Headhunter - Hardcover

Findley, Timothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517598272 ISBN 13: 9780517598276

Publisher: Crown, 1994

Synopsis

When Lilah Kemp, a schizophrenic, unemployed librarian and sometime spiritualist, accidently frees the evil Kurtz from the pages of "Heart of Darkness," she searches desperately for a Marlow to help her return him before it is too late

About this title

Reviews

Overlong and overwrought, yet compelling and powerful, Findley's ambitious chronicle of a society gone amok with greed, depravity and moral emptiness is sometimes maddeningly diffuse but always intriguing. The setting is a slightly futuristic Toronto, a city in the grip of an epidemic called sturnusemia, purportedly carried by starlings, who are being exterminated by death squads using a lethal spray. AIDS has run rampant; art, music and literature have become decadent. In this surreal landscape, Lilah Kemp, a former librarian suffering from schizophrenia, has "inadvertently set Kurtz free from page 92 of Heart of Darkness. " Rupert Kurtz, the latter-day incarnation of Conrad's epitome of evil, runs the city's leading psychiatric hospital. Brilliant but demented, Kurtz is secretly conducting drug experiments at his clinic, and he is also a member of the Club of Men, pornographers who do unspeakable things to children. Since his clients and co-conspirators all come from the wealthy and powerful segment of Toronto society (which Findley portrays with acidulous satire), Kurtz seems to be indestructible. But then, as he must, Marlow arrives: psychiatrist Charlie Marlow comes to the institute and finally vanquishes Kurtz once again. An hallucinatory, menacing tone permeates this complex tale. Some passages are brilliant, glittering with insights, while others bear the marks of haste and melodramatic excess. There are a stupefying number of characters and subplots. On the other hand, Findley ( Famous Last Words ) creates witty literary allusions: one character is a contemporary Emma Bovary; another is named Jay Gatz. His subtext is the power of literature: "We write each other's lives--by means of fictions . . . This way we point the way to darkness--saying: come with me into the light." Despite its many faults, the novel (a bestseller in Canada) is empowered by anger; it is a stirring indictment of the amorality that Findley sees as the plague that will usher out the 20th century.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Joseph Conrad's Kurtz as a nightmare headshrinker? The analogy pays off if you stay with this Canadian thriller, but first you have to make it through an obstacle course of intolerably digressive subplots. Schizophrenic spiritualist Lilah Kemp, reading Heart of Darkness at the Metropolitan Toronto Library, sees Kurtz depart from page 92 and walk out; soon he's ensconced as the monstrous head of the Parkin Psychiatric Institute. As Lilah waits in anguish for a Marlow to emerge and do battle with him, Dr. Austin Purvis, a Parkin psychiatrist, wonders what's become of a mysterious patient who changed his name from Adam Smith to Smith Jones to X before disappearing. Meanwhile, Purvis' colleague Dr. Eleanor Farjeon struggles to make sense of a blight that's left eight young patients terror-stricken and mute; another patient, Warren Ellis, becomes the center of a plot to manipulate a research grant from the Beaumorris Corporation; photographer John Dai Bowen's Club of Men continues to recruit boys willing to submit to the members' gaze and Bowen's lens; and mystery man James Gatz moves into a neighborhood that is now home to a Boston psychiatrist named, yes, Dr. Charles Marlow. Death squads of exterminators battle starlings spreading the sinister plague of sturnusemia, and Amy Wylie, a poet obsessively opposed to the exterminations, is committed to Parkin. Kurtz turns out to have a hand in every one of these intrigues, but you may weary of a cast as large (but not as compelling) as any in a George Eliot novel before you find out how. Findley (The Telling of Lies, 1988, etc.) presents a punishingly ambitious portrait of the psychiatrist as contemporary antichrist, but neither Kurtz nor Marlow finally comes to life in his resurrection. You'll finish this recklessly overscaled novel, if you finish at all, with a profound sense of relief. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

An Edgar Award winner for The Telling of Tales (Delacorte, 1988), Findley here conjures up a spiritualist who manages to release Kurtz from the pages of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness --but can't get him back in.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Award-winning Canadian author Findley has written a powerful, brilliantly conceived, spellbinding story that will mesmerize readers from first page to last. Lilah Kemp, self-proclaimed psychic and sometime mental patient, accidentally lets the evil Kurtz escape from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and is compelled to find a Marlow to capture Kurtz and return him to the pages where he belongs. In Lilah's real life, Kurtz takes the form of Chief Psychiatrist at Toronto's Parkin Institute of Psychiatric Research, and the Marlow she needs to conquer Kurtz is a staff member there. Kurtz is a diabolical man, playing with the minds of some of Toronto's richest and most powerful men and women--three beautiful and ethereal sisters, a renowned society photographer, a wealthy recluse, a secret pederast. And while Kurtz preys on victims in his consulting rooms, outside in Toronto strange things are happening: A terrible killer disease called sturnesemia is rampant, the D-Squads bring their tanks of destruction through the streets, and the city's adolescents are rendered mute by a mysterious affliction. At once dazzling, mind-blowing, and unrelentingly grim, Headhunter is a wonderfully dark satire, a horrifying tale of decadence and evil, and a savagely witty commentary on human society. Watch for this one at or near the top of next year's best-book lists. Emily Melton

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0517598272
• ISBN 13: 9780517598276
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 440