The Resurrectionists
by Michael Collins
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael CollinsEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-03
ISBN: 0143038222
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of The Resurrectionists
Book Review: Should have won the Booker
Summary: 5 Stars
Superb. Found it hard to put down. All the characters are flawed humans, all trying the best they can to made a life for themselves. Michael Collins' plot is well constructed and weaves to a very satisfying conclusion.
Summary of The Resurrectionists
The solitude of the Upper Michigan Peninsula is Michael Collins?s heart of darkness in this compelling story of the unquiet dead. Frank Cassidy?s parents burned to death almost thirty years ago; now his uncle is dead?shot by a mysterious stranger who lies in a coma in the local hospital. Frank, working menial jobs to support his unfaithful wife and two children, heads north in a series of stolen cars to dispute his cousin?s claim to the family farm. Once there, Frank wants answers, but realizes that what he is searching for?and the promise of the American Dream?is quickly receding from his grasp. Brilliant and unsettling, The Resurrectionists is an ironic yet chilling display of American culture in the seventies and a compassionate novel about a man struggling to overcome the crimes and burdens of his past.The Resurrectionists, Irish writer Michael Collins's follow-up to his Booker Prize-nominated The Keepers of Truth, is a thriller that bubbles up from the tawdry stew of its central character's fringe existence. Frank Cassidy is a clinically depressed, all-but-impoverished New Jersey man who receives word that his uncle Ward (who raised Frank after his parents were killed) has died. Frank's reaction is telling: perhaps there's a piece of Ward's Michigan farm that has been willed to him. Traveling in a succession of stolen cars, Frank gets to his snowbound destination and finds that Ward's death is shrouded in mystery; worse, Frank is implicated in the crime.
Collins has written a significantly ambitious work here that wants to be more literary than its genre conventions typically require. This makes for a novel with many memorable elements but a blurry reading experience overall. Still, one has to appreciate the author's insight. Strategically set in 1979, the story's emotional landscape is profoundly provocative and disturbing, a photo album of sociocultural exhaustion. The characters are burdened by sundry fallout effects of Vietnam, Watergate, recession, and mutable family structures. Cumulative dread and regression fill the air. In such a setting, a fellow like Frank, somewhere between ordinary life and the netherworld of crime, between failure and redemption, is a consummate protagonist. --Tom Keogh
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