Customer Reviews

BLACKBOX: A Novel in 840 Chapters

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The fact that this book has been barely reviewed was shocking. Blackbox will take you on a mind journey you have to read to believe. Not only is this book clever, funny, witty, and insightful, but extremely well written and amazingly creative. This is one novel that you'll be thinking about long after you read it.

Now this is craftsmanship. Nick Walker has written a debut novel that reminds me a bit of the device from which it takes its title. A piece of work primed to slip unnoticed into a plethora of similar machinery yet able to survive in the wake of critical disaster (for which BLACKBOX proves quite an easy target). All Palahniuk comparisons aside (Survivor), BLACKBOX withstands its own endless cliches, thin plotlines, and high concept writing. The result is a welcome vacation from an otherwise monotonous literary year. Despite its faults, Walker's creation proves extremely difficult to put down. Conversely, the reader discovers no deeply profound life lessons or tragic true stories of triumph against all odds inside this book. What one WILL find is 840 chapters, 20 different narrators (none of which can truly be labeled a protagonist), 2 suicides (depending on your perspective), at least 10 instances of public vomiting, and ultimately one of the most darkly hilarious novels in recent memory. At the center of it all lies the story of a doomed long distance love affair and the people caught in-between. Walker has spun a wicked web that catches you from the beginning and doesn't let up until the final word. It is a tale of what could have been but (realistically) never is. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Wow!
I've never written a review before but this quirky, odd, meandering novel just begged me to write about it.
Any fan of po-mo fiction (Foster Wallace, DeLillo) will dig this novel.
The book really does have 840 chapters (signifying the 840 previous flights leading up to flight SA841). Each chapter is told in a different narrator's voice and each chapter connects and bisects the other chapters....a six degrees of separation of chapters.
Nick Walker is a very original writer with a great ear for dialogue.
"Blackbox" is a chilling, funny (at times laugh out loud funny) and very disturbing story... a fun read that begs you to ask "is life really just a series of random instances"?

I finished this within 3 or 4 days and I've never read a more gripping book in all my life. The " 840 chapters " ( I rather call them moments or minutes really ) are brilliantly laid out since it leaves you wanting to know more. At times you have to put the book down since you can't help but be in hysterics of laughter especially with the simulated suicide from " Unfunny John." All I can say is that you really have to read this book but only if you like your comedy black.

Think Chuck Palahnuik rewriting Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" but without the over-imagining and way more characters. Walker cops their styles pretty heavily - and this isn't really a bad thing. What you get is a pretty decent book to kill a few hours on a plane (I found it ironic when I read this on a plane, and that probably added to the experience) as you trace relationships between about 20 characters - but this isn't nearly as confusing as it could be (and I actually found that a bit disappointing that the idea wasn't taken a bit further). The book is supposed to play on the idea of "six degrees of separation" but never actually going farther than maybe two or three degrees - but the exposition of these degrees is rather clever. You'd think with 840 chapters told from the point of view of a person under extreme distress (don't want to give away the identity of the narrator), it would be far more (for lack of a better word) "jumpy" like Vonnegut's narration in "Breakfast of Champions," but it comes off more as a regular book with what could have been regular chapters that just has a countdown number every few thoughts - relatively organized, all things considered.

The high point of the book is (in my opinion) this - considering the sheer number of characters (and how very corrupt each of them are), one would think it'd be hard to develop any relationship with any of them, yet you still find yourself empathizing with them (except maybe ex-government agent). Well, at least I did. Each character came off as unabashedly human - flaws, disfunctions, and all - easy to relate to and worry about.

All in all, this is a decent book, a great start for Mr. Walker if it all goes up from here, very cleverly written, and well worth the four bucks I paid for it.

Yes, there are a lot of characters (around 15) to keep track of. Yes, the story jumps from here to there (840 times). I sat down for a solid 2 days and finished the book so I wouldn't get confused. If I did get confused, I used the handy character list at the back of the book.

I'm a big fan of stories and characters that interweave in a book. Movies which do the same don't grab me, but Blackbox knocked my socks off. The last 40 pages had my heart racing, literally! All characters are great portraits of life and all have humor deeply embedded within themselves, which makes for hilarious reading. I'll never look at a comedian the same way ever again. Lastly, the list of phobias will perk you up. My favorite was "onomatophobia: the fear of a certain word."

This book sounded like a fun and interesting concept, but it managed to disappoint on nearly every level. Many of the 'chapters' were one sentence fragment, one word or simply a "...".
I think that the writer was more concerned with working a concept than actually putting together a good story.

I didn't like any of the characters, didn't want to learn anything more about any of them and didn't feel like the plot would be some interesting cliffhanger as promised.

..... I just hope that 2nd Edition Used books will take it back from me.

Rubbish.

A strange book. Counting down chapters from 840 to 1; I was ready to see some characters die before I reached 400. This was convolutions for convolution's sake.

Seemingly this endless collection of very short and in some cases non-existent paragraphs (aka chapters) was a means to turn a short novella into a 311 page "book".

There were some humorous situations and a weird group of characters, but not enough to carry the day. Not recommended unless you just like trying unusual books.

I saw "Blackbox" on the new-books shelf and that caught my attention because I like those kinds of books. What really caught my interest was the subtitle "A Novel in 840 Chapters". Now, that was novel!

I quickly skimmed it and read the back cover. Look good enough to buy.

I am disappointed, though. The best part of the book might just be the subtitle. I feel a little like Unfunny Johnny, a character in the book. Wishing I had not bothered. Ah, onto others.

Great, inventive concept.
Kudos to Nick Walker.

If you have the tendency to read more than 1 book at a time, don't try it with this. It will drive you nuts.
If you multitask a lot, this is one book that can actually keep your mind fully occupied all by itself.

Best read after you see "Memento" "Snatch" "Pulp Fiction" or maybe even "Fight Club"

This book is nuts. -It's the multi-threaded story architecture on Crack. Lots of characters, lots of threads.
It lost me.
I honestly had to chuck this book after pg. 50. Could not stand it.
Perhaps it gets better near the end.