Product Description

Part 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 fortresslike Peck Clinic, whose doctors claim to have "resurrected" two patients who were lost in the void. What Sweeney comes to realize, though, is that the real cure to his son's 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, Sweeney's search for answers leads to sinister back alleys, brutal dead ends, and terrifying rabbit holes of darkness and mystery.

O'Connell 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29473 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
In four previous novels, Jack O'Connell has established a reputation as an author of literary-suspense and thriller-noir. This time, with The Resurrectionist, he has consolidated and surpassed that reputation with a story so mesmerizing that the reader can't figure out what is real and what's imaginary, what is threatening and what is make-believe.

The wraparound story in this multi-layered tale is about Sweeney, a pharmacist by trade, and his young son, Danny, the victim of an accident that has left him in a coma. Sweeney moves Danny to a hospital specializing in comatose patients, the Peck Clinic. The Doctors Peck, father and daughter, claim to have "resurrected" two patients from the void of deep coma. Prior to Danny's accident, he and Sweeney had been reading a fantasy series of comic books called Limbo, and it is around these stories that things get really interesting. There are circus freaks, weird stunts, an apparent "resurrection" or two, a long odyssey in search of a lost father--any number of plot lines and characters overlapping between what is real in Sweeney's life, and what might be a dream or drugged reality, and what is storybook fiction.

Alongside all the strange and convoluted events of the novel there is a compelling meditation on the power of story, the meaning of madness and sanity and the very nature of consciousness. This is more than fantasy; it is a masterful and wholly imaginative invention based on the sad reality of a father and son trying to find one another again. --Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly
Two worlds wrapped tight in gloomy gothic trappings vie for dominance in this engrossing, elaborately staged exploration of consciousness from O'Connell (The Skin Palace). Sweeney, an Ohio pharmacist, brings his comatose son, Danny, to the Peck Clinic, "a sandstone monster on fifty acres of private land near Quinsigamond's western border." Danny is all Sweeney lives for; he even studies the comic book Limbo, featuring a troupe of circus freaks led by the visionary Chick the chicken boy, for what his son may have imagined when his brain functioned normally. Like Stephen King in Richard Bachman mode, O'Connell digs for darkness as Chick and his companions, who inhabit the fantasy realm of Gehenna, encounter Dr. Lazarus Cole, "The Resurrectionist" (stoned to death only to walk again) and dread the inevitable showdown with their nemesis, "the mad doctor called Fliess," in his "enormous laboratory castle, the Black Iron Clinic." Meanwhile, in the real world, cultists kidnap Sweeney in hopes of using fluid from Danny's brain to transport them all to Gehenna. This strange brew is sure to enhance O'Connell's growing cult status. (Apr.)
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From The Washington Post

You would think that a conversation between a mad scientist and his prized newt might not stand out in a novel dominated by sociopathic bikers, a father's unbearable guilt and a sad quest by a group of sideshow freaks.

You would be wrong. In the strange crucible of reality and imagination that is The Resurrectionist, by Jack O'Connell, their one-sided exchange exemplifies the author's sheer chutzpah: from its meticulous attention to detail to the parallels between Dr. Peck, founder of a coma clinic, and his blue-spotted newt, Rene. "Both [man and animal] were naturally nocturnal," O'Connell writes. "Both were deaf to conventional wisdom. Both were regenerators, magicians who could raise up that which had been lost or damaged or cut away." Despite its static qualities, the scene is a classic of recent modern fiction, revealing worlds about a pivotal character.

The Resurrectionist is full of such surprising scenes. An emotionally damaged man named Sweeney has brought his son, Danny, to Dr. Peck's clinic. He's trying to get away from Cleveland, the site of the accident that led to Danny's condition and killed Sweeney's wife. Though the boy is comatose, we see his dreams about a band of freaks from his favorite comic book, "Limbo." O'Connell threads these freaks' purgatorial adventures throughout the novel. Meanwhile, in the real world, a biker gang led by a thuggish visionary intends to enter the comic book world of "Limbo" by means that might either harm or save Danny. When Sweeney discovers that Dr. Peck has been subjecting his coma patients to horrible experiments, he must navigate through this funhouse landscape to try to save his son and himself.

Much of this unholy amalgamation, set in the same contemporary "rust-belt" city as O'Connell's prior novels, shouldn't work -- and some of it doesn't. At times the layering of levels and symbolism doesn't quite cohere. And faced with an overabundance of plot complications, O'Connell allows certain characters to disappear for too long.

Yet these flaws seem minor in the context of the novel -- nullified by brilliant writing, original concepts, emotional resonance and O'Connell's fearlessness. I've read The Resurrectionist twice now, and both times it came as something of a revelation. It seems odd we should care so much about the freaks, for example, when we know they're merely characters in a boy's comic book. Nor should the dream-life of a coma patient be so resonant, and yet it is.

The newt may be mute, but it speaks volumes.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.