working for a struggling local newspaper, The Truth. Bill mostly gets to write only about the mundane local issues that typically fill small town papers (when they still existed).
When local bad boy Ronny Lawton reports to police that his father is missing, and a severed finger is found in the house, Bill and the paper finally have something of substance to investigate and report on. Some of their work even makes it into national newspapers.
Naturally, suspicion falls on Ronny - everyone knows that he and his father had a confrontational relationship.
Bill tries to get close to Ronny at the local burger joint where he works, with some level of success.
When Bill finds out that Ronny also has an estranged wife, with a child, living locally in a van, and with a new boyfriend, Bill decides to find out what she might know.
Bill finds himself drawn to this woman, Teri, and her child, who she locks in a cage when she goes to work. (One aspect of this novel that I found moderately annoying was Bill's (as narrator) frequent references to this woman as "Ronny's estranged" instead of using her name.)
Bill receives a note, the kind with words and letters cut from a newspaper (The Truth) and assembled with glue on paper, revealing that the head of the missing man could be found at a certain location.
After a delay of a few days, Bill and his newspaper colleagues visit this place at night, to indeed find a maggot ridden, decaying human head.
The plot takes several twists and turns, with a few asides, culminating in a hostage situation, with Ronny holding Teri, her (and his) son, and Bill at gunpoint as the FBI try to negotiate his surrender.
I won't reveal what happens next, or even the final outcome of the investigation into Ronny's father's murder. That would be telling.
Overall, this was a cleverly constructed and enjoyable novel, a little different to the regular pulp fiction murder mystery novels.
On the downside, I didn't always enjoy the writing style, with its cliched references to American pop culture and some of its stereotypical character types. Collins went a little overboard in his efforts to emulate American language and mannerisms, resulting in characters and situations that were not always completely convincing.
February 18, 2014
I thought this book was very powerful, it definitely kept me reading. It was not entirely realistic, and I think in many ways it was meant as a social commentary rather than a novel. Which is one of my problems with the book – it has a message in it, but it really bashes that message in with a sledgehammer rather than presenting it in a subtle way, which I prefer. I found the narrator to be a very unlikable in the beginning, but he kind of grew on me. I think that would have been very disappointed if I read the whole book thinking the mystery would be solved and then finding out it wasn't. As it was, I look to the discussion questions in the back and discovered that the mystery was never answered. So I knew that going in, there was a think I would've been quite disappointed. It was well-written. I did think that the epilogue is really took a lot away from it though – it was unnecessary, you didn't know whether it was the writer talking or the narrator, and it really belabored the point. Much too much. As much as I'm complaining about the book, I'm giving it 4 stars because it did hold my interest and there were times when it was really compelling.
June 19, 2014
It's a strange book to be honest.
The story itself is quite intriguing, with a murder mystery set in a dying town, and a neurotic journalist trying to solve it. The town itself is such a perfect crime scene, with its economic and moral decay, a secret sisterhood of clients of one of the few thriving businesses a local hairdresser, isolated from the civilisation, made me think a bit of Midsummer Murders. If you re not one of them, you're an outsider, and you will never be let in. Things are dealt with by people from the town.
It is not one of the most pleasant or engaging reads, the style makes it sometimes hard to follow, so do the characters. It is very well written, but it's very raw, impersonal and cold. Bill's monologues were t times as boring to me as they must have seem to his co-workers. We are almost sitting inside the head of someone whom we would not like to have an an acquaintance.
But as I said, the plot make up for everything, although the ending is a bit hard to believe.
The story itself is quite intriguing, with a murder mystery set in a dying town, and a neurotic journalist trying to solve it. The town itself is such a perfect crime scene, with its economic and moral decay, a secret sisterhood of clients of one of the few thriving businesses a local hairdresser, isolated from the civilisation, made me think a bit of Midsummer Murders. If you re not one of them, you're an outsider, and you will never be let in. Things are dealt with by people from the town.
It is not one of the most pleasant or engaging reads, the style makes it sometimes hard to follow, so do the characters. It is very well written, but it's very raw, impersonal and cold. Bill's monologues were t times as boring to me as they must have seem to his co-workers. We are almost sitting inside the head of someone whom we would not like to have an an acquaintance.
But as I said, the plot make up for everything, although the ending is a bit hard to believe.
September 8, 2014
WOW!! There's 3 weeks of my life I'll never get back! !! This book was so bad the author couldn't even bother to name some of the lame characters! ! Not that anyone really cared about the pathetic losers that did have names.
I find it hard to believe this book was short listed for the Booker prize. ...it must have been slim picking that year. Do yourself a favour and maybe watch paint dry instead of reading this book!
I find it hard to believe this book was short listed for the Booker prize. ...it must have been slim picking that year. Do yourself a favour and maybe watch paint dry instead of reading this book!
September 9, 2012
Had I not read other impressive novels by Collins, I probably would have given up on this one. The first half is slow and rather disjointed. I was far more interested in the characters in the narrator's life than in the narrator himself (who seemed to be cobbled together from a collection of favorite quirks the author had collected from observations over the years). That said, Collin's prose is such a treat, I never feel I have been robbed of the time spent reading him.
May 29, 2018
I was gripped by this one, which is impressive given how much of it takes places in the narrator’s head over the course of one long, oppressive summer. It’s written in insistent American sentences that drive you onwards looking for answers.
Our narrator, Bill, is a junior reporter at the local paper of a depressed rust belt town, and the heir to a long-bankrupt manufacturing firm that was once the town’s major employer. He writes rambling philosophical articles that read almost like beat poetry, grasping at what has happened – what is happening – to his town. They don’t get published.
The Keepers of Truth is hard to classify. It’s somewhere between a noirish thriller, a gothic mystery and a New Yorker long read about structural decline. I think in the end it’s primarily a portrait of youth: a portrayal of a privileged young man trying to make sense of the calamity that has befallen his town.
His youth is certainly a big part of his character, for above all he is confused, still trying to make sense of the world. He has been to college, but isn’t especially clever in an analytical sense. What he has is feeling. But sensitivity is no good for understanding the impersonal economic forces making a plaything of his town. And so he stews and he writes, muddling together a number of big themes: worklessness, deskilling, consumerism, globalisation.
He is jaded but not yet cynical. He cares about his town, and desperately seeks to understand its calamity. Yet he has a rich boy’s horror of the poor, and his motivations are never completely uncontaminated by noblesse oblige. He is aghast at the poverty of his town, yet he disdains the consumerist impulse seen whenever a few dollars are available. His recollection of the boom years cast hard work and frugal living in a romantic light.
And behind all his big ideas, he is simply trying to figure out how to live well himself. Again, his words aren’t adequate to the job. Living well is a manual, earthy skill, learned over the generations, difficult to codify. As ways of life change, we are alienated from the preceding generations, and the flow of wisdom is obstructed.
Because Bill is on to something. Worklessness and consumerism do – albeit in opposite ways – both uproot us from our communities. And so our poverty isn’t just about money; it’s deeper than that. It’s about lost community and lost self-respect. It goes all the way down to the meaning in our lives.
Being stuck inside the brooding head of a hero who is not unusually good, clever or decisive is occasionally frustrating. But things are kept moving by the whodunit plot. And in the end I think his youth is a clever device to make a wider point. Economic forces *are* bewildering. And more, because of the alienation they deliver from our communities and from the wisdom of preceding generations, we are all in the position of the young, trying to work things out. TKOT explored these themes well, building plot and mood around them expertly.
Our narrator, Bill, is a junior reporter at the local paper of a depressed rust belt town, and the heir to a long-bankrupt manufacturing firm that was once the town’s major employer. He writes rambling philosophical articles that read almost like beat poetry, grasping at what has happened – what is happening – to his town. They don’t get published.
The Keepers of Truth is hard to classify. It’s somewhere between a noirish thriller, a gothic mystery and a New Yorker long read about structural decline. I think in the end it’s primarily a portrait of youth: a portrayal of a privileged young man trying to make sense of the calamity that has befallen his town.
His youth is certainly a big part of his character, for above all he is confused, still trying to make sense of the world. He has been to college, but isn’t especially clever in an analytical sense. What he has is feeling. But sensitivity is no good for understanding the impersonal economic forces making a plaything of his town. And so he stews and he writes, muddling together a number of big themes: worklessness, deskilling, consumerism, globalisation.
He is jaded but not yet cynical. He cares about his town, and desperately seeks to understand its calamity. Yet he has a rich boy’s horror of the poor, and his motivations are never completely uncontaminated by noblesse oblige. He is aghast at the poverty of his town, yet he disdains the consumerist impulse seen whenever a few dollars are available. His recollection of the boom years cast hard work and frugal living in a romantic light.
And behind all his big ideas, he is simply trying to figure out how to live well himself. Again, his words aren’t adequate to the job. Living well is a manual, earthy skill, learned over the generations, difficult to codify. As ways of life change, we are alienated from the preceding generations, and the flow of wisdom is obstructed.
Because Bill is on to something. Worklessness and consumerism do – albeit in opposite ways – both uproot us from our communities. And so our poverty isn’t just about money; it’s deeper than that. It’s about lost community and lost self-respect. It goes all the way down to the meaning in our lives.
Being stuck inside the brooding head of a hero who is not unusually good, clever or decisive is occasionally frustrating. But things are kept moving by the whodunit plot. And in the end I think his youth is a clever device to make a wider point. Economic forces *are* bewildering. And more, because of the alienation they deliver from our communities and from the wisdom of preceding generations, we are all in the position of the young, trying to work things out. TKOT explored these themes well, building plot and mood around them expertly.
December 3, 2020
This is a book I picked up many years ago and tried reading a few times and stalled. I find the writing a “little deep” in authors telling of it, however once I got past that on this reading it is a good story. Satisfying ending, but again last chapter is the deep thoughts of the destruction of industrialism. Characters were defined well and kept simple in their patterns.
September 3, 2025
I went into this book blind, as it was a book club read, but I ended up loving it. This book follows a man named Bill who works at a small newspaper in a small American town with dwindling opportunities. A high-profile murder mystery case happens, and Bill and his two colleagues follow the story at their news publication. The murder victim is the father of Ronny Lawton, a local Denny's worker. Only the finger of Ronny's father was found, and the talk of the town is that Ronny was the one who murdered his father and hid the body. Bill finds himself at the center of this case, looking for answers, and he soon finds himself at the heart of the story.
But beyond the murder plot itself, this book is a social commentary about life in a small American town that has been affected by industrial change and a lack of capitalist opportunity. I enjoyed the author's writing style and how he is able to capture irony in his writing, while also capturing the trauma of a changing town and the events that its locals have experienced. Bill comes off as simple, but his simple-minded demeanor comes from the trauma he experienced over his father's suicide many years before the events of this story. He has many rants and outbursts that are scattered throughout this book where he's speaking about relevant topics that affect society today. This is impressive considering the book is now 25 years old (published in 2000).
Michael Collins is an Irish-born writer, but he seems to have a deep understanding of life in America, or at least in small American towns. I enjoyed his writing style so much that I would read more of his books.
But beyond the murder plot itself, this book is a social commentary about life in a small American town that has been affected by industrial change and a lack of capitalist opportunity. I enjoyed the author's writing style and how he is able to capture irony in his writing, while also capturing the trauma of a changing town and the events that its locals have experienced. Bill comes off as simple, but his simple-minded demeanor comes from the trauma he experienced over his father's suicide many years before the events of this story. He has many rants and outbursts that are scattered throughout this book where he's speaking about relevant topics that affect society today. This is impressive considering the book is now 25 years old (published in 2000).
Michael Collins is an Irish-born writer, but he seems to have a deep understanding of life in America, or at least in small American towns. I enjoyed his writing style so much that I would read more of his books.
August 15, 2012
Another beauty of a book by Michael Collins who has a knack of capturing he collapse of American small town life and the position of an outsider. It works with some great humour and a very cinematic feel. The rights have been brought up, and i for one would go and see it.
The truth is a small town newspaper - in decline, along with the town, as the manufacturing ceases and the only thing they have to report on are the high school sports and the legal notices.
Bill works there and is an amateur philospher who's clever brain is stunted. He amusing himself with the creation of the tabloid headlines.
Bill makes a wonderful narrator as his intelligence works against him at all levels, his colleagues at work arent interesting and there is a great section towards the end where he starts philopsising about life with a stripper - who's only reply is to offer to suck his cock for $20. He takes her up on this and continues his debate - exceptionally laugh out loud stuff.
The story - Ronnie Lawton - bodybuider and down and out is accused of killing his father - who has disappered and only has a fingertip at the house remaining. Everyone thinks he did it.
This is a scoop for the paper and there is soem fine interplay with a rival tv presented about who gets the exclusive. Further investigations reveal an ex wife of Ronnie - now holed up in a mobile home with a new lover and a baby.
Bill thinks she may be involved as she wants the family house and investigations lead to an affair driven by her.
Bills backstory is interesting - from a dynasty that has collapsed and a father that killed himself - bill has spent time in mental instititions and failed his logic exams that would back up his philosophical musings.
Ronnie revels in his notoriety and becomes a hit with school kids everywhere - it transpires because he as a 10" cock.
All interesting and building to the climax - Ronnie takes his family hostage and cue more laughs as his demands revolve around fast food.
No writer seems to catch the break down of american values quite like Collins. And this book is a classic - both a comedy, a mystery and a social exploration of amercian values.
Another top 10 for 2006
The truth is a small town newspaper - in decline, along with the town, as the manufacturing ceases and the only thing they have to report on are the high school sports and the legal notices.
Bill works there and is an amateur philospher who's clever brain is stunted. He amusing himself with the creation of the tabloid headlines.
Bill makes a wonderful narrator as his intelligence works against him at all levels, his colleagues at work arent interesting and there is a great section towards the end where he starts philopsising about life with a stripper - who's only reply is to offer to suck his cock for $20. He takes her up on this and continues his debate - exceptionally laugh out loud stuff.
The story - Ronnie Lawton - bodybuider and down and out is accused of killing his father - who has disappered and only has a fingertip at the house remaining. Everyone thinks he did it.
This is a scoop for the paper and there is soem fine interplay with a rival tv presented about who gets the exclusive. Further investigations reveal an ex wife of Ronnie - now holed up in a mobile home with a new lover and a baby.
Bill thinks she may be involved as she wants the family house and investigations lead to an affair driven by her.
Bills backstory is interesting - from a dynasty that has collapsed and a father that killed himself - bill has spent time in mental instititions and failed his logic exams that would back up his philosophical musings.
Ronnie revels in his notoriety and becomes a hit with school kids everywhere - it transpires because he as a 10" cock.
All interesting and building to the climax - Ronnie takes his family hostage and cue more laughs as his demands revolve around fast food.
No writer seems to catch the break down of american values quite like Collins. And this book is a classic - both a comedy, a mystery and a social exploration of amercian values.
Another top 10 for 2006
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 13, 2018
A Read to Relish and Remember!
This was a happy find, a real Kindle cutie. So much merits a mention, not least the coruscating fizz of prose effects Collins deploys to such remarkable effect virtually everywhere. Similes and metaphors wow the reader: 'Two dark patches of sweat emanated from his armpits like phantom grey wings' or this, of Linda Carter: 'She was innuendo made flesh'. One more: 'I sat there in the flickering light of the candle and tasted the slow burn of irony and his bourbon in my throat.' Irony is Collins's speciality; the very title underwrites its importance. 'the keepers of truth' are in lower case, wryly understated for, as the purposely plodding plotline reveals, truth can only be 'kept' if it can been found in the first place. Not even the FBI and their sleuth-spooks can get to the bottom of things: who decapitated Ronny Lawton's father? Nobody knows; everybody suspects. The whole novel is held in stalemate, what Collins calls post-industrial Middle America's 'psychosis of dismemberment, deregulation, downsizing, cutting things.' The reader gets drawn in to 'the vacuous agitation of a murdered man' through a local newspaper struggling to keep afloat in the dry, hot summer of a Plains town, where 'you felt the burden of people about to scream.' Where action is missing, Collins fills the gap with slick verbal dexterity, especially with human faces: 'the angular gawk' of a man's chin gives him a predatory look, 'the eyes roaming around things.' Underlying it all is the parodic eyeline of the narrator, the bright and bitter Bill, with his own benighted past, overwhelmed by his sense of inadequacy as a gumshoe journalist. Beautifully etched comic touches show Collins to be the master of bathos and irony. You can scoop up handfuls of his brilliance at every turn and relish this book through the long, languorous sentences and arid August days it describes. Get out the bourbon and enjoy.
What Michael Collins describes as 'a gallery of defunct industrialism', is set in the post-war tundra of a dying American city, where the decapitation of an old man is 'part of our psychosis of dismemberment, deregulation, downsizing, cutting things.'
This was a happy find, a real Kindle cutie. So much merits a mention, not least the coruscating fizz of prose effects Collins deploys to such remarkable effect virtually everywhere. Similes and metaphors wow the reader: 'Two dark patches of sweat emanated from his armpits like phantom grey wings' or this, of Linda Carter: 'She was innuendo made flesh'. One more: 'I sat there in the flickering light of the candle and tasted the slow burn of irony and his bourbon in my throat.' Irony is Collins's speciality; the very title underwrites its importance. 'the keepers of truth' are in lower case, wryly understated for, as the purposely plodding plotline reveals, truth can only be 'kept' if it can been found in the first place. Not even the FBI and their sleuth-spooks can get to the bottom of things: who decapitated Ronny Lawton's father? Nobody knows; everybody suspects. The whole novel is held in stalemate, what Collins calls post-industrial Middle America's 'psychosis of dismemberment, deregulation, downsizing, cutting things.' The reader gets drawn in to 'the vacuous agitation of a murdered man' through a local newspaper struggling to keep afloat in the dry, hot summer of a Plains town, where 'you felt the burden of people about to scream.' Where action is missing, Collins fills the gap with slick verbal dexterity, especially with human faces: 'the angular gawk' of a man's chin gives him a predatory look, 'the eyes roaming around things.' Underlying it all is the parodic eyeline of the narrator, the bright and bitter Bill, with his own benighted past, overwhelmed by his sense of inadequacy as a gumshoe journalist. Beautifully etched comic touches show Collins to be the master of bathos and irony. You can scoop up handfuls of his brilliance at every turn and relish this book through the long, languorous sentences and arid August days it describes. Get out the bourbon and enjoy.
What Michael Collins describes as 'a gallery of defunct industrialism', is set in the post-war tundra of a dying American city, where the decapitation of an old man is 'part of our psychosis of dismemberment, deregulation, downsizing, cutting things.'
April 11, 2018
Despite all the acclaim this book has received, and all the rave reviews, I have to give it only one star. Lauguage, well yes it's highly accomplished, and the post-industrial landscape of the US is evoked with passion. Yet I found myself deeply uncomfortable with the anger, bitterness and cynicism Collins vomits up. In particular there is a deep strain of sexual polarisation and mysoginy running through the story. Men are, well just men of various maladjusted types while women are either viscous desirable whores or terrifying matrons who secretly manipulate the destiny of the poor male suckers. I got increasingly annoyed about the nametag "Ronny's estranged" applied consistently to the abused ex wife of the cartoon like bad guy who becomes the focus of community hatred. Ok, it is a literary device, but the viscious depersonalisation it offers is vile. When the erstwhile hero eventually escapes industrial squalor with the nameless whore and her child, and there is a queazy whiff of knight errant there, the rant goes with a sentimental evokation of natural man in the wilderness... Please! An accomplished but deeply flawed book.
May 23, 2011
The Keepers of Truth by Michael Collins is one of those books so full of the authors own opinions that it should have a brain-washing warning sticker on it to warn people who’s brains are easily washed. Anyway, the story is interesting if not all that original. It is a murder mystery, but the way it is written and presented to us is what made this a five star read for me. Knowing the author helped make this even more fun as well. As I said, I can see this book angering some hard-core Americans. You know the ones I mean: people who take pride in their town and country no matter what. People like that probably wouldn’t read a book like this which talks a lot about the decaying American Dream and so on and so on. The only scene that angered me was when the story’s antagonist, Ronny Lawton, throws a bag of perfectly good Burger King food out the window in his hostage situation.
October 7, 2011
Presented as a crime novel, but much more then that. A murder is the main subject but what Collins gives us is a novel about failed lives, society going downhill. While reading, the matter whodunit wasn't relevant anymore. The book I read before this one was The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, it had a lot in common and that's a big compliment. Brilliant, will definitely read more of Collins' books.
May 30, 2012
A philosophical sort of murder mystery. . . It's assumed by all that the son killed the father, but it's neither proved nor confessed, but. . . well, it's still a mystery and still full of the angst of life in a 'dying industrial town' (from the inside flap), and I still liked it and it was still well-written, but I just didn't love it. Sorta' recommended, not for a light summer read, but definitely NOT if you're already depressed.
January 11, 2017
A haunting book on the slow degradation of a small industrial town in the USA. The narrator, a reporter for the crumbling local newspaper, gets sucked into the case of a local ruffians missing father (presumed killed) and the case becomes an analogy of the erosion of human values and the slow death of character in the town. Collins' writing style adds the necessary pathos to the narration and captivates.
March 20, 2016
Barely 3 stars for this one. After reading The Resurrectionists I got a bit besotted with Michael Collins, but none since has had the same effect on me as that book did. However this one did improve as it went along, with signs of his interest in American culture and in particular the culture of poor, uneducated people who were so well showcased in the later book.
December 20, 2017
Hmmm
Nicely written book, with great characters and atmospheric descriptions of place. My issue was that I had no empathy with the main character, and found some of his actions unbelievable almost to the point where I gave up. But I persevered and glad I did. Some passages I skimmed; they just went on too long.
Nicely written book, with great characters and atmospheric descriptions of place. My issue was that I had no empathy with the main character, and found some of his actions unbelievable almost to the point where I gave up. But I persevered and glad I did. Some passages I skimmed; they just went on too long.
January 11, 2018
Un'america malata, ed incapace di reagire al fallimento del sogno americano. Anime perse mi era piaciuto, ma qui c'è troppa carne al fuoco, mal digerita. Non sa disegnare le persone oltre lo schizzo. E' un canto di orrore sull'America inizio anni '90 ma gli manca la vena artistica.
Il plot c'è, i personaggi anche. Ma non basta saper scrivere. Bisogna anche farlo bene.
Il plot c'è, i personaggi anche. Ma non basta saper scrivere. Bisogna anche farlo bene.
May 24, 2010
Good writing, compelling plot; depressing. Not hilariously depressing, like Palahniuk, but just plain depressing, like DeLillo or Ellis (only the plot's more interesting). I liked it in spite of myself because it's true.
March 30, 2013
Very ambitious, if a bit overwrought. Eminently readable . Crazed depiction of heartland going to hell. Given the matrix plot premise of a thriller of sorts, refreshingly free from else predictable must-have duking it out scenes. Likely reflects on author's cis-Atlantic roots.
June 15, 2014
This book was the kind of book that I kept saying to myself, why am I reading this??, but couldn't quit. The writing was very good. It was just a little different for me to read. Good buy at 50 cents.
June 29, 2007
though it was shortlisted for the Booker in 2000, I wasn't that gripped...
January 17, 2011
I just loved this story. Amazing.
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