When Lilah Kemp, a schizophrenic, unemployed librarian and sometime spiritualist, accidently frees the evil Kurtz from the pages of Heart of Darkness, she searches desperately for a Marlow to help her return him before it is too late. 10,000 first printing.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Overlong and overwrought, yet compelling and powerful, Findley's ambitious chronicle of a society gone amok with greed, depravity and moral emptiness is sometimes maddeningly diffuse but always intriguing. The setting is a slightly futuristic Toronto, a city in the grip of an epidemic called sturnusemia, purportedly carried by starlings, who are being exterminated by death squads using a lethal spray. AIDS has run rampant; art, music and literature have become decadent. In this surreal landscape, Lilah Kemp, a former librarian suffering from schizophrenia, has "inadvertently set Kurtz free from page 92 of Heart of Darkness. " Rupert Kurtz, the latter-day incarnation of Conrad's epitome of evil, runs the city's leading psychiatric hospital. Brilliant but demented, Kurtz is secretly conducting drug experiments at his clinic, and he is also a member of the Club of Men, pornographers who do unspeakable things to children. Since his clients and co-conspirators all come from the wealthy and powerful segment of Toronto society (which Findley portrays with acidulous satire), Kurtz seems to be indestructible. But then, as he must, Marlow arrives: psychiatrist Charlie Marlow comes to the institute and finally vanquishes Kurtz once again. An hallucinatory, menacing tone permeates this complex tale. Some passages are brilliant, glittering with insights, while others bear the marks of haste and melodramatic excess. There are a stupefying number of characters and subplots. On the other hand, Findley ( Famous Last Words ) creates witty literary allusions: one character is a contemporary Emma Bovary; another is named Jay Gatz. His subtext is the power of literature: "We write each other's lives--by means of fictions . . . This way we point the way to darkness--saying: come with me into the light." Despite its many faults, the novel (a bestseller in Canada) is empowered by anger; it is a stirring indictment of the amorality that Findley sees as the plague that will usher out the 20th century.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
An Edgar Award winner for The Telling of Tales (Delacorte, 1988), Findley here conjures up a spiritualist who manages to release Kurtz from the pages of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness --but can't get him back in.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Findley is a master...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Headhunter (Hardcover)
Headhunter is a complex novel which combines images from Conrad's Heart of Darkness (the escape of Mr. Kurtz) and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Jay Gatz, the lady in white) into a superb psycological novel. Findley is a master of the screw-with-your-head type of novel, and he has proved it with Headhunter.The novel has countless dimensions that cannot be revealed through one reading. I look forward to reading it again (when I get it back from the last person I told "You HAVE to read this!"). It's lengthy, but definitly worth the time. Enjoy the book!
5.0 out of 5 stars
A gripping read,
By
This review is from: Headhunter (Hardcover)
I don't usually like "mystery" or "suspense" novels, but this book took me by surprise and proved impossible to put down. The plot is not "overlong and overwrought". In fact, Findley builds the story meticulously. Right from the first page a sense of forboding and horror pervades the book, very much as in the model, Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (also used by Coppola in "Apocalypse Now"). Perhaps not a "successor" to Conrad's novel, but certainly a very worthwhile development from it and one which does not owe its genius to the original. Certainly the reader will get more out of this book having read Conrad.
This book should please suspense readers as well as those after something a little more substantial. I am very surprised the book is not better known and am curious to read more by Timothy Findley.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Modern day Heart of Darkness,
By A Customer
This review is from: Headhunter (Hardcover)
Findley updates the distrubing images and symbolism of Conrad's classic Heart of Darkness, in this riveting epic. The character development is incredibly precise and leaves the reader with a true sense of being invloved with the characters. It is much easier to comprehend if you have read and studied Conrad's book, but a must for anyone who enjoyed the classic. Headhunter is book that will stay with you for the ages.
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