Customer Reviews

The Disappearing Body

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

 

 

Like Luc Sante, Leonard Gardner (Fat City) and James Ellroy, David Grand knows what makes us so weak and fallible. His ability to stare into our core, while weaving an amazing story is what makes him such a force in contemporary fiction. That, and his fierce, funny imagination solidify him as my favorite writer writing today. The Disappearing Body has everything a perfect noir should have and more. I don't think I've had this much fun with a book in years.

I've been wanting to read The Disappearing Body for a long time, even if I have no recollection of why I was originally interested or who turned me onto the book, and finishing it doesn't really illuminate either of those questions. Essentially an intricate and complex piece of Philip Marlowe-style detective fiction, The Disappearing Body juggles a body that disappears (and then reappears), a labor union ready to blow up a plant, a healthy drug-smuggling operation, a number of suicides, a recently released prisoner, and a number of people struggling to come to terms with their pasts, all while a couple of figures seem to be manipulating events for reasons that only gradually become clear. It's all a satisfying (if extremely convoluted) tale, one that manages to not only weave its numerous threads but also make characters whose pain, regret, and remorse are palpable. In the end, though, while I liked the book just fine, there's little that really makes The Disappearing Body a true knockout. It's intriguing and rich, but I'm not sure I get why it's got the cult reputation it does.

I enjoyed the setup and found the ambience of the book to be great, but the story was meandering and aimless, and lost my interest.

David Grand's noir mystery, set in the period between the two world wars, has a complexity of plot and character that makes James Ellroy's novels look like "Dick and Jane" stories. The trouble is that there's no real pay-off at the conclusion to justify the effort the reader needs to make to keep straight the various subplots. Indeed, the argument could be made that the book lacks a plot at all and consists merely of a complex system of subplots. Perhaps this is what readers and reviewers mean when they refer to the work as somehow "postmodern." It lacks a center.