The Insult [Paperback]

Rupert Thomson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 29, 1997

"We are in the dark side of the brain--full of grief and deliciously strange comedy. I've never read anything like it."
--Michael Ondaatje


With this eerie, provocative, and utterly original novel, Rupert Thomson takes the psychological thriller into unexplored territory. Martin Blom is walking toward his car in a supermarket parking lot when a single random bullet pierces his brain. From that moment he is blind--his doctor says permanently. But then one evening Martin discovers what is either a genuine miracle or a delusion suffered occasionally by the newly blind: in the dark, he can see.

Armed with this ambiguous gift, Thomson's protagonist enters a nocturnal world of strip clubs and sleazy hotels. In that world, an alluring young woman may give herself to the one man she thinks is unable to see her, only to vanish inexplicably. In that world, a blind man may become a murder suspect. And in the gorgeously disorienting world of The Insult, reality itself is a consensual hallucination. And you succumb to it at your own risk.  


"Reads like an unholy collaboration between Oliver Sacks and Edgar Allan Poe."  --Time Out

"Thomson is a master stylist, a virtuoso of the hallucinatory image, a writer with a dark vision and a bright future."  --Washington Post

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you haven't discovered the black-magic world of British novelist Rupert Thomson, this quality paperback edition of his psychological thriller, The Insult, is a fine point of entry. There are elements of both Franz Kafka and Raymond Chandler in the story, as Martin Blom--blinded by a shot to the head in a supermarket parking lot--finds out one night that he can actually see. Is it a result of what his doctors insist is a delusion often suffered by the newly blinded? Or does it have something to do with a bizarre experiment hidden in a secret file in a part of the hospital he accidentally stumbles upon? Martin is soon living on his own in a seedy hotel, using his unique night vision to explore adventures--social, criminal, and sexual--totally new to him. If The Insult gets you hooked on Thomson, Air & Fire is also available.

From Publishers Weekly

Thomson (Air and Fire) can certainly write up a storm. The young English novelist has a remarkable bag of tricks at his disposal, with a tinglingly fresh eye and ear for the most fleeting of sights and sounds and a dashing way with metaphor and imagery. At first, it looks as if his tale of Martin Blom, a young man in an unnamed country who is shot in the head one night and blinded, is going to be a sort of contemporary Kafka vision. Blom is treated in a strange institution by a sinister doctor. Then he finds he can see again, but only at night; fleeing to a dour capital city, he begins to organize his lonely life around that fact. It is when Blom meets and falls for the mysterious Nina, and she disappears, that The Insult begins to go off the rails. What had been an absorbingly macabre study in solitude veers, in its second half, into a histrionic family history of Nina that seems only steps away from Cold Comfort Farm. After that, it is impossible to rekindle the intense interest Thomson had originally ignited in Martin's story, and the book, for all its incandescent writing and malign urban atmosphere, peters out glumly.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (July 29, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679781501
• ISBN-13: 978-0679781509
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,406,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Subdued and dark character study of a damaged family history, January 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Insult (Paperback)

Martin Blom, victim of a random shooting, is rendered blind. As the story unwinds he finds he can see but only at night or in the dark. He begins to create a life around this odd existence. Moving slowly, narrating the story in 1st person, we are allowed to casually observe his meanderings and his eventual settling at a dingy hotel/brothel. Add to this neo-noir mix the beautiful mystery woman Nina, and her mildly twisted craving for Martin in his blindness. The later abrupt disappearance of Nina, coupled w/ suggested furtive movements by his ex-doctor, prompt Martin to head to remote locales in search of a family history which may explain Nina's whereabouts. The second part of the novel is the wistful recounting of Nina's grandmother's difficult life and how it eventually ties to Nina and threatens Blom himself. The style of narrative at the half-way point shifts to the grandmother, and it almost sounds like a different author. I found the story to be a similarly winding, round-about sort of mystery as Asylum by P. McGrath. The last hundred-plus pages were consumed in one sitting, as things began to rapidly unfold, I realized that Martin's story was now effectively secondary to the tragedy described by the grandmother. The tone and tragedy in this novel were subtle, and subdued. It did not produce a strong emotive response during the reading, one does not cheer for Martin, or feel for him in any way. He's a bit of an anti-hero, in the narrator vein of Poe's work. Every character here is broken in a way, which leads to a dulling moroseness in their interactions, which we watch in a detached clinical manner. Still, I found it an interesting work, to be read, if possible, on a rainy, grey day.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gradual Descent into Life, June 1, 2000

By 

A. R. Gray (The South) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Insult (Paperback)

A beautifully written text. Begninning with a bullet-shaped punch, Thompson introduces new elements of the tale at precisely the right moments - the main character's initial 'flaw' becomes his saving grace, but in the end only serves to guide him into another story, one of which even his condition could not be aware. A novel about what it is to be blind to life, instead of being blind to light.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting read..., September 8, 2000

By 

Amy T. Ruder - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Insult (Paperback)

If you've read the other reviews of this book, you already know that Martin Blom was "insulted" by a gunshot wound, leaving him blind by day but able to see nocturnally. This book is dark (pun intended) yet fun and witty. Very unreal but very real at the same time. Rupert Thomson is a masterful writer. He creates fascinating (albeit strange) characters more bizarre than you've read about before. The story twists and turns and ends up where you wouldn't expect it to (which I loved). He writes in a style that's easy to read and creates strong visuals of people and places and emotions. (I'm rather surprised by the other reviews that didn't like his character development or his writing style). It's erotic, eerie, off-beat and a really good read. Very cool- I'll be recommending it to my friends who like the unusual.