Customer Reviews

Lights Out in the Reptile House: A Novel

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Jim Shepard creates a believable state recently taken over by a violent totalitarian regime. The state could be just about anywhere, and sounds Mediterranean...Carribean...Eastern European...Central African...South American...East Asian... or perhaps Middle Eastern. Well, I suppose it could just about happen anywhere. It contains elements of all of the worst paranoid dictatorships of recent history: Communist purges, Fascist tortures, Nazi destructiveness, fundamentalist repeals of freedom and I-know-what-is best-4-U censorship. Add to this mix 15-year old Karel Roeder who lives with his unemployed and distant father.

Karel could be a lot of 15-year old boys-to-men in any culture, still a child, coming to manhood slowly with no guidance. Seeking comfort and stability he's not frequently known, trying to be a man, trying to figure out his place in the world and his society. His interests are mainly the reptiles in the zoo where he is apprenticed to herpatologist Albert, and his childhood family friend and budding anti-regime activist Leda, on whom he is developing a serious crush.

This tale follows Karel through the losses and destruction of the few things important to him. Very descriptive, a well told story, frightening in its starkness. Hints of the film "Brazil". Be afraid.

This novel is set in a fictional police state- a sort of Austro-Hungary in the tropics. It follows a lead character's brush with the authorities, and a deepening entanglement with the opposition. There isn't a "Hollywood" ending, which is also refreshing.