Customer Reviews

Life Expectancy: A Novel

5 star:		(164)
4 star:		(76)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

In the past fourteen years, I've read everything of Koontz's that I could get my hands on and, yet, he still managed to thrill me with Life Expectancy. It wasn't the plot, nor the diabolical twists and turns. You know, right away, when you sit down to read a Koontz book that he's going to take you on a fast, suspenseful ride. You know that the characters will be well-drawn and that you will be frightened out of your wits and that sometimes you will laugh until you cry. All of those expectations were met in this book. What I got online to tell you, fellow readers, is that instead of a suspense novel that you will read in a few hours and put away, you're getting a novel that will touch you in ways you'll never forget. And, what's more, Koontz accomplishes this by not being preachy at all. I adored the Tock family: Rudy and Maddy and Grandma Rowena, Weena; Jimmy (who's the hero), and his wife, Lorrie (who is one heck of a heroine). I disagree with the critic who said Koontz's humor was misplaced in this book. I loved their humor. As macabre as Grandma Weena's stories were, they were hilarious! These characters had a zest for living that was wonderful. No matter how horrible life sometimes got for them, they did not give up. Personally, that's the only way I know how to live. You don't give up in life, you just keep going and you WILL prevail! That's what I love the most about Koontz's books. His characters have human failings, but they possess indomitable spirits. You will laugh, and cry, and shout Hallelujah! when the bad guys get theirs. An all-around rousing tale that Grandma Weena, that teller of macabre tales, would be proud of. Some highpoints for me were: The prose--smooth as silk, concise, not a word wasted. The fact that the story was populated by a multicultural cast. Okay, I appreciate that in a popular novel. It's just more realistic to me to have people from all races in a story. Wait until you read the scenes in which Jimmy and Lorrie are in their SUV on the way to the hospital for her to give birth to their first child, when a maniac in a Hummer runs them off the road during a snowstorm. You'll feel like you're in the car with them! Kudos, Mr. Koontz.

On the stormy night that Jimmy Tock is born, not only does his dying grandfather correctly predict the facts of his birth, including the fact that he will be born with fused toes, but he also predicts that there will be five horrible days ahead in Jimmy's life.

Armed with the five dates, the adult Jimmy, now a baker by profession, must face those five days. As each date approaches, Jimmy feels the sword of Damocles dangling by an invisible thread over his head. What will each horrible day bring, and when during the day will the sword drop? Each chapter covers the time leading up to and through one of the prophesied days. Those days are horrible indeed. They are also interrelated and tied to a mysterious fact about Jimmy's birth that he has yet to discover.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I closed the cover of this book, but not because of the ending. I'm referring to the fact that Koontz has redeemed himself for his disappointing last book, "The Taking," with the suspenseful and surprise-filled "Life Expectancy." Koontz is the only horror writer I know who can seamlessly blend horror, humor, love, and hope. The only reason I did not give this book five stars is because I felt his trademark juxtaposition of horror and humor actually went a bit overboard at times. The story is full of twists and turns and tension-filled moments. It is populated with quirky characters including pastry chefs, a tornado chaser, a morbidly pessimistic Grandma, demented circus performers, and a pet portrait painter. Recommended as a riveting and satisfying read that both chills and radiates the warmth of a freshly baked loaf of bread.

Eileen Rieback

Having read just about everything Dean Koontz has written over the past twenty years I find one thread that ties them all together. I know that having been confounded by plot twists and turns all through the novel I will see the pages thinning and the end rushing toward me still not knowing how the story is going to end. And with each passing page I will think 'no way he can end this in the space he's got left'. Then I'll think, 'yes, he can. He always does.' And he will. Life Expectancy was slightly different. I thought that he had tied everything together and then noticed that there were still several pages left. Must be an epilogue, I thought. Right. An epilogue from hell that only Koontz could have come up with. And I should have known that syndactily meant more to Dean than just fused fingers...

If you are a longstanding Koontz fan like myself you will see echoes here of Odd Thomas and, more likely, Tick Tock (which, if there IS a God he will rerelease in hardcover). If this is your first Dean Koontz novel, then Prepare to be Enchanted.

In Snow Hospital in Snow County, Colorado, dying Josef Tock makes ten predictions about his unborn grandson who is also in the hospital about to leave the womb. Of the forecasts, the most ominous is that Jimmy will face five terrible days in his future. The sandwich generation Tock is Rudy who paces between the maternity and death wards until Jimmy is born at the same moment his father dies. Rudy soon learns how accurate the predictions are as Josef stated the height and weight of his grandson and that the child will need surgery to correct Syndactyl or call him Flipper. On that same day at the same location, a circus clown goes on a killing rampage.

Two decades later, Jimmy is in the library when seemingly the same clown from twenty years ago and two accomplices shoot the librarian and capture Jimmy and Lorrie Lynn Hicks. Explosives are placed in tunnels that link the library underground to the courthouse. Jimmy knows he will survive this ordeal because he believes terrible day two awaits him in the future. However, he ponders what could happen to those he cares about like Lorrie Lynn when a terrible day occurs and what will happen to him when terrible day five happens?

LIFE EXPECTANCY is a terrific suspense driven tale when it concentrates on knowing a segment of your future, but unable to do anything to thwart it except perhaps avoiding those you cherish. When the story line switches into grave humor such as the dialogues between Lorrie Lynn and Jimmy, it loses some of the tingling chills. Jimmy is terrific as the first person narrator, but though fans of Dean Koontz will enjoy this tale, the jocularity takes away from a powerful premise.

Harriet Klausner

I read all of Koontz's work but I was a little disappointed lately with his recent works. I was rewarded for my loyalty with this book. It is Koontz at his best like his work used to always be. The story is interesting as are the characters and the plot twists are nonstop and the ending of the book was extremely surprising. Jimmy Tock is a great character. He is my favorite except for Snowman who I wish would show up in another book. Jimmy's wife is a character that I found annoying but you can't have everything. At least Koontz makes the women in his book strong not weak sniveling little cowards. I highly recommend this book. It is a must read for mystery fans. It is more mystery than horror but that was ok with me since it was just such a great story. I couldn't put this book down. I am glad Koontz is back to his old standards.

At this point, it's hard to describe anything Koontz writes as completely original; he's written so many books that, any sort of criticism aside, you're bound to recognize certain plots and/or characters from previous books.

That said, "Life Expectancy" differs, in some ways, even more from the norm than did Koontz's previous offering, "The Taking." Perhaps the most obvious is the fact that this book is *not* set in Southern California, unlike nearly every book Koontz has written in the past decade. Likewise, the narrator and protagonist does *not* physically resemble Koontz, and there is little preaching or moralizing. [I did think of Dr. Evil midway through the book, though; if you've seen the first Austin Powers movie, you'll understand why.]

Jimmy Tock is a convincing narrator; while other reviewers have been put off by his tendency toward glib humor (it reminded me of some of the banter in "Cold Fire"), removing that humor would have made this book as bleak as "The Taking," which I really don't think Koontz wanted to do. [Personally, I would hope that, were I in Jimmy's place, I would be able to laugh on those "terrible days" as well.]

You can read the basic plot summary above, so I won't regurgitate that; let me simply say that I was constantly surprised by where the book is going. In particular, I didn't expect the final part to turn out as it did, especially after having read "Odd Thomas," so I must give Koontz credit for managing to pull one over on me.

This is another quick read; I read it cover to cover in just a few hours. I can certainly recommend this book to Koontz fans, and I'd suggest it even to people who aren't big fans of Koontz.

In Life Expectancy, Koontz steps into a region somewhere between the territories of John Irving and Jonathan Carroll, to create an unnerving and eerily surreal tale of a family of pastry chefs haunted by killer clowns.

Jimmy Tock is born on the day that Nixon resigns, and during the same minute his grandfather dies. Josef Tock, paralyzed by a stroke and lying on his deathbed in the same hospital, makes a series of predictions about the boy - his length and weight, that he will suffer from syndactyly (fused fingers and toes), and that there will be five terrible days in his life. He even predicts the dates, which his son Rudy dutifully writes down before returning to the maternity ward. Rudy arrives in the expectant fathers' waiting lounge just in time to see a clown shoot the doctor who has delivered their children.

Rudy manages to prevent the clown, Konrad Beezo, from shooting the rest of the hospital staff who he believes let his wife die in childbirth. Beezo escapes with his son Punchinello, swearing that he will become a great clown instead of an aerialist like his mother and grandfather, and Rudy takes Jimmy home to his own eccentric family.

Twenty years later, Jimmy and his family become nervous as the first of the five predicted 'terrible days' approaches. On that day, Jimmy ventures out to the library, where he sees a stranger shoot the librarian in cold blood as the first step in a plan to rob the local bank of three million dollars in fatigued currency. Jimmy is soon being held hostage by a trio of psychopathic plain-clothes clowns led by a spider-guzzling Punchinello Beezo, who is determined to blow up the entire town to avenge his mother's death. Within minutes, Jimmy finds himself chained to the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, and striving not to contradict to Punchinello's paranoid rendition of their respective family histories.

And that's just the first of the five terrible days. Over the next twelve years, Jimmy will have to fight to keep his own beloved family from being lethally entangled in the murderous feud between the Beezos and their acrobatic in-laws, the Flying Vivacementes. For their sake, he is sometimes forced to make bargains with self-deluding murderers, and eventually agrees to become an assassin in order to save one of his children.

Much of the fun in Life Expectancy - and for all its grand guignol horror elements, it is remarkably good fun - comes from the eccentricity of his larger-than-life characters. The self-effacing Jimmy narrates most of the novel, and light-heartedly expresses his regrets that his grandfather's vague predictions and his training as a pastry-chef have ill-prepared him for handling explosives and disarming gunmen. His mother paints portraits of pets, including gila monsters, and his grandmother delights in adding gruesome touches to children's stories. Jimmy worries that they're turning into the Addams family, until he learns that his wife-to-be Lorrie is the daughter of a professional snake-handler and a tornado-chaser.

Koontz also manages to make all four generations of the Tocks, and the other inhabitants of Snow Village, extremely likeable with remarkably few words - which makes the Beezos' murderous rampages all the more horrific. He's even more skilled when it comes to creating frightening villains, and Konrad and Punchinello Beezo may be the most terrifying clowns in literature since Stephen King's It manifested as the child-eating Pennywise.

Life Expectancy combines horror and humour and revels in its own over-the-top weirdness. It occasionally lapses into non sequitur for longer than it should (especially on the subject of pastries), and Lorrie is sometimes a little too quick with the witty lines... but for the most part, it keeps you off-balance so effectively that whenever you turn a page, you don't know whether you're about to laugh or shudder. Which makes it a near-perfect book for readers who enjoy doing both.

Only Koontz could make a funny-scary-spiritual book out of clowns and bakers (oh yeah, also snake charmers and storm chasers).

I must admit as I started this book I wondered if Mr. Koontz had lost it. I thought "if he were not famous, he would never get this thing published". Then I realized the narrative was being told by a clumsy guy with no real skill at anything but baking (and being), and as I began to understand his personality, it began to make sense and to become more of a work of art.

Another very enjoyable book, with a lot of sudden twists, by still one of my favorite writers. Thanks again for another good read (may there "always be cake") Mr. Koontz!

Wow! I thought Odd Thomas was never going to be beaten on my list of favorite Dean Koontz novels, but to me, Life Expectancy just blew that theory right out of the water. Koontz made me feel like I was right there with the characters. I had to stop myself from flipping through the pages to find out what was going to happen next. I'm glad I did, because I would have missed something in the process and there is no page in this book that should be missed.

Dean Koontz is such a gifted writer that just from reading his discription of the characters and their surroundings, I could actually smell the freshly baked pastries coming out of Jimmy Tock's oven. Every character becomes alive and it's almost as if you have known them all your life, or at least it leaves you wishing that you did.

There are 5 terrible days predicted for Jimmy Tock by his dying Grandfather and you live through each one right along with the whole Tock family. As you live through one date you can hardly wait to find out what will happen on the next. As Koontz leads you down one path you will be thinking that you know where you are heading, but the path has so many twists that you never end up where you think you are going to be.

May I suggest you start this book when you have plenty of time to spare, because you won't want to put it down once you begin the journey, and it's a journey that will leave quite a few snapshots in your mind. Enjoy the ride. I know I did.

What if you knew the dates for the 5 most horrible days of your life? How would you respond at 12:01 a.m. each time? This is the premise that Jimmy faces. Koontz, a master of suspense, mood, and language, creates situations of terror, none predictable.

By story's end, you won't look at clowns the same way. A satisfying read from beginning to end. If you like interesting characters (even some of the villans are charming), intense thrills, and a strong finish, Life Expectancy is a worthy read. Koontz has done it again!