Customer Reviews

Closed Book

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its been awhile since Ive actually read this book, but I thought it was very good, and thought provoking

This was the first of Adair's books I picked up, save the translation of Perec's A Void, and I was sorry I did. The plot concerned a stodgy old writer, based on caricatures of the last group of interesting British writers such as Kingsley Amis, who gets into a horrific car accident that renders him not only blind, but also eyeless. He proceeds to explain why this is such a huge difference, using terrible metaphors and analogies while being ornery, but not quite as sharp and biting as Adair seems to think he is. He hires an amanuensis to help him write his final book, an autobiography. What follows is a thriller clearly meant to invoke Hitchcock and Welles, but that winds up falling flat on deaf ears, or blind eyes.

The unfortunate part of this attempt is that every part is underwhelming. The book they are writing together sounds horribly pedantic, while the narrative about them living together is filled with banal instructions on how to care for a blind person (Please don't leave stuff on the staircase!!!). The worst part comes at the inevitable twist, which emerges with all the excitement and surprise of paint drying.

After reading about Adair's novels I was excited to read more, but after reading this one, I will have a difficult time picking up another one.