I didn't write a blog post in January which sort of throws me off my once-a-month blogging pace I've been trying to maintain. Maybe February will see some better results. To get things started this month, I have a review of this book I read. It's called Beat the Reaper, by Josh Bazell.
I received this book as a Chirstmas present from my sister. She somehow used twin telepathy to guide her to this book. She knew nothing about it; she picked it up because she saw it on display. According to the author bio on the back, Bazell wrote this book while completing his residency at a Manhattan hospital. Kristin read this and immediately thought I would be interested because, hey, I'm a writer who's on a med school track right now. So I did read it. And it was interesting, entertaining, diverting. As an anatomy student, I enjoyed some of the medical jargon. He uses the word "periosteum", and my brain lights up. I know what that means.
Anyways, what is this book about? Why should you read it? Our protagonist is Peter Brown, an orphan who befriends the son of a mob boss and is unofficially adopted into their family. The book has two storylines that unfold simultaneously. This first storyline concerns itself with how Peter trains himself to become a ruthless killing machine, practicing martial arts for eight hours a day, becoming a vigilante hit man to avenge the murder of his grandparents. The second storyline unfolds over the course of a day as Dr. Brown, a resident at a Manhattan hospital, negotiates the chaos of his day. Through some clever plotting, Dr. Brown's fate gets tied to the fate of a terminally ill cancer patient who is about to undergo surgery with what may or may not be New York's worst surgeon. Getting mugged, fucking in an elevator, accidentally getting injected with a unknown pathogen, eating lots and lots of speed to stay awake, all these things are just part of a normal day at work for the doctor. And all manage to occur within the first few chapters.
Stylistically, it reminded me of Chuck Palaniuk, except more intelligent, and more coherent. The beauty of having a badass killer that's also clinically inclined is that when he's, say, kicking somebody's ass or performing surgery on himself, he can describe all the bone breaks in explicit medical fashion. For example, here's an interesting passage that illuminates the idea that the Seven Dwarves probably had lung disease, and their lung disease might have been folded into the plot of Snow White.*
Click to Embiggen
According to the interview with author in the back of the book, Bazell comes from the serial crime genre of fiction, and the way this book ends, it seems he's setting us up for more adventures with Dr. Brown. I'm not really a reader of genre fiction, but I don't think this is a bad thing, necessarily. I just wish Bazell had put more effort in to the climax and resolution of this story. Not to give anything away, but the way it ends, it seems like, "And then I killed the bad guy," a plot point which seems inevitable from a million miles away, and when it finally arrives, it seems like it was because we reached a predetermined word count rather than the obligatory release. Imagine the feeling you get when you feel a sneeze coming on, but when it comes time, you can't do it. Yeah. It's sort of like that.
*(When I went to youtube to link to a clip of Snow White, I discovered that the song Whistle While You Work is actually sung by Snow White and her little forest animal friends while she cleans the house like a good old-fashioned woman. While the Dwarves do whistle, I couldn't find a clip of them whistling in the mine, so I posted this instead. Admire it for its outstanding, astounding animation. Dig especially the part starting at 1:57. If you pay close attention you'll notice that each dwarf walks with his own unique gait. Couple that with the fact that they walk from the background into the foreground, are shot from multiple angles, and everything is kept in true perspective, and you can appreciate why it took six months to animate this 35 seconds or so of footage. I might have to write an entry that compares Walt Disney and James Cameron. They are more alike than you think.)
Anyways, what is this book about? Why should you read it? Our protagonist is Peter Brown, an orphan who befriends the son of a mob boss and is unofficially adopted into their family. The book has two storylines that unfold simultaneously. This first storyline concerns itself with how Peter trains himself to become a ruthless killing machine, practicing martial arts for eight hours a day, becoming a vigilante hit man to avenge the murder of his grandparents. The second storyline unfolds over the course of a day as Dr. Brown, a resident at a Manhattan hospital, negotiates the chaos of his day. Through some clever plotting, Dr. Brown's fate gets tied to the fate of a terminally ill cancer patient who is about to undergo surgery with what may or may not be New York's worst surgeon. Getting mugged, fucking in an elevator, accidentally getting injected with a unknown pathogen, eating lots and lots of speed to stay awake, all these things are just part of a normal day at work for the doctor. And all manage to occur within the first few chapters.
Stylistically, it reminded me of Chuck Palaniuk, except more intelligent, and more coherent. The beauty of having a badass killer that's also clinically inclined is that when he's, say, kicking somebody's ass or performing surgery on himself, he can describe all the bone breaks in explicit medical fashion. For example, here's an interesting passage that illuminates the idea that the Seven Dwarves probably had lung disease, and their lung disease might have been folded into the plot of Snow White.*
Click to Embiggen
According to the interview with author in the back of the book, Bazell comes from the serial crime genre of fiction, and the way this book ends, it seems he's setting us up for more adventures with Dr. Brown. I'm not really a reader of genre fiction, but I don't think this is a bad thing, necessarily. I just wish Bazell had put more effort in to the climax and resolution of this story. Not to give anything away, but the way it ends, it seems like, "And then I killed the bad guy," a plot point which seems inevitable from a million miles away, and when it finally arrives, it seems like it was because we reached a predetermined word count rather than the obligatory release. Imagine the feeling you get when you feel a sneeze coming on, but when it comes time, you can't do it. Yeah. It's sort of like that.
*(When I went to youtube to link to a clip of Snow White, I discovered that the song Whistle While You Work is actually sung by Snow White and her little forest animal friends while she cleans the house like a good old-fashioned woman. While the Dwarves do whistle, I couldn't find a clip of them whistling in the mine, so I posted this instead. Admire it for its outstanding, astounding animation. Dig especially the part starting at 1:57. If you pay close attention you'll notice that each dwarf walks with his own unique gait. Couple that with the fact that they walk from the background into the foreground, are shot from multiple angles, and everything is kept in true perspective, and you can appreciate why it took six months to animate this 35 seconds or so of footage. I might have to write an entry that compares Walt Disney and James Cameron. They are more alike than you think.)
