Order DISINTEGRATION here
(also reviewed)
Order TRANSUBSTANTIATE here
Order HERNIATED ROOTS here
Order STARING INTO THE ABYSS here
There are no mirrors in my apartment. I have forgotten my own face.
People are quick to dismiss any debate on the nature of reality. Many platitudes have been said about virtual reality and the future of human perception, but the nature of contemporary reality has never been debated all that fiercely around the water cooler. What is our reality made of? Are we being exposed to narrative constructions we're asked to believe in? Things like that. Richard Thomas' latest novel DISINTEGRATION is a fragmented, disembodied existential thriller about the fleeting nature of a man's reality. It's an ambitious and daring book that stumbles upon a couple tired clichés, but that ends up delivering a solid story and moments of great existential paranoia you'll be delighted to drop on the guys, next time you meet at the water cooler.
DISINTEGRATION is the story of an anonymous hit man struggling to regain the foundation of his identity after his wife and children were taken away from him by an unspecified tragedy. He works for a mysterious Russian mobster named Vlad, who he barely even sees. The only thing that gives our protagonist a sense of purpose anymore is the rustling sound of the envelope containing his next assignment. The deeper he gets into this life of excess and violence though, the barer his reality becomes and the more paranoid he becomes about the circumstances that turned his existence upside down. Is he a victim of fate or the victim of an elaborate conspiracy?
I had difficulty connecting with the narrator of DISINTEGRATION through my reading and it took me over a hundred pages to figure out why. I had no problem with the shadowy hit man in itself, but I thought his desires were a tad boring and cliché. A wife and two children is arguably the placeholder for happiness in our society, and since his wife and children are basically distant memories, they're just an idea of who the protagonist thinks he should be. Want to feel good about yourself again? Get in line, buddy. Now, I may be unfair to DISINTEGRATION because the concept is cool (a man wanting his life back), the execution is also cool (Richard Thomas has a thoroughly unique and vivid writing style), it's the choice of variables that didn't work in some cases.
Sometimes they run. Those are the ones I find out in the dive bars, the sex clubs, the dark reflections in the night. They are always looking over their shoulders, because the evil of their acts is like a black halo ringing their heads, neon flashing vacancy, broken burnt-out letters, incomplete.
I've been reading Richard Thomas for a couple years now and I was looking forward to him start writing like this. He's a fragmented storytelling enthusiast, but DISINTEGRATION reads pretty straightforwardly despite being a puzzle with pieces of different sizes. I particularly enjoyed the depictions of Chicago's night life during the action scenes. The neon underworld of DISINTEGRATION somehow echoes the one from James Sallis' DRIVE, a classic of the genre that wouldn't be all that different if both would have been third person narrations. Thomas' action scenes are slow, tense and ruthless. He's one of these authors who can slow it down and let a moment bloom when it's crucial.
DISINTEGRATION is a classic redemption story. What makes it unique is the fragmented, contemplative delivery. There are a couple cliché variables and I suppose some of them were inevitable given the genre (sex, lust and women seen through the prism of men's desire in general), but it didn't make DISINTEGRATION any less enjoyable to me. I thought that Richard Thomas' portrayal of Chicago's urban sprawl and his fearless action scenes depicting the protagonist on the job made the novel enjoyable to me. For these two reasons, I'm planning to pick up Thomas' second Windy City Dark Mystery BREAKER, coming out next January.