The Contortionist's Handbook - Hardcover

Clevenger, Craig

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 193156115X ISBN 13: 9781931561150

Publisher: Macadam Cage Pub, 2002

Synopsis

The Contortionist's Handbook is the story of John Dolan Vincent, an abnromally gifted child with a prclivity for mathematics beyond his years. However, he also bears a rare deformity—polydactylism—and his genius is counterbalanced by a near absence of social skills and episodes of severe migraines.

As an adult his migraines occur with alarming regularity, and his repeated attempts at self-medication send him over and over to the emergency room. He knows that to visit twice is to risk being institutionalized as a suicide risk. So, following each trip to the hospital, he draws upon his skill as a petty forger, and reinvents a new identity for himself.

The Contortionist's Handbook is about the lengths people will go to in order to protect themselves from others and ultimately from themselves.

About this title

About the Author

Craig Clevenger was born in Dallas, Texas and raised in Southern California, where he studied English at California State University, Long Beach. He has travelled extensively and lived in Dublin and London, but currently resides in California where he is at work on his second novel, Dermaphoria.

From Publishers Weekly

Clevenger's debut novel is a well-crafted but underplotted character study of a brilliant, damaged man who struggles with mental illness and substance abuse as he bounces in and out of prison and a series of hospitals around Los Angeles. Most of the novel takes place in the latter setting; some tense early scenes pit protagonist John Dolan Vincent against a psychiatrist known as "The Evaluator," who probes Vincent's psyche to see if his recent overdose of muscle relaxants was really a botched attempt to cure his migraine, as Vincent claims, or a suicide attempt. The twist is that Vincent has checked into the hospital under an assumed name; after each of his previous overdoses he has changed his identity to avoid being placed in a mental hospital. The psychiatric interview provides a decent vehicle for telling the story of Vincent's difficult family life and his decision to use his mathematical talent to assist a murky criminal network. The trouble is that Clevenger has little to offer to push his story forward besides Vincent's efforts to protect Keadra, the woman he falls in love with during a hospital stint, from the thugs who are trying to track him down. Clevenger is a solid writer who does some good work when it comes to creating a noirish atmosphere and smart, compelling characters, but the pace is uneven at best. The quality of the writing warrants a follow-up effort; hopefully, Clevenger will know what to do with his characters the next time around.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Macadam Cage Pub
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 193156115X
• ISBN 13: 9781931561150
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 199