Death Kit: A Novel [Paperback]

Susan Sontag (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2002

First published in 1967, Death Kit--Susan Sontag's second novel--is a classic of modern fiction. Blending realism and dream, it offers a passionate exploration of the recesses of the American conscience.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Released in 1963 and 1967, respectively, these are Sontag's first and second novels. In The Benefactor, protagonist Hippolyte "depends on his dreams to direct the course of his life" (LJ 9/1/63). The story, which unfolds over a 60-year period, might itself be a dream. Death Kit is no less cerebral.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"In Death Kit Susan Sontag has written a terrifying black novel with the fierce unsettling thrust of a Kafka-esque fable. It is a truly awesome book, forged from a stark in which staccato sentences and near-documentary observations are fused into a brilliantly sustained style."—Boston Globe

"It seems an impertinence merely to recommend this book for its literary qualities. Death Kit is an experience beyond definition, part novel, part thriller, part philosophy, part dream."—Douglas M. Davis, The National Observer

"Death Kit is a strange and wonderful book, a ritual exorcising of modern terrors, a dream book of love and death . . . Sontag conjures up scenes of sordid everyday life that are as brutal and macabre as anything in Raymond Chandler or Nathaniel West."—Frederic Tuten, Vogue

"This novel is 'real art'—disconcerting, absorbing, entertaining (in the Greek sense of the verb; to grip), and extremely unnerving. One can only say, in the most direct way: read it."—Doris Grumbach

"Death Kit . . . is a powerful visionary novel and a remarkable achievement. Miss Sontag has written an extraordinary novel, a Kafka-ish nightmare of an American Jederman, which proclaims at once her soaring talent and her profound pessimism."—John Barkham, Saturday Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Picador (June 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312420110
• ISBN-13: 978-0312420116
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,084,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. She is the author of four novels, a collection of stories, several plays, and six books of essays, among them Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She died in December 2004.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hidden treasure, December 9, 2000

By 

"clarissa_dalloway" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Death Kit (Paperback)

This book deserves attention, and is in some ways Sontag's best fiction. Rough in some places, painfully rough, the prose grinds through the protagonist's agony, lightens with his fancy, slips away from coherence as he slips from coherence. This is writing on a par with a rough and angry, poignant and bittersweet symphony. It reminds me more of the Shastokovich Symphony no. 7, "Leningrad", than of any other book that I have read. Read it. Read it twice because the first time it can hardly be taken in.

This is the story of man's hallucination during and after his suicide. The surface tone is cold and metallic, distanced. But underneath it is achingly, sadly, brutal.

Interpret this story. Exercise your mind, your powers of analysis and of sensation. This is a layered piece of writing that holds up and puts out on many levels. And don't miss the exquisite prose on pages two through four.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Oddly intriguing, December 16, 2010

By 

S. Deeth "Sheila Deeth" (OR, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Death Kit: A Novel (Paperback)

Susan Sontag's Death Kit opens as the story of a man who, in the course of a train journey, becomes convinced he has recently killed someone. The fact that he tried to kill himself only a short time ago gives the reader a clue; perhaps Diddy's version of events is not entirely reliable. And as the story progresses, the varied characters flitting in and out of his life begin to a take on an image more symbolic than personal. The dead railwayman, the blind lover, the jovial fellow employee...

As Diddy drifts into dreams and memories, the feeling of unreality grows. How much of this is present, how much past, how much just dreamed? But the truth has a way of revealing itself. Even as Diddy grows more unhinged, the reader begins to grasp where his tale will end up.

Death Kit is an oddly intriguing, absorbing tale, not entirely satisfying or dissatisfying, but hard to put down, with some beautiful images and haunting turns of phrase. It's a long, slow, sad, literary read, and an interesting introduction to the concept of the unreliable narrator.

Disclosure: I borrowed this book from a friend.

3 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ha ha, March 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Death Kit (Paperback)

this book was funny ok mabye it isn't who cares