On the way to his own wedding, a man reveals to a stranger the story of a most unusual family, characterized both by its sensuality as well as its secrecy, and of Katie, a woman violated in her youth and confined to an asylum. A first novel. 10,000 first printing.
Amnesia
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The nameless narrator of this semi-surreal, hypnotic debut is an archival librarian who misses his own wedding while listening to the unbidden confession of a complete stranger, Izzy Darlow. At age 13, Izzy commits a robbery one day before his bar mitzvah, and to atone, he volunteers to work at a mental hospital. Three years later he meets Katie, a sometimes mute patient traumatized by sexual abuse which she relives in nightmarish memories. Izzy's story weaves Katie's past into the history of his own family's disintegration, which was abetted by his brother Aaron, an eccentric engineer who builds a computer that mimics negative emotions. The two lives intersect when Izzy falls for Katie; they make love on the washroom floor but after electric shock treatments destroy her memory, Izzy kills his need for her. Unhinged by Izzy's story, the narrator, himself the victim of some unidentified childhood trauma, wanders through a dreamlike mindscape of other people's memories (he is an archival librarian); Izzy's voice alternates with that of the ancient Greek poet Simonides, "the Father of Memory," until the narrator's mind is overwhelmed. Published to extravagant praise in Canada (with comparisons to Nabokov, Genet, Calvino and Margaret Atwood), this fragmentary novel impresses with propulsive sentences that smolder and ignite, hallucinatory images and a lyrical exploration of the destructive effects of buried memories and family secrets.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
A dysfunctional family and a difficult adolescent in Toronto are the foundations of this compelling and intricate first novel, which combines elements of Frankenstein with the magical realism of recent South American fiction. Three characters--an archives librarian who has lost his memory; Katie, a young woman in a mental hospital; and Izzy Barlow, the main narrator--tell and retell their stories. These stories intersect, diverge, contradict, embellish, and ultimately come together to lay bare each life. The dangerously seductive comfort of forgetting and the nature of memory, guilt, and passion are explored intellectually and viscerally. Ambitious in scope and complex in its writing, this compulsively readable novel becomes bogged down toward the end, but Cooper is clearly an author to watch. For readers of literary and experimental fiction. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/93.
- Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So glad to have it back.,
By
This review is from: Amnesia (Kindle Edition)
My tattered copy is no longer serviceable. It will be nice to read this again in a crisp Kindle font. This was quite an ambitious first novel from a very ambitious man. Challenge yourself. I believe you will thank me.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An author I will not forget,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Amnesia (Kindle Edition)
Douglas Anthony Cooper escaped me until last week and for the life of me, I don't know why I downloaded Amnesia for my Kindle. Regardless, this author has impressed me greatly with his way with words, way with creating characters, way with interweaving and juxtaposing tales, and he has given me a novel which I am eager to reread. Because I was able to highlight passages on the Kindle, I am can access incredible statements at my convenience. This is not a novel which is read and forgotten, but rather one which festers and reappears at any time, like memories that are triggered without warning. It is literature which I believe is timeless and I recommend this novel to those who enjoy being immersed in a story without thinking about the weakness of an author's words.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
READ THIS BOOK!,
This review is from: Amnesia (Kindle Edition)
Memory is important, and its loss creates dangerous, violent, even evil conditions. This magnificent novel explores memory and its loss in contexts spanning the extremely personal, interpersonal, familial, metropolitan, architectural, mythic, philosophic, and religious. In a feat unsurpassed in virtuosity, Douglas Anthony Cooper has written a compelling, page-turning fictional memoir/mystery in a truly poetic voice.
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