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    The Resurrectionist
    The Resurrectionist
    The Resurrectionist
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Resurrectionist

    Written by Jack O'Connell

    Narrated by Holter Graham

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Gritty noir fiction, mind-bending fantasy, and medical thriller combine in a new novel by an author dubbed the "cyberpunk Dashiell Hammett."

    Sweeney is a druggist by trade; Danny, his son, is in a persistent coma, the victim of an accident. Hoping for a miracle, they have come to the Peck Clinic, a fortresslike haven in a post-industrial city overrun by gangs. Doctors there claim to have resurrected two patients who were similarly lost in the void.

    Gradually, Sweeney realizes that the cure for his son's condition may lie in "Limbo," a fantasy comicbook world into which Danny had been drawn at the time of his accident. Plunged into the intrigue that surrounds the clinic, Sweeney searches for answers and instead finds sinister back alleys, brutal dead ends, and terrifying rabbit holes of mystery.

    Full of puzzles and surprises, The Resurrectionist is a surreal, gothic meditation on identity, the nature of consciousness, the power of stories, love, mad scientists, circus freaks, and ultimately forgiveness-both giving and receiving.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateApr 8, 2008
    ISBN9781598875980
    The Resurrectionist
    Author

    Jack O'Connell

    Jack O’Connell (b. 1959) is the author of five critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling crime novels. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, O’Connell’s earliest reading was the dime novel paperbacks and pulp fiction sold in his corner drug store, whose hard-boiled attitude he carried over to his own writing. He has cited his hometown’s bleak, crumbling infrastructure as an influence on Quinsigamond, the fictional city where his first four novels were set, and whose decaying industrial landscape served as a backdrop for strange thrillers which earned O’Connell the nickname of a “cyberpunk Dashiell Hammett.” O’Connell’s most recent novel was The Resurrectionist (2008). A former student at Worcester’s College of the Holy Cross, he now teaches there, not far from where he and his family live just outside of his hometown.

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    Reviews for The Resurrectionist

    3/5

    98 ratings18 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a very strange story and a hard one to summarize. There are many different threads to the story but on the surface there are two main plots. Sweeney has moved to a small town and placed his comatose son in the care of the specialized clinic. He has taken the job as the night shift pharmacist and lives in an apartment in the basement. Very quickly he realizes that there is something going on at the clinic and on his very first day in town he has an unpleasant run-in with the local biker gang, the Abominations.Also, running through the book is a story within a story which takes the form of a fantastical comic book plot. The story of a troupe of misfit circus freaks who travel across their Old World landscape seeking a home. They follow the chicken boy who goes into trances that reveal the way they should travel. Ultimately each of these plots, Sweeney and his son, the clinic, the mad doctor, the biker gang and the circus freaks will meet in an explosive ending. This is an outlandish story but underneath the layers the themes of faith and forgiveness are simple enough.I was really taken with this book. The first few pages had me hooked and I was drawn into the strange and surreal world. The whole book, even the "real world" portions had a comic-book feel to it and reality became suspended. There are a lot of characters, a lot of plots and downright weirdness that will make this book not for everyone and probably even not for most people. While the book isn't overly violent, (though there are a few parts) I would compare this to a stylized Quentin Tarantino movie or the dark, weirdness of a Tim Burton movie. If that type of plot appeals to you, then this book will be sure to satisfy.
    • 3/5
      The Resurrectionist is probably not a book I would normally have bought on my own, though the title (which I love) would have intrigued me enough to pick it off the shelf and give it a good gander. Fast paced, part mystery, part circus freak show, part outlaw biker-gang escapades, part comatose child and his insomniac, pharmacist father, part creepy coma clinic, part dark fantasy, and part Limbo comic book adventure (though the comic book part of it, come to find out, incorporates all of the above parts listed), The Resurrectionist, simply put, is hard to classify. Which is probably a good thing. It’s not pure mystery, not pure fantasy, not pure hardboiled noir, not pure tragedy, not pure father/son contemporary drama, though it is, nonetheless, pure fun. The Resurrectionist is a dream world adventure into and out of a parallel universe. When the two universes collide, broken, despairing lives become whole. I highly recommend it.
    • 3/5
      Warning: may cause disorientation, dizziness, and paranoia.I guess if I went into this book expecting Kafka, Eco or Chabon I was setting myself up to be disappointed. A good gothic effort, O'Connell took a large risk writing a medical thriller that attempts to be more interesting than a simple Robin Cook medical whodunit. If 5 stars were Kafka, 4 stars were Pynchon/Chabon/Eco, I'd give this book 3.5 stars for aim and execution. Not perfect or timeless, but definitely working for a longer tail than most easy to categorize novels out there. I'd rather read a novel that aims for the back of the moon, than a pot boiler that settles for easy escapism.O'Connell's work deserves more attention, so I guess that puts him in good company.
    • 4/5
      This is the weirdest of the 5 (so far) books in the Quinsigamond series and that is saying something. Sweeney is a man on the edge. Unable to cope with the guilt of not being there when his son Danny's accident occurred he will do anything to try and restore Danny from the coma he's been in ever since. That's all he lives for so when an opening appears at the renowned Peck clinic in Quinsigamond, Sweeney applies and is granted a place for his son amongst the patients. He is also taken on as a pharmacist within the clinic itself. Events don't transpire exactly as he's hoped and soon find Sweeney enmeshed with a biker group that's also made it's way to the rust-belt factory town who have plans of their own for Sweeney and Danny. Which way will Sweeney eventually lean? Who can he trust to do the right thing for his son?Interjected within this story we are also treated to excerpts from Danny's favourite comic book, Limbo, which is about a troupe of freaks forced to flee from their circus home and follow the mystical instructions given to the chicken boy when he enters into Limbo while in the grip of a seizure. While fleeing a mad doctor they're trying to re-unite chicken boy with his long lost father believed to be on the far shores of Gehenna. I did mention that this book was weird, right?The two narratives eventually join up to form a whole that speculates on consciousness and where we go when that is lost and the feelings of guilt and rage of those that get left behind. It also takes a look at how stories can have an effect on people's lives and not always for the betterment thereof. This book will not be everyone's cup of tea, the characters in the main are mostly unlikeable, there's quite a mishmash of elements in the storytelling linking gothic and noirish mystery that will not sit well with everyone. But for me, because I've enjoyed the previous work of the author it seems to have built nicely to this. I wouldn't recommend this as a first experience of his work though but I found it quite compelling.
    • 3/5
      This is a strange story that weaves together two plot lines: a father brings his comatose son to a mysterious clinic in a truly horrendous Rust Belt town in the hope of a cure, while a band of circus freaks try to escape their nemesis in a comic-book adventure that the boy used to love. Unfortunately, the story never quite gelled for me into a world I could fully believe in or characters I could fully commit to.
    • 3/5
      While I found the book well written, I had problems with it. I was never convinced by the Goldfaden Freaks as a comic series for children, or that parents would let their children become involved in reading such a thing. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I just couldn't buy the premise. Also, it was huge mistake for me to read this on a personal level because my husband was in a coma for a protracted period (yes, he woke up, thanks, he's fine) so I spent a lot of time with him and other coma patients, and so much of what was in here struck me as pure bullshit. Interesting, and perhaps how a writer might imagine it to be, but it didn't resonate for at least one person who's actually been through it.
    • 3/5
      I classified this as quirky fiction and that could not be more accurate. So many oddball characters and a young boy in a coma who is the most "normal" of all of them. This book crosses over from medical mystery, to comic book, to thriller. Sweeney's son Danny is in a coma from an "accident" and Sweeny is on a quest to have him "resurrected." He takes Danny to the Peck Clinic and things grow more terrifying and bizarre. Filled with a cast of characters from a gang of Abominations to a traveling pack of circus freaks. I found this book hard to put down for some reason, it wasn't a book I would have thought I would have liked, but it works. If you enjoy storytelling that is a mix of several quirky genres then try this book.
    • 3/5
      Don't let this book's slim appearance fool you: its contents are meaty.Sweeney, a pharmacist, brings his comatose son Danny to the strange and surreal Peck Clinic in hopes of bringing the boy back from "the void." What follows is a deft and dreamy web of intrigue and fantasy, with compelling (though not always likable) characters, and several spooky, mysterious twists and turns.O'Connell raises questions of what it means to be concious, and even, alive. The writing is strong, though not always easy to follow, and that was the ultimate disappointment. I liked this book, but felt it could have been so much more.
    • 4/5
      There's a lot happening in this book. Deeply personal musings on consciousness, death, and dealing with the sickness of a loved on collide with a surreal and testosterone-fueled wake up call for that man who finds himself floating while life happens to him. The tone is decidedly sardonic, but recalls a pulp-noir nihilism that is attractive not because of its danger, but because of its release. The descriptions given of the hospital and the working environment therein boast an epic, fantastical nature yet echo the darkening mood the novel creates over its course.There's action and deep heartache within. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      The Resurrectionist is a deeply involved exploration about how stories can effect readers. Split between the retelling of a comic book series, the tale of a band of addicted outcasts, and the story of a man who has lost his son to a coma and a wife to suicide, this novel brings into the light those people who live on the edge, with little to connect them to the world at large.It is a unique novel, to say the least, and I have to admit that I'm not sure I got all of the novel with one read. Perhaps in a reread, I would be able to see all of the connections, symbolism and thematic movements that O'Connell was making, but I don't think that's in the future for me. It does not feel like a novel that I would necessarily want to pick up again, as much as I might have become addicted to reading it the first time around.There were pages I felt myself lost in the story of Sweeney, the Abominations, and the Limbo-verse, and that is high praise. However, there were too many pages where I just felt lost. I loved the book and the ideas of what role stories play in our lives, but there was almost too much going on in this book for me. The Abominations were necessary to the story of Danny and Sweeney, but I think their story either needed to be expanded or diminished. If the story had been expanded, I wouldn't have seen them as a mystery, which I think was necessary for the flow of the novel. The themes of fatherhood, a son's love, the isolation a family can create for itself, and escapism are persistant throughout the work, and they mesh together well when thinking of the carnies' bonds with each other. In the story of Sweeney and Danny, the themes are heartwrenching. For the group of roving outcasts, the themes are not as strong, perhaps because this story is the weakest in my opinion.
    • 3/5
      The Resurrectionist by Jack O’Connell is an unsettling story of consciousness and coma - of limbo, the place between life and death. Or the gap between our conscious world and another alternate consciousness of which we can only speculate but never visit. O’Connell has us visit.Sweeney’s son Danny has fallen into a coma, and after futile results from the original diagnosis, he moves him to the renowned Peck clinic, operated by the mysterious Peck’s- father and daughter. O’Connell tells his story on two parallel levels: One in the ‘real’ world and one in a comic book world. But really, the story lies in that edgy intersection of the two.Sweeney is determined to bring his son back to consciousness, and is torn between his suspicions of the intent of the Peck’s and of a nomadic biker gang that has other ideas for Danny and his father. Danny had been enamored of a gothic comic book titled Limbo. O’Connell interweaves Danny’s story with that of the comic book, the story of another nomadic group - sideshow circus freaks who are on their own quest as imagined by their visionary leader, Chicken Boy who falls into trace like states and receives messages from his father.The hook is that Danny is literally “lost in Limbo“, having fallen into a deep coma following his reading of the climax of the Limbo comic series. The road leading t what hsi father hopes is Danny’s recovery and his own redemption is the subject of O’Connell’s dark fantasy.
    • 4/5
      This story, concerning a man named Sweeney and his comatose son Danny, is told alongside and interwoven with a comic book named Limbo. O'Connell is a masterful storyteller, and provides humanity and hallucinagenic fantasy in equal turns. The themes of grief and forgiveness were particularlly touching to me. A very fine and very weird read.
    • 3/5
      Warning: may cause disorientation, dizziness, and paranoia.I guess if I went into this book expecting Kafka, Eco or Chabon I was setting myself up to be disappointed. A good gothic effort, O'Connell took a large risk writing a medical thriller that attempts to be more interesting than a simple Robin Cook medical whodunit. If 5 stars were Kafka, 4 stars were Pynchon/Chabon/Eco, I'd give this book 3.5 stars for aim and execution. Not perfect or timeless, but definitely working for a longer tail than most easy to categorize novels out there. I'd rather read a novel that aims for the back of the moon, than a pot boiler that settles for easy escapism.O'Connell's work deserves more attention, so I guess that puts him in good company.
    • 4/5
      I think there's a really good novel to be had in the Resurrectionist, but the author isn't quite able to realize it's potential. The plot's of both of the books narratives are fascinating. The prose is excellent and I found myself hooked instantly. And the ultimate moral of the story is one I whole heartedly endorse.Now here's the but, or buts actually. First and foremost is that O'Connell doesn't quite manage to sell the world in which the story occurs. It's clear that the two separate stories our linked in some way, but this idea never seems fully realized. Furthermore the antagonistic atmosphere of the lead protagonist's story, that the reader is meant to interpret as being reality, comes off as such a strange place in its own right that it feels like fantasy, and this takes the reader out of the story.I also hated that the author O'Connell had to explicitly state that not all stories require endings. This is true, but making it that apparent just makes the non-ending feel like it was merely an attempt to cover for an unintended absence. And furthermore, while endings may not be required, resolutions are, and that's a bit lacking here as well.While that all sounds harsh, I actually do recommend reading the book, just with some reservations is all. It's still the first novel in a long time in which the very first thing I did upon finishing it was look up what else the author had written.
    • 3/5
      This is a curious book about a father's trying to cope with the comatose state of his only son. O'Connell alternates the telling of Sweeney's trying to find a cure for his son, Danny, with the tale of group of persecuted circus freaks in a fantasy comic book series, LIMBO, that had been Danny's favorite. Sweeney, a pharmacist, has taken a job at a clinic that offers the hope of awakening his son. But the clinic is headed by an obsessive scientist, and the town has been invaded by a crazed motorcycle gang led by Nadia, a nurse, who is also working at the clinic. O'Connell seems to be exploring the questions of reality and illusion, identity and personality, and love and forgiveness, with his parallel stories -- but I'm not sure it all really works out. Certainly, more questions are posed than are answered. One thing that the story of LIMBO certainly lacked was the illustrative aspect -- if LIMBO is indeed a comicbook fantasy world, we need to see the drawings (I did read an ARC -- perhaps they will be included in the published book).
    • 1/5
      The first word that comes to mind after reading this book is…weird. I normally would not have purchased this book and after reading it, am very surprised that I was selected to read and review it. The Resurrectionist is about a father, Sweeney, and his comatose son, Danny. Sweeney is committed to bringing his son “back” from the coma and therefore, has left his previous life and traveled to the Peck Clinic, where he has taken a job as a night pharmacist. This story is interwoven with the comic book, “Limbo”, which is the story of a band of circus freaks that are seeking refuge. Prior to the coma, Danny and Sweeney read this comic book and Danny seemed to have a kind of obsession with it and which ultimately may have been the cause of the coma. Sweeney goes to great lengths to “cure” his son, including joining a motorcycle gang that steals the brain fluid of comatose patients and injects it in order to go to “Limbo.”Overall, I was disappointed by this book as the story never came full circle. I never understood the relationship between the numerous characters and found myself getting confused and having to revisit the introduction of them in order to understand what was happening. In addition, many of the story’s plot lines were left unresolved and the transitions between there were choppy. In the end, I was just glad that this one was over.
    • 3/5
      The Resurrectionist is probably not a book I would normally have bought on my own, though the title (which I love) would have intrigued me enough to pick it off the shelf and give it a good gander. Fast paced, part mystery, part circus freak show, part outlaw biker-gang escapades, part comatose child and his insomniac, pharmacist father, part creepy coma clinic, part dark fantasy, and part Limbo comic book adventure (though the comic book part of it, come to find out, incorporates all of the above parts listed), The Resurrectionist, simply put, is hard to classify. Which is probably a good thing. It’s not pure mystery, not pure fantasy, not pure hardboiled noir, not pure tragedy, not pure father/son contemporary drama, though it is, nonetheless, pure fun. The Resurrectionist is a dream world adventure into and out of a parallel universe. When the two universes collide, broken, despairing lives become whole. I highly recommend it.
    • 2/5
      Ultimately this book has been engineered to be a good, quick read and little more: there is no there there. I found it gripping and yet a great disappointment. So many plot elements are left unresolved, story threads abandoned and characters undeveloped (including the fate of the title character).The story of Sweeney, a pushed-to-the-edge pharmacist and his comatose son Danny and their journey to The Peck Clinic for better care and the possibility of an awakening is woven in with the comic book tale of Limbo and the quest of a band of circus freaks to find safe haven. An additional thread follows the Abominations, a biker gang with an agenda. Violence is graphic and yet improbable. Pirates are vicious but inept; bikers, stereotypically dumb as a post (unless they’re introspective chemists or moody leaders) and freaks are torn from the sideshow posters that we all grew up with. The twilight zone of the Peck Clinic feels as though it exists in a perpetual late night shift. For such a world famous institution, they felt woefully understaffed.The world of Limbo as described in the book is nothing a responsible father would allow his six year old son to become obsessed over, much less paper his life with. I kept thinking the world of Chicken Little would be a more probable (and frightening) story for a young child than the ensemble gathered around Chicken Boy. A likelier possibility might have been to make Danny a teenager.The Resurrectionist is the only book by O’Connell that I’ve read, but there’s been such positive notice for his earlier work that I intend to pick one up and hope that the failures of this book were an aberration.