Customer Reviews

Cast of Shadows: A Novel

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I thought I was going to dislike CAST OF SHADOWS. The premise seemed flimsy at best. The daughter of a physician is murdered. The physician, a pioneer in the field of reproductive cloning, is able to obtain the DNA of her murderer and engineers his cloning for the purpose of identifying the killer. Yawn. It sounded vaguely like a plot that Michael Crichton would have rejected, and wisely so, sometime back in the 1980s. And the author, Kevin Guilfoile, was stuck in my memory bank as a kind of self-styled humorist whose work had left me with the vague impression of someone who is clever but not smart. I accordingly cracked the binding of CAST OF SHADOWS with the thought that I could try it for an hour or so and then leave it unread.

Well, I didn't have to get very deeply at all into CAST OF SHADOWS before I realized that this debut novel is quite like the house of one of the characters in the story: much, much bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside, full of twists and turns and corners and surprises. The aforementioned physician, Davis Moore, is a sympathetic character --- his teenage daughter is murdered --- but he's not entirely a likeable guy, kind of sanctimonious, full of self-justification, and content to follow rules until he has a reason to break them. Moore uses his medical practice as a vehicle to exact revenge. One can understand the concept of revenge, especially in a case like this, but there isn't exactly full disclosure exercised here with respect to Moore's patient or to the resulting life in being, at least not initially. Moore keeps track of Justin Finn, the cloned child. And yes, indeed, he comes to resemble someone very, very twisted.

But this is more than a tale of rough judgment and exacted revenge. Guilfoile crafts a tale that is riveting, excruciatingly suspenseful, and intellectually challenging. Part speculative fiction, part suspense and part horror, CAST OF SHADOWS deals with a future so close that it is not just around the corner but is only a half-block away and approaching fast. Guilfoile's story is peppered with a number of interesting, and flawed, supporting characters, and also introduces an online virtual reality game called Shadow World. Shadow World plays an integral part in the novel, to the extent that it is a character unto itself. It is such a fascinating concept, in fact, that it alone is worth the investment in the book.

CAST OF SHADOWS also presents a number of moral and ethical issues in dramatic settings, all of them difficult, all of them important. It is also much deeper than one would expect. Guilfoile takes the reader through so many twists and turns, particularly at the end, that it is only after extended reflection that one realizes what a truly steep and wild ride it has been. As complex as Guilfoile's plot is, however, he so carefully lays out his path that it is impossible for the reader to get lost.

CAST OF SHADOWS is a book that will be read, savored, discussed, and argued for some time to come. It is simply, and surely, not to be missed.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

I'm a sucker for certain types of commercial bait - a review that compares a pop record favorably to a transitional Beatles record like "Revolver" or "Sgt. Pepper's," or a jazz record to "Kind of Blue" or "Saxophone Colossus," or a novelist to "Faulkner" or "Roth." What got me on to Kevin Guilfoile's Cast of Shadows was a reviewer's approving nod to "this modern-day Frankenstein tale" - a line that summoned up Ur-resonances within me that have jangled through my neural system since first fired in a movie theater 50 years ago. (That comparison, it turns out, was apparently concocted by a Knopf publicist and eagerly grabbed up by several hook-hungry, imagination-deprived book "critics.")

So that's how I have the book in my hands.

For the first 100 pages or so, I found the story of fertility specialist Davis Moore, his murdered daughter, his slipping marriage and slow-fuse relationship with an attractive female colleague, and his hope-against-hope plan to clone his daughter's murderer slow going but plausible, with cloning, its politics, and its ethical and religious implications interestingly evoked and explored. Strangely, as the pace picked up and little Justin Finn's development is chronicled, the book began gliding into implausibility - in Guilfoile's near-future Chicago, pace and plausibility seem inversely related. There were more key coincidences than a Dickens novel, more than a fair share of character-motivation issues, and an epic 20-year time span that seems disproportionate to the book's preoccupations, which, although weighty, are distinctly less than epic. This is, at bottom, a futuristic murder mystery.

By the time I was in the second hundred pages, however, I was not only invested in the story but hooked: I was rooting for Guilfoile, wanting the book to work for its daring to take up difficult ethical and philosophical themes - regardless of the hard time the author had in finding the literary voice for such exposition (sometimes a neat aside, other times a clunky lecture, but generally striking a good rhetorical balance). I thought Justin, the cloned boy, an absorbing, complex, believable character, and I liked the way Guilfoile used the "Shadow World" computer-game subtext that, with the exponential information-technology advances of the past decade, seemed the least contrived element of a storyline I suspect Guilfoile felt forced to "over-contrive."

Knowing he had a nice idea, Guilfoile also knew he needed a lengthy fictional timespan to play it out - at least 300 pages for two decades and a fuller, more populated world. He thus invented a large cast of characters, some of whom do the heavy literary lifting across long spans of time (but who in that long stretch generally undergo little change). Many others comprise a long list of "fifth business" types who matter very little, and appear very briefly, but whom Guilfoile makes essential in one way or another to advancing his story. With all this, and despite its bursts of energy, Cast of Shadows struck me as a fairly long 320 page book that during my beach week had me flipping back and forth in keeping the Jackies and Joans and Sallies and Marthas straight.

Among the book's considerable attractions, however, is Guilfoile's literary deftness. He observes closely, sees things at an odd angle, and turns a handsome descriptive line. For instance, "He liked to grip a book with both hands, as if the knowledge were entering through his fingers instead of his eyes" to describe the precocious Justin's intense preference for hardcovers over paperbacks. And Guilfoile dares to ruminate on philosophical themes - he has a clear eye for the ethical issues surrounding fertility and abortion, enjoys parsing them, and has a taste for the Great Books and the eternal moral questions, references to which are sprinkled throughout his book. Yes, he's capable of producing a howler or two - how about "The words drilled into his heart and uncorked a gusher of rage"? And he sometimes likes to overdescribe the inconsequential - "He let a sip of Shiraz trickle down the back of his throat." Consider such passages a first-time novelist's entitlement of Mulligans (and hope for a more attentive editor next time around). Guilfoile can write.

Cast of Shadows isn't Frankenstein (although The Modern Prometheus theme is front and center), and Guilfoile isn't Mary Shelley, but he's ambitious in much the same way, and his book is worthy: a clear cut above most summer fare - more literary and cerebral than the average thriller, daring to take on large moral and religious themes, leading the reader to weigh serious issues that we may indeed find ourselves grappling with in not too long a time, but still with a measure of thrills and ingenious twists...and a conclusion I found quite satisfying. I don't think Cast of Shadows will haunt my imagination, but I have no difficulty recommending it for late-summer reading lists.

We show the parts of ourselves that we want the world to see. The secrets are hidden behind a façade. Our shadow lives are the private lives we share with few. Such is the premise of Kevin Guilfoile's debut novel, Cast of Shadows.

The setting of this psychological thriller is in the near future when human cloning is legal. The cast of characters includes Dr. Davis Moore, a Chicago fertility doctor specializing in reproductive cloning and his teenage daughter, Anna Kat. Sam Coyne is a successful young Chicago lawyer. Justin Finn is a clone and Martha Finn his mother. Mickey the Gerund is a religious fanatic doing the Lord's work for The Hands of God. And Sally Barwick is the detective who unravels secrets.

After Anna Kat's brutal rape and murder, Dr. Moore breaks the law and creates a clone from evidence found at the crime scene. The book progresses around the fate of this young boy, Justin Finn, and lives of the people affected by the two crimes. Undercover, Moore observes his creation, waiting for the day his daughter's killer's face will become realized.

But things aren't what they seem. Through an intricately woven original plot Guilfoile creates a fast paced gripping thriller that keeps the reader guessing up until the final shattering pages. This is a must read.

I'm a fan of Kevin Guilfoile's humor work for McSweeney's and honestly didn't know what to expect when picking up his first novel. He keeps it very close to the vest in the first third of the book and just reports the events as they occur (and very compelling events they are...) and I found myself wondering when we would start seeing the wonderfully twisted phrases and incredible wit that I was used to hearing from Guilfoile.

Later in the book when the action has really heated up I suddenly took notice that all of the style I had expected was showing up clearly in every paragraph - wonderful thoughts and very subtle asides on the nature of difficult subjects - so carefully placed in the story as to blend in completely. A mature approach from someone who's got the smarts to show off if he wants to.

Of course the story itself is a tour de force and like a good indi movie I couldn't wait until my wife finished it so I could test out some of my theories on several character's motivations and ultimate fates.

I think this is a great debut and can't wait to see what comes next.

I bought and read this book on the strength of the great reviews it has been getting. Kevin Guilfoile is getting a ton of hype and I tend to be skeptical about that so was hesitant at first and honestly did not expect much. Well, let me try and explain how wrong I was. This book is such a brilliant debut...I was hooked from the first few chapters and literally could not stop reading until finished. The wonderful and most surprising thing about this novel is not the incredibly inventive premise, the elegant economical prose or even the complicated web of plots and subplots. It is how effortlessly and elegantly Guilfoile HANDLES all of it. You are led down a very weighty path of twists and turns...and yet it remains breathless and present and completely enthralling. There is something so easy about how Cast of Shadows is digested...in spite of a great deal of complexity and elevated language. As if this was not enough, Guilfoile's sense of character is so rare and wonderful. He understands that complexity cannot be told, it has to be shown. We discover these people...they are revealed by what they do and what they think. It is so organic and real. Everyone is flawed and human. There are so many stunning, loaded sentences about the main character's marriage....I found myself reading and re-reading these moments. You would literally understand volumes about these people from a single sentence about their domestic living. There are off handed references to Davis taking care of his drunk wife that are completely haunting. The brilliance of this is it is not central to the story at all...just the ingredients of brilliant, not-to-be-taken-lightly artistry.

A big mistake would be to merely see COS as a mystery thriller. The depth here is amazing...he blows away his contemporaries. Guilfoile has written a book about PEOPLE that just happens to be wrapped in an amazingly complex, suspensful wrapper. His talent is undeniable. Can't wait to read the next book!! Go out and read this one...and then read it again!!

This book came out nearly a year ago; please note there are spoilers in this review.

I tried to read this book, and only managed to get through the "present-day" parts of the book before two things happened: one, I figured out where the book was going, and two, I got disgusted by it.

While I admire Guilfoile's premise, the scientific underpinnings of this novel are so badly flawed that they ruin the entire book.

First is the so-called "nature versus nurture" debate, the question of how much control our genes exert on our lives. "Cast of Shadows" assumes essentially absolute determinism: a clone will be the spitting image, mind and body, of the person cloned. This borders on the absurd: if that were the case, all identical twins would be completely identical, which certainly is not the case.

Second, he completely wrecks the character of Justin's birth mother. Obviously, Guilfoile needed some reason why she could not have a child using her own eggs, but he blithely chose to make her a "carrier" of Huntington's disease. The problem here is twofold: there are no carriers for Huntington's; if you have a defective gene for it, and live long enough, you *will* inherit the disease. And yet, this woman has absolutely no problem bringing a child into the world, and apparently is unaware of the death sentence hanging over her head. It seriously begs the question of whether Guilfoile bothered to have any geneticists proofread this book.

For a premise as intriguing as this one was, it was a shame that it was so badly mishandled here.

The only thing disappointing about this book is that it is Guilfoile's first novel, and I can't rush out and buy any previous novels that he has written.

The tale occurs in the near future when human cloning has become legal, and the protagonist is Dr. Moore, a fertility doctor, whose daughter has been raped and murdered. While grieving over the loss he inadvertently comes across a semen sample of the murderer, and impulsively clones a baby from this sample. He wants to follow the child's development so that he can see what his daughter's murderer looks like.

Some reviewers have deemed the plot of this book to be preposterous, but seem to not realize that the book takes place some years from now, and continues for another 17 years, and thus essentially qualifies as science fiction. Essential to the plot is a highly sophisticated virtual reality computer program, which seems to be quite possible given the novel's time frame. After all, I purchased my first computer game in 1984 for my IBM XT, and it was all text, no graphics. Today's games would seem impossible back in those days.

When Dr. Moore clones the child named Jason, he has no idea how his life and those around him will be changed. Startling new developments and plot twists kept me glued to the book. It's an exciting thriller with a truly unexpected ending. I have no interest in stories that pass over the edge of credibility, and believe me this book doesn't do that at all. Very highly recommended.

How far would you go to catch a violent killer? What if he'd killed your teenage daughter? Dr. Davis Moore, a well-known geneticist, faces a frightening moral dilemma when he gets the opportunity to secretly clone his daughter's killer and implant the resulting embryo in the womb of an unsuspecting woman. His plan is to watch the child grow up and, eventually, look into the face of the killer and possibly identify him.

That fateful decision affects the lives of dozens of people--that of his fragile wife; the pediatrician who ends up sharing his secret; a private investigator-turned-reporter, and ultimately, the child himself, Justin Finn, who turns out to be smarter--and scarier--than Dr. Moore ever anticipated.

Set in the near future and frighteningly believable, Guilfoile tracks this complex story over twenty years, through the minds of all the major players and several on the fringes, and through a video-game universe that has become a world-wide obsession. Every time I thought I had it figured out, I was wrong--right up until the very last page. The villains (and no one in this book is truly innocent) are so well-motivated that I found myself understanding and almost sympathizing with every character at one time or another. An incredible debut novel from a writer to watch.

The writing is ok, the premise is interesting. There are one too many coincidences in the book. Even adjusting for that, the book has a fatal flaw which is only apparent near the end. Unfortunately I can't say much more without spoiling the plot.

The only way to resolve this flaw is to say that "sheer dumb luck sometimes happens." Either that or a loosely tied sequel in which the mistake is discovered. The weakness starts with the DNA sample and ends with finding the serial killer. It becomes just too serendipitious, all for the sake of forcing in the twist in the end.

Additionally, the author would have been better off with a more tightly written and ultimately satisfying main plot rather than veering off into subplots and extraneous characters.

I read a lot of thrillers. This is one of the most gripping I've read in years. It combines elements of the best of Michael Crichton, Michael Connelly, and perhaps Robin Cook.

Anyone perusing the other reviews will know the gist of the plot: Davis Moore, M.D., is a human cloning specialist in Chicago. His daughter, age 17, is murdered, and police find just the kind of DNA evidence at the murder scene to which Dr. Moore can apply his talents in an effort to tease out the murderer's identity.

This much is revealed in perhaps the first 30 or 50 pages, and in the hands of a lesser writer, the plot might unfold predictably for the next 300 pages. Not so here. The full title of one of Crichton's better efforts is "Westworld: Where Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong." So it would seem here, but as in "Westworld," what in principle cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong in every direction, like a malevolent bacterium replicating itself kaleidoscopically. Only one plot twist did I figure out, leaving a half-dozen as grisly surprises.

The book is worth reading just for its imaginative portrayal of a worldwide distributed computer game that replicates real life down to the bricks in a Chicago alley and that has much of the planet enthralled, as their avatars live half-time in that world, taking risks their real-world selves would not dare to do. First-rate.