Customer Reviews

The Dead Heart

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a short, dark-as-they-get, comic novel which rips along at a furious pace. I was careful not to read too much about it, as I hate spoilers, so I also will not tell you very much about the story. I'd really enjoyed a couple of Doug Kennedy's other books, so I trusted him and was not disappointed. His descriptive prose is spot-on and his energy infectious. The book is a 1st person account of a "facing midlife" crisis which goes weirdly, wackily, wombatily awry. One of the backcover reviews of my British edition said, "If you read this on your way to Australia, you won't want to get off the plane."

I discovered Douglas Kennedy thanks to "In God's Country". Curious to read more about him and his writing, I decided to go for his very first novel. I was not disappointed one bit! This book is so grabbing that it is almost impossible to put down once you've started reading it. Sorry I will not say much about the story (I do not want to spoil it). Just know that you will travel alongside this guy who is kind of looking for something missing in his life and that his trip to Australia will take a turn that no one could have predicted. It starts for the better before getting close to the worst.
The writing is speedy and humorous before getting dark and somewhat scary. A great great great book.

Set in the modern Australian outback, this novel is a real grabber. A traveler picks up a young woman hitchhiker, and she takes him to a very strange town, from which he cannot leave. A great adventure and highly recommended.

I would also highly recommend the other two Douglas Kennedy novels I have read--"The Job" and especially "The Big Picture" (I stayed up to two o'clock reading this story of a lawyer who kills his neighbor, takes over the man's identity, and disappears, starting a new life with the man's trust-fund checks).

The Big Picture

We first meet Nick Hawthorne in a Darwin bar. As a stripper offers contorted perspectives on what Australia has to offer, our hero from Maine meets a fellow countryman from Detroit intent on doing to Asia what America does to most places. (Personal opinions, eh?) Nick has some of those. He has a personal approach to life, but feels he gets little out of it, despite having achieved the status of being the first person principal character of Douglas Kennedy's novel The Dead Heart.

Nick is a journalist who has only ever had bit jobs. They interested him bit, earned him a bit, stimulated somewhat less. Then he found a map of Australia and became so obsessed with the continent's emptiness that he sold up and left the US to discover the unknown, to visit the unvisited. He is less than impressed with Darwin. It's not a good start. But a VW camper van bought from a Jesus freak promises a great escape along the road to Broome. Not round the corner...

A hitcher called Angie provides welcome diversion from the repetition of the road. She seems easy-going, not to mention easy, and a little threatening. She is travelling for the first time, but exudes confidence. Nick, however, retains control. Or so he thinks...

Until he finds himself in Wollanup. It's a town whose recent tragic history has removed it from the map. Nick has arrived at nowhere, the dead heart of a land. He is now unknown, has sex and beer on tap and an awful diet. A horror story haunted by powdered eggs...

Until Krystal starts to cook... His mechanical skills come into play. The rebuilt camper van is destroyed again. Its renewed mobility is a threat.

Events happen, like they do... Douglas Kennedy's The Dead Heart evolves into a kind of fast-moving, page-turning thriller. But there are characters here. Something - not sure what! - seems almost credible. Nick is not the most likeable person, but this rather self-centred, thirty-odd, overweight hedonist does realise that there might be more to life than unlimited sex and beer on tap. He wants both, but clearly somewhere other than Wollanup.

What happens in The Dead Heart is crucial. It's a plot-led work, but it is also engaging and well written. Its racy style fits the characters' obvious preoccupations and helps to create a vivid portrait of lives that know only the here and now.

The Dead Heart is a book to be read in a single sitting. The process will leave readers wondering how they might have reacted in such circumstances. And what about Australia as depicted? Is this a stereotype? You bet...