If you want to give a try to this amazing novel, head up here
Country: USA
Genre: Literary/Noir
Pages: 225
There should be more novels like The Science Of Paul. That means more MFA graduates should get into crime fiction. I opened Aaron Philip Clark’s first novel, torn between a slight dread and an apologetic approach, which were both completely unnecessary. It’s been a while since I have read a noir novel that packed such a punch. Hell, it’s been a while since I have read a writer’s first novel that was this good. The Science Of Paul crawled under my skin with the slow and methodic approach of a medieval executioner. And I love every single minute of it.
Like the title announces, it’s the story of Paul, Paul Little, an ex-convict who decides to start a new life on his grand-father estate after he inherits of it. But if you lived a life of crime, it’s not easy to put the past behind and get away. His hometown of Philadelphia, like an abusive mother, doesn’t want to let him go. As he plans his escape to his grandfather’s farm in North Carolina, Paul’s good side is going to catch up to him. Karma is a bitch for ex-professional sinners like him.
The Science Of Paul is written in a first person point-of-view, which is a stylistic choice that Clark uses very well, but isn’t without its drawbacks. It’s obviously a character based novel, focused on Paul’s battle with his inner demons and in that regard, it’s remarkably well achieved. His tortured relationships with women is particularly well crafted. His fatalistic views about love give Paul some humanity and put him ahead of all those cardboard characters that you see more often than not in noir fiction.
It’s uneven and overwritten sometimes, which are two traps you can fall in when you write a novel at the first person. For example, I doubt that a jailbird like Paul, no matter how much of an intellectual he is (because he is an intellectual, he reads Hume and gains a good grasp of it), I doubt he’d ever be poetic enough to see a cigarette hanging “loose and defiant” from his girlfriend’s lip. There are some pacing problems in the beginning also, but forty pages in, they disappear as the plot starts to unravel.
Aaron Philip Clark kept me on my toes and kept his novel glued to my hands for the whole two hundred and twenty five pages it lasts. The Science Of Paul is a high minded crime novel about the issues of American street culture, but has enough gusto to keep any hardcore crime readers hooked. It’s a little short and straightforward in its development, but it definitively puts Aaron Philip Clark on the map. Read it if you like literary novels, read it if you like crime novels. If you like both, then read it right now.
Like the title announces, it’s the story of Paul, Paul Little, an ex-convict who decides to start a new life on his grand-father estate after he inherits of it. But if you lived a life of crime, it’s not easy to put the past behind and get away. His hometown of Philadelphia, like an abusive mother, doesn’t want to let him go. As he plans his escape to his grandfather’s farm in North Carolina, Paul’s good side is going to catch up to him. Karma is a bitch for ex-professional sinners like him.
The Science Of Paul is written in a first person point-of-view, which is a stylistic choice that Clark uses very well, but isn’t without its drawbacks. It’s obviously a character based novel, focused on Paul’s battle with his inner demons and in that regard, it’s remarkably well achieved. His tortured relationships with women is particularly well crafted. His fatalistic views about love give Paul some humanity and put him ahead of all those cardboard characters that you see more often than not in noir fiction.
It’s uneven and overwritten sometimes, which are two traps you can fall in when you write a novel at the first person. For example, I doubt that a jailbird like Paul, no matter how much of an intellectual he is (because he is an intellectual, he reads Hume and gains a good grasp of it), I doubt he’d ever be poetic enough to see a cigarette hanging “loose and defiant” from his girlfriend’s lip. There are some pacing problems in the beginning also, but forty pages in, they disappear as the plot starts to unravel.
Aaron Philip Clark kept me on my toes and kept his novel glued to my hands for the whole two hundred and twenty five pages it lasts. The Science Of Paul is a high minded crime novel about the issues of American street culture, but has enough gusto to keep any hardcore crime readers hooked. It’s a little short and straightforward in its development, but it definitively puts Aaron Philip Clark on the map. Read it if you like literary novels, read it if you like crime novels. If you like both, then read it right now.
