Julian Solo [Hardcover]

Shelly Reuben (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1988

10th Anniversary Edition of JULIAN SOLO.

In 1817, Mary Shelley looked beneath life's surface. What she saw were passionate people with unquenchable thirsts for knowledge, and tragic characters caught in the swirling momentum of a scientist who felt compelled to create. Mary Shelley gave us Dr. Frankenstein.

Now another Shelly peers into life's hidden depths to question and to probe.

JULIAN SOLO is a novel about a brilliant scientist who died...and yet lives, and who, having experienced this impossible transition, seeks to recreate the circumstances again and again.

Why cannot we use death to prolong life? Julian Solo asks. Why cannot death be made to serve, instead of to obliterate? Why cannot a man reach, with his hands and his heart, into that abyss from which there is no return, to defy death, overcome death, defeat death -- for the sake of the woman he loves?

Julian Solo is a man of integrity, an honorable scientist, a medical man on whom we can rely. He has given us his solemn promise that we can trust him.

His purpose is to conquer death and his journey is into the void. He wants us to come with him.

This is a book no reader will forget.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The eponymous hero of this gothic-like mystery is a modern variant of mad scientist, an ambitious and attractive psychobiologist doing research in a psychiatric hospital on Roosevelt Island. The story begins, however, after Solo's death, and is narrated by his accused killer, his stepson Mathew Wylie, whose mother, recently married to Solo, is also dead, or in a state quite similar. Solo's research focused on what he called cryogenic catalystic serum, an injection of which could slow bodily processes to a death-like state of suspended animation. When his new wife develops symptoms of a neurological disease with no known cure, Solo steps up his efforts in the laboratory and, throwing off all scientific restraint, injects both himself and his wife with CCS. But Mathew, who has been investigating Solo's increasingly strange behavior with the collaboration of family friends, interrupts this experiment midway. Via diary entries, letters, lab reports and the like, the story of Julian Solo's obsession takes the reader through the boroughs of New York, from a lovely old house overlooking the Verrazano Narrows to abandoned institutions on Roosevelt Island. This is an admirable debut.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"More than a mystery, this is a love story, a series of love stories... This is Shelly Reuben's first novel." -- The Armchair Detective

"This novel, by Shelly Reuben, is written in the classical tradition that inspired directors like Hitchcock and Huston..." -- Laissez Faire Books --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1 pages
• Publisher: Dodd Mead; 1st edition (April 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0396092837
• ISBN-13: 978-0396092834
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,374,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars "Why cannot we use death to prolong life?", June 1, 2006

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Julian Solo (Paperback)

Julian Solo, Reuben's first novel, harkens back to the days of Robin Cook and Michael Crichton's early medical thrillers, the murky laboratories of scientists obsessed with the key to eternal life, in this case cryogenics. The story takes place in the not-too-distant past, but before much of the current technology we enjoy today. There are no cell phones, no personal computers, just the strange and hallowed halls of Roosevelt Island Psychiatric Hospital, where a surgeon, Julian Solo, becomes fascinated by his studies of the hypothalamus, concocting a serum he believes can postpone death indefinitely.

All this would be academic had he not fallen in love with Cynthia Wylie, who is suddenly afflicted with symptoms that suggest a degenerative nerve disease. Hopelessly in love with his new wife, Julian turns his back on the obvious adoration of his secretary, Melanie Graice, to whom he entrusts all the details of his extensive research and correspondence. As the novel opens, Cynthia's son, Mathew, awaits word of his fate, the unwitting victim of circumstances beyond his control. Mathew has faced the truth and found it wanting; he has demanded an accounting of events that have spiraled into a dazzling mix of intentions, good and ill, a potential scientific breakthrough and a flawed experiment.

Weaving a small cast of characters into an intricate web of dreams come true and nightmares awakened, Reuben ponders the dark side of power, tampering with fate and the loss of perspective occasioned by excessive love. When human failings intervene, as they always will, the possible becomes grotesque and circumstances run amok, diluting the purity of science, tainting all. The prose is archaic, a little tortured, which only serves to emphasize the unsettling ambiance of this bizarre and prescient tale. In a mix of chilling journal entries, the story takes shape, step by step closer to the tragic denouement, the great folly of Julian Solo. Luan Gaines/ 2006.