Journal of a UFO Investigator: A Novel [Hardcover]

David Halperin (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 3, 2011

A sparkling debut novel set in the sixties about a boy's emotional and fantastical journey through alien worlds and family pain.

Against the backdrop of the troubled 1960s, this coming-of-age novel weaves together a compelling psychological drama and vivid outer-space fantasy. Danny Shapiro is an isolated teenager, living with a dying mother and a hostile father and without friends. To cope with these circumstances, Danny forges a reality of his own, which includes the sinister "Three Men in Black", mysterious lake creatures with insectlike carapaces, a beautiful young seductress and thief with whom Danny falls in love, and an alien/human love child who-if only Danny can keep her alive-will redeem the planet. Danny's fictional world blends so seamlessly with his day-to-day life that profound questions about what is real and what is not, what is possible and what is imagined begin to arise. As the hero in his alien landscape, he finds the strength to deal with his own life and to stand up to demons both real and imagined. Told with heart and intellect, Journal of a UFO Investigator will remind readers of the works of Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Religion scholar Halperin’s rollicking first novel set amid the turbulent 1960s recounts the story of Danny Shapiro, an imaginative teenage loner and self-proclaimed UFO investigator from a small town near Philadelphia. While his ailing Jewish mother and bitter Baptist father struggle to get along, Danny’s got his own problems. He and his best friend love the same girl, and while Danny continues to believe in the unexplained, his friends have become increasingly skeptical. But when someone breaks into the Shapiro house and steals Danny’s book about his encounter with the Three Men in Black, his fantastical world becomes very real. His investigations lead him to a small group of paranormal researchers, including fanatical Julian and lovely but dangerous Rochelle, and an exciting world where everyone, whether his good friends or the airport security guards, become dubious. A thrilling romp through the domain of aliens and spacecraft, Halperin’s highly entertaining coming-of-age tale poses questions about the real and the imagined and suggests that fusing the two might be the only way to survive adolescence. --Jonathan Fullmer

Review

''What's in this book? What isn't? History, mystery -- even aliens, for God's sake. The most compelling and original coming-of-age story I've read in a long time.'' --Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish

''Journal of a UFO Investigator is a remarkable book. Part science fiction, part novel of growing up, part surrealist voyage into the imagination, it is a disconcerting and satisfying experience.'' --Iain Pears, New York Times bestselling author --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (February 3, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670022454
• ISBN-13: 978-0670022458
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,395,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Back in the 1960s, I was a teenage UFO investigator. I grew up to become a professor of religious studies--my specialty, religious traditions of heavenly ascent.

After publishing five scholarly books, I came to realize there were things I wanted to say about faith, and the loss of faith, that couldn't be said in academic writing. That's why I started writing fiction.

"Journal of a UFO Investigator" is my first novel. I draw on my "UFOlogy" background to speak about faith and illusion, and the illusions we create to ward off the inevitability of death. Find out more at www.davidhalperin.net.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The portal beckons. Step inside the fluorescent disk. February 6, 2011

By Bryan Gilmer

Format:Hardcover

What an achievement - this novel is somehow imaginative, fantastic and escapist while also being dark, weighty, painful, realistic and deeply personal. The book offers the intricate characterizations and the emotional and spiritual exploration of a serious literary novel while avoiding the trap so many of them fall into: bloodless, plotless, morose, wallowing and static scenes and prose. Instead, a relentless, tense, dynamic narrative pulls us at the pace of a thriller through through two continents to the novel's satisfying resolution.

The first-person protagonist is 1960s high school outcast Danny Shapiro, a Jew at a gentile school trapped in a dysfunctional family with a terminally ill mom and an angry, resentful father filled with contempt for his son's UFO obsession. Danny loses his eighth-grade best friend when they both like the same girl, whom Danny passes up a chance to dance with because he believes that having a shiksa girlfriend might literally kill his mother. Danny tortures himself over this moment of cowardice for years. World events intensify his angst. The U.S. and Soviet Union nearly annihilate the planet in a showdown over Cuba; President Kennedy is assassinated, and Israel goes to war, all as his mother's health worsens by the day.

Danny does not explode nor numb himself with drugs. Instead, he sinks down, down, DOWN into his own psychic hellscape, spending his tortured, sleepless nights a thin wall away from his mother's labored breathing, sheltering himself in the circle of light beneath his desk lamp, setting down in his journal a fantastic alternate narrative of the past few years of his life. In his journal, he is an unjustly tormented yet heroic UFO investigator assisted by a loyal mentor and friend, desired by a conveniently Jewish seductress and chosen by an alien race ...

But you'll see. You're in no way prepared for the world(s) you'll enter when you open this book. I marvel at its ambition. And I'm in awe that Halperin not only pilots this mysterious spaceship to accomplish its several missions -- but even figures out how to land it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Works on many levels April 14, 2012

By Lewis Shiner

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Halperin gets it both ways in this fine book, which purports to be the novel that a teen Ufologist is writing, detailing his imagined encounters with deros, aliens from inside Earth. The postmodern premise is not an excuse for lazy writing, however--quite the contrary. The narrator's "real" history becomes at times inextricably tangled with his fantasies, resulting in both a deeply moving coming of age story and a satisfying UFO adventure, both of them well written, thoroughly researched, and believable only when they're supposed to be.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Combining the Jewish Mystical Tradition with the SciFi Canon August 28, 2011

By jlove

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

First a disclaimer: I had the honor, privilege and pleasure of studying with David Halperin when he was a grad student at UC-Berkeley, so it is true that I am not an unbiased reader. That said, I paid for my copy of the book, would do so again, and will probably buy a few more to give to my friends.

The subjects that David mastered are not easy. Jewish mysticism has soared into the cosmos since at least the time of the prophet Ezekiel. The rabbinic fantasies he studied are entirely non-linear and often without obvious meaning. The authors of these fantasies are fluid, and the reader frequently loses track of who is speaking. In a sense, David recreated this fluidity of tradition and authorship and then transformed the style into settings he drew from more the more modern SciFi mythologies of post WWII America. Readers need not be concerned if they are not schooled in the esoterica of Chariot Mysticism as they are likely to be familiar with these motifs from their modern origins in Amazing Stories to their more recent adaptations such as The X-Files and Men in Black.

While David is a scholar, and while many of the themes he covers are dark, this is not at all a depressing or dreary tome. It is more of a wild ride that will keep you guessing to the very end. And unlike many of the passages of David's research, this book does draw its themes together to a highly satisfying conclusion.