The Resurrectionists - Softcover

Michael Collins

Softcover

ISBN 10: 075284928X ISBN 13: 9780752849287

Publisher: Phoenix, 2002

Synopsis

The frozen wastes of North America are Michael Collins's heart of darkness, a territory he maps with infinite precision in this new novel of murder and menace. Twenty years ago, when Frank was five, his parents burned to death in a remote Northern town. Now, his uncle is dead too, shot by a mysterious stranger with a dead man's name, a stranger who now lies in a coma in the local hospital. Frank heads North to dig up the past - back to the town where he never belonged, to find out why his uncle died, and why people shrink when they hear his name.

About this title

Review

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

About the Author

Michael Collins was born in Limerick in 1964. He has won the Pushcart Prize for Best American Short Story and the Kerry Ingredients Book of the Year for THE KEEPERS OF TRUTH. He was educated in Ireland and America and divides his time between Seattle and London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Phoenix
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 075284928X
• ISBN 13: 9780752849287
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368