Waiting Period - Softcover

Selby Jr., Hubert

3.36

1,400 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0714530905 ISBN 13: 9780714530901

Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd, 2003

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"I love the book because it transcends fashion and style. . . . It’s fantastic."—Paul Morley, BBC 2 TV Newsnight Review

A man pulls back from the brink of suicide when his application to buy a gun with which to shoot himself is -delayed. Instead of throwing his life away, he decides to spend all his time and effort disposing of those who he feels deserve to die. With a renewed zest for living, he embarks on a joyful killing spree, having found the true purpose of his existence.

"Like all great writers, Selby does not answer questions. He only raises them to a pitch so intense that only a scream or a prayer can stop the pain."—San Francisco Chronicle

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About the Author:

Hubert Selby, Jr. was born in Brooklyn in 1928. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, Song of the Silent Snow, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream starred Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn and was directed by Darren Aronofsky. Hubert Selby Jr died in Highland Park, Los Angeles, California in April 2004.

From Publishers Weekly:

Selby's latest offers a chilling look into the mind of a killer, as the author of Last Exit to Brooklyn uses stream-of-consciousness first-person narration to slowly transform his anonymous male narrator from a paranoid, disaffected war veteran into a deranged murderer. The catalytic event that initiates the transformation is the narrator's attempt to purchase a gun to commit suicide, but when a brief waiting period ensues, he decides instead to get even with his various tormentors. The first target is the bureaucrat at the Veterans Administration who has been denying the narrator his benefits, an alleged injustice he remedies by slipping the man a lethal dose of E. coli bacteria. The narrator goes through a brief period of killer's remorse, during which he almost confesses to a newsstand operator, but once his jitters pass, he targets a local TV celebrity for another dose of lethal bacteria. From there he goes completely over the edge, building a homemade crossbow as he explores the feasibility of using explosives to facilitate similar attacks in various cities around the country. Selby's style is relentless, harrowing and frighteningly effective, albeit somewhat monotonous and tough to read; this might have been a better novel if Selby had introduced some secondary characters and broken up the first-person narrative into chapters built around each incident. Still, in a world in which the reach of terrorism seems to grow on a daily basis, this story is a disturbing reminder of how vulnerable we are to attacks from the discontented and deranged, regardless of their location or nationality.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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