Customer Reviews

Nerve Damage

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Sometimes the dead live on in your dreams."

A nice start to the first suspense novel I've opened in years.

I pressed on.

It turns out that Roy Valois is dreaming of Delia. He reaches out to touch her hair. Ooops. It's Jen in his bed, and, first thing in the morning, she has news: She's been offered a job running the ski school in Keystone. That's in Colorado. Right now, they're living in Vermont. A significant distance. Especially because they've been dating for two years --- and marriage is very much on his mind. Roy calls and reserves a table at the town's best restaurant for dinner a few days later. This won't be like the last time, in the tiny Washington apartment, when he just blurted out his proposal to Delia.

I look up. I've read two-and-a-half pages in less than a minute, and I already know a great deal.

In another paragraph I know more. Roy lives in a barn he bought with Delia. He's a sculptor, working in large slabs of metal. Delia was an economist at the Hobbes Institute, a think tank that focuses on third world problems.

But enough of the past. Roy's working on a masterpiece that he's named after his late wife. (She died, Peter Abrahams tells us almost as an aside, fifteen years ago, in a helicopter crash off Nicaragua on a trip to convince farmers to plant pineapples.) He also plays amateur hockey. And is soon reminded of a famous goal he scored in college.

Will that glorious undergraduate moment be mentioned in his New York Times obituary --- or will it be art art art? Obits of the famous generally are written years, even decades, before the actual death; a local kid volunteers to hack into the newspaper's files. He finds Roy's obit: no mention of the hockey goal. But there is an incorrect description of Delia. According to the Times, she was employed by the United Nations, not the Hobbes Institute. Roy's annoyed by that mistake. So he calls the Times reporter and....

And now an hour has gone by and I've read a third of the book. (This doesn't happen when I'm reading James Salter.) Another 90 minutes and I'm done. The sun is now angled low, the afternoon has cooled. But I've read an exciting book and I'm red hot.

Who is Peter Abrahams? Stephen King's favorite suspense writer. Well, lucky me: I started at the top. I check out his web site, where he lists his literary influences:

Nabokov is one of my favorites. The sheer brilliance! He makes it look so easy....Closer to my own field, I've been influenced by Graham Greene...

Greene, I'd expect. But Nabokov? To love "Pale Fire" and then write suspense thrillers?

I'm not going to argue. Peter Abrahams has written 18 novels so far. A cursory scan of the reviews suggests they're uniformly superior. I have my work --- correction: my pleasure --- cut out for me.

In an interview, Peter Abrahams once said that his one main rule for writing is, "Do something original on every page." NERVE DAMAGE is another excellent illustration of this rule in practice. The story of an artist racing against terminal illness to discover the truth behind his wife's death, the novel is insanely smart and furiously compelling with dialogue that crackles like a sparkler; but as always the real treat is the writing. Never fancy, always cat-quick and often snort-your-soda funny, Abraham's prose moves like judo across the page, using the weight of the reader's interest to propel the tale forward without ever seeming to break a sweat. His protagonist's vision of the world, precisely observed and wholly unsentimental, rings fundamentally true, and Abrahams uses the least assuming details to enormously successful effect.

If NERVE DAMAGE is your first Abrahams book, I envy you -- it's like walking into a bar, sitting down and having the Beatles in their prime come up onstage for an unannounced set of their greatest songs, playing for two hours and packing up their kits. Abrahams is the consummate pro.

First Sentence: Sometimes the dead live on in your dreams.

Metal sculptor Roy Valois has just finished a masterful piece of sculpture he names for his late wife, Delia and plays an exceptional game during his local hockey night. When talking with a friend and wondering whether his goal that night would someday be mentioned in his obituary, he solicits the help of a young geek to look it up. However, his surprise comes when he sees they've listed Delia's job as being with the UN and not with a private think tank. In trying to clear up this "mistake," the reporter is murdered and it soon become clear someone doesn't want Roy questioning the past.

Abrahams writes very good psychological/political suspense. In Roy, he has created a character for whom we quickly come to care. He is realistic both as an artist who sees the flaws in his work where others see the perfections, and as a man who still loves playing hockey, still grieves the loss of his wife and is thrown into desperation when he finds he has an incurable cancer. Abrahams has created an excellent race against time and conveys Roy's frustration beautifully. The plot, as the story progresses, does go over the top but it certainly didn't slow down my reading. If you're looking for an exciting one-sitting read or a great airplane book, this is it.

I bought this book based on the reviews and was somewhat disappointed. The mystery was good and it was because of this that I continued to read to the end. However, the dialog was exceptionally poor. It was unoriginal and repetitive. In fact, it was so bad that it made Ray appear as if he were developmentally disabled although you know he's not. If you can get past the dialog, it's a good read.

If you're famous, the New York Times already has your obituary written. It's kept on hand and updated whenever something momentous happens in your life. Roy Valois, the main character in Peter Abrahams' latest thriller, Nerve Damage, is famous. Not the Entertainment Tonight kind of famous, but well known in art circles as a metal sculptor on the rise. When a chance comment and an artist's curiosity lead him to peek at his obituary, he finds an error there, not about himself, but about his late wife. She worked for a think tank in Washington DC, not the UN. When he tries to correct the error he's chastised for the minor system break-in and told that it is not an error. If anyone checks facts it's the New York Times (and Santa, with those good and bad lists). The more he tries to convince them by "proving" she worked for the think tank, the more difficult his effort becomes.

In the middle of his quest the artist discovers he has only months to live because of early exposure to asbestos. He's about to die, and now it seems increasingly possible that the wife he loved never did die in the helicopter accident her "employer" told him about. So, couldn't she pick up a phone? Maybe drop him a line?

The action in the book is believable, for the most part. We care about Valois and even some of the minor characters. The ending we're sure will happen doesn't, at least not exactly. A solid enough read that will lead me to taste the writer's previous books, which some reviewers found superior to this one. If that's so, it's an experience to look forward to.

I love Peter Abrahams and think he is a very talented writer. That said, this particular story is not up to his standards. I could not get past the fact that I did not believe that the protagonist, given his condition in the story, would be able to do everything he does in his pursuit of the truth of what happened to his wife years before. As the book went on, I had more and more trouble believeing the man capable of a lot of the physical action required of him let alone the tremendous mental strain he was under. There was also too many coincidences in the story to tie up loose ends. There have been many instances of stories where the main character is "fighting the clock" to solve a mystery that have been told much better and with more believable characters. Hopefully, Mr. Abraham's next novel will be a return to form.

In Peter Abraham's new thriller, "Nerve Damage," Roy Valois is a forty-seven year old sculptor living in Vermont. Although he never completely recovered from the sudden death of his wife, Delia, fifteen years earlier, Roy has been dating a ski instructor and he is thinking of popping the question. However, terrifying medical news from his doctor changes Roy's plans. Not only does he begin a fight to regain his health, but, quite by chance, he also discovers that Delia had been lying to him about her job. Roy is determined to find out what Delia was really doing while she pretended to be an economist for a think tank. His investigation leads him down a frightening, unpredictable, and dangerous road.

The first half of the book is terrific. Roy is a sweet and likeable guy and his plight is poignant. When Delia was killed, allegedly in a helicopter crash in Venezuela, the news hit him very hard. Now that he suspects Delia was living a secret life, should he try to forget about the past and concentrate on his suddenly precarious health, or should he pursue the question of who his wife really was? What does Roy stand to gain by asking questions, when the answers will likely to bring him even more pain?

Abrahams humanizes Roy and makes the reader empathize with this down-to-earth individual. When he isn't laboring over his sculptures made from scrap metal, Roy is a hockey nut who still loves playing the game with his blue collar friends. A few other notable characters are: Skippy, a high-school dropout and computer hacker (why does every novel these days have the obligatory computer hacker?) whom Roy briefly takes under his wing; Krishna Madapan, Roy's mink-clad and pretentious art dealer; Dr. Chu, a compassionate physician who tries to help the increasingly desperate Roy; and the lovely and brilliant Delia, who still inhabits Roy's thoughts night and day, even though she is long gone. A series of intimate scenes in flashback gives readers a glimpse of Roy's loving relationship with his wife.

"Nerve Damage" works well for a while. Roy is increasingly puzzled as he tries to trace Delia's history, and Abrahams perfectly captures the agonizing psychological state of an individual whose back is firmly pressed against the wall. The plot is, at first, engrossing and suspenseful, especially since there is a possibility that Roy is hallucinating because of a medication that he is taking. However, the book loses steam and a great deal of verisimilitude when it degenerates into standard action-adventure fare. The conclusion, unfortunately, is way over the top; it is a disappointing finale, particularly in light of the book's intriguing, original, and moving premise.

What can I say about Abrahams that I've never said before? Beyond a doubt he is one of the best suspense writers of the past twenty years, and I can't think of many in the past century that I prefer. His plots are labyrinthine and his twists and turns razor sharp, but he never leaves the reader behind in a spurt of cleverness. We always feel that we''re discovering the buried secrets with the same alacrity as his endearing everyday heroes and heroines. There are no loose ends anywhere, for he makes every word count like the most brilliant poets and aphorists. Plus, even at their worst, his people are real, you might meet them every day at the grocery store--or at Tiffanys I suppose for his superrich. But most of his men and women are just scraping by, emotionally if not financially.

Take Roy Valois, the sculptor hero of his latest novel NERVE DAMAGE. Valois is a successful artist by any measure, sort of a heroic Richard Serra type whose huge metal constructions have won him a museum following and a devoted gallerist (Krishna his name is) who performs the lowly functions like courting collectors and taking off his fifty per cent off the top. Roy is dating an attractive ski instructor, Jen (sort of a Jen Aniston type) and thinking of asking for her hand in marriage, but if he's honest with himself, he knows that he's not 100% over with the memory of Delia Stern, the wife who died in a tragic chopper crash some fifteen years ago, in Venezuela, where she was working as an enonomist on the staff of the Hobbes Institute, a nonprofit think tank dedicated to alleviating hunger and global warming in Third World countries. Roy works far from New York, in a foundry slash studio in far off, small town Vermont, where the townspeople respect him almost as much as if he was a native. Suddenly bits and pieces of his marriage to Delia come flooding into his brain, and he begins suffering from a peculiar sort of nerve damage that affects his appetite and his sleep patterns.

If you've read OBLIVION, you'll see why I think NERVE DAMAGE the other side of OBLIVION's coin. In OBLIVION, our hero suffered from a weird progressive amnesia, in which he forgot more and more everyday, until like the hero of MEMENTO he had to write down everything he knew in a way that would make sense to him when he regained his powers of thought. In NERVE DAMAGE, Roy's loss is even more keen, for he becomes convinced that his beloved wife might be nearer to him than he knows, if only he can live long enough to find her, to sense her presence with the same acute knowledge with which he's lived all these years in her absence. A New York Times reporter, working on a standard obituary for Roy, becomes involved in the mystery regarding Delia's death, and this fellow and his boyfriend, Jerry, find themselves up to their necks in an unbelievable intrigue. It's simple to say, you won't be able to put this book down, but please, those of you who are involved in relationships, or those of you with pets, take good care not to ruin your love lives, nor punish your pets, by refusing to budge until you've finished the last page! I nearly did both, and yes, it was worth it!

I can't say much for the plot because I was too busy with the eye twitch I got from the stunted dialogue. Getting any information from any of the characters was like pulling teeth. The one sentence answers made me think of reading a Hemingway book. Plus the characters must be morons:

Generic Example:

Where did you get the car?

Car?

The one you were driving to the store.

Store?

Harris Teeters. I saw you coming out with a bag of groceries.

Groceries?

For the love of all that is holy stop answering a question with another question!!! I almost threw the book across the room!

As I listened to this book I trudged along wanting to see how the author would work it all out...and that's the only reason I finished it.

I have to agree that the diaglogue is rather stilted (as another review stated "don't answer a question with a question" -- so much of that!!) The main character has very few redeeming qualities...he seems to be out of touch with the world, very assured of his own opinions and beliefs, and in denial about so much in and around him. And his naivete, for someone of his age and experience, is astounding.

I listened to this book and the meandering story could have been told in three fewer CDs and would have been much more interesting.