Customer Reviews

Night Work: A Novel

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

 

 

The back of the book says that this is a fast-paced read, that is a lie. This is a slow, evenly pace book of one character's strange and unusual meet up with an apocalyptic world.

The story includes no other characters besides Jonas, who wakes up in early July to find that there is no other living being on earth. He has no phone signal, no Internet, nothing. He then goes through a few hundred pages of experiences that are sometimes terribly drab, and other times filled with nightmarish escapades -- most of the nightmare stuff happens, not so ironically, when Jonas becomes the Sleeper.

Jonas has sleep disorders. On one hand, he is a sleep walker -- on the other, he is always tired. He conveniently finds everything he needs: Food, drink, clean clothing, cars, mopeds and trucks. The ease in which he finds everything at his disposal makes the narration more than unreliable, maybe absurd, I don't know.

As negative as this all might sound, I felt compelled to read the whole book. I didn't put it down and took it all in within a week and a half of train rides back and forth to work and sneaking in some reading at home at night. I liked it the most when Jonas was getting philosophical about his life, his love, his girlfriend, love. Everyone thinks about these things at one level or another, and Jonas should have contemplated more of this stuff instead of driving around Vienna.

I am not sure that I'd suggest this book to you -- it seems to me that there are more important pieces to take in dealing with one's thoughts on what makes one's life complete.

Night Work starts of well but never moves beyond setting the scene. It's like Thomas Glavinic read I am Legend by Richard Matheson and somehow convinced publishers he too could write a tale where just one guy seems to be left alive in the entire world. Unfortunately Glavinic really couldn't come up with anything after the main character (Jonas) worked out (and he's not too bright so it takes a while) that something quite weird has happened. Since the contract was already there, this obviously got published.

Basic plot is a young guy in Vienna, Austria awakens to discover the TV, Internet, phones and everything are out. His paper never arrives, nor does his bus. He has to come to terms with the fact that he may well be the last person on earth.

The book certainly isn't thrilling as advertised on the back cover as nothing ever really happens. Jonas is definitely no ordinary man as also mentioned either. As far as IQ points, he's lucky to have too many. Any ordinary man (or woman) would probably at the very least concentrate on how he's going to make fresh fruit and meat last as long as he can, maybe even how to plant the decaying stuff so he'll have more in the future, try and prepare for what he is going to do if he actually does run into other survivors (or aliens, vampires etc he doesn't know what happened) and other common sense stuff rather than watching videos. Plus the writing is a bit weak in setting the scenario, electricity still exists even though no one is around to run the plants, if it's still on after a day or two I'd be headed out to the power plant as obviously people are still alive out there.

So many mind debates could have happened with Jonas such as yeah I can now drive as fast as I want and through store windows and stuff without getting into trouble but hey what if injure myself, no one would come out along the rural highway and rescue me out in the middle of nowhere, no one to fix a broken leg. These sort of internal debates would have been great and what the story needed. I mean he just gets into a lift in the tallest tower in Vienna without debating the huge risks ie what if the power now stops and I get stuck, I'll be trapped inside forever, what are the benefits of going up there opposed to the real possibility I could get trapped. He just thinks, yeah the power may go off but I'll risk it.

It's just very weakly written, and Jonas just keeps doing the same thing each day just at a slightly different location. This gets boring real fast, I mean I've been to all the places he goes and there's a bit of I remember that place but even that novelty wears out real fast and if you haven't been to Europe you wouldn't even have that to make it more interesting. I mean videotaping yourself, is this all the author could come up with. Give this a miss, if you haven't already done so go and grab a copy of Richard Matheson's I am Legend (it's a totally different and way better plot than the pathetic Will Smith movie of the same name) and read that instead.

The protagonist, Jonas, awakes one morning to find that all other people, as well as all animals, have vanished. Now the suspenseful question is, what is the author going to do with this for 400 pages?

At first, the answer seems: not much. With all other people gone, Jonas soon turns inward. He visits places associated with his past. He makes video recordings of himself sleeping. (What? Why?)

Gradually, a second character emerges: The Sleeper, Jonas's somnambulistic alternate personality; Jonas often wakes up feeling completely unrefreshed and finds that his sleepwalking self has been out and about wreaking havoc, sometimes directly opposing what Jonas has been trying to do while awake.

Although the middle half of the book is kind of slow and boring, the last quarter is strong, and worth sticking it out for.

This isn't a science fiction novel. No attempt is made to explain why everyone vanished; and various things are not completely unrealistic: utilities continue to function, and the world looks basically as it did before, except that it is very quiet. In real life, if all people suddenly vanished, then the works of humankind would rapidly start to deteriorate: the electricity would go out, tunnels would flood, oil refineries might blow up, fires would rage out of control, etc. (Compare the book "The World Without Us".) In addition, with all animal life gone, the ecosystem would collapse. But that's not really the point of this book. This book is about the psychology of extreme loneliness. As such, it is easy to suspend belief and focus on Jonas's inner struggle. (There are also hints that the whole thing could be a fantasy, perhaps Jonas's life flashing before his eyes immediately before he dies. But it doesn't really matter.)

Anyway, I recommend this book if you would like to read something unusual and disturbing and don't mind the slow pace.

I had great hopes for this book as I enjoy reading other perspectives on what the world would be like if it suddenly lost all it's people. The problem with the book is that the writer writes the same passages over and over again without any resolution to anything. It reads as if the writer reaches a point in the story and does not know where to take it from there...so he just leaves it hanging. It lacks descriptions of the character's emotional responses to being the only one left on earth. There is so much one could do with that and the result is the character lacks depth. The ending is disappointingly cliche. I did finish the book and found the second half tortuous as I tried to rush to the finish to "get it over with". I do not recommend this book...your time reading is much better spent on a better piece of writing.

Night Work is an interesting idea. What if you woke up and you were alone? Completely alone. Everything is gone. Animals, insects, birds, nothing. Just you. What would you do in an empty world? That's a great premise for a novel. Unfortunately, this book just wanders all over. Which I guess is supposed to depict what you'd do if you were the last person alive.

I wanted to like this book. I really, really did. But there was just too much of "I drove over here and did this. Then I drove over here and did that." Over and over and over again. It didn't seem plausible that there was not a breakdown above and beyond what does happen. And there just isn't much in the way of soul searching until the end. Long story short, I just didn't find it that believable that a person in that situation would do what the main character does. I realize this is a work of fiction but it's still got to pull you in. This doesn't.

Despite its high marks, as an apocalyptic novel this one fails miserably. I can't figure out the protagonist's point of view, is he a ghost? Has something really happened to every living thing on Earth except him and it's unexciting? Is he in an alternate reality? As a psycho-drama it fails as well - why does the protagonist seem to accept the situation with little more than detached interest? I read and speak German - perhaps it works better in that language but in English, it was a waste of time.

"Glavinic creates a more subtle if no less nightmarish mood than such similar books as The Day of the Triffids and I Am Legend."--Publishers Weekly

So subtle I nearly nodded off on several occasions. And any similarities to Triffids or Legend are limited at best. Seriously, I was cared so little for the lead/only character that it was a real challenge to make it to the end of this book.

So one fine summer day in Vienna, Jonas wakes up and finds all humans, animals, and insects gone, replaced by only dead silence and stillness under the cloudless blue sky.

Now if you're the type of post-apocalyptic fan looking for Matheson-style monster-whacking, this is not the book for you. "Night Work" is acutely psychological, focusing on Jonas's memories and his relationships to the now-vanished people. It is also paranoid and even vaguely grotesque, recalling that famous image of the last man on Earth, sitting alone in his room and suddenly hearing a knock at the door. There is another version of that, which imagines the last man on Earth, sitting alone in his room, with a LOCK on his door. Against what? The loneliness closing in on all sides? Or. . . ?

When there are no fellow humans to contend with, what are other potential sources of conflict? Who or what could be your enemy?

In essence: the point of "Night Work" is not so much what does happen but what could happen, especially once the line between the internal and the external has been blurred, and it turns out that conflict with yourself can be as intense as clashing with other individuals, especially in a world gone horribly wrong. The juxtaposition of a massive, sudden trauma (everyone on the planet is mysteriously gone) and the subsequent lack of any human interaction whatsoever eventually leads Jonas to turn on himself. His personality splits between "Jonas" and "the Sleeper" - the nickname he gives his own sleeping image on the camera he set up after noticing unsettling changes in the apartment, despite the locked doors and windows. All Jonas remembers of the nights are haunting, surreal dreams, but the Sleeper is clearly challenging him, thwarting his plans and engaging in bizarre and increasingly menacing behavior.

Jonas's waking hours, meanwhile, are dominated by mounting paranoia driven by both his nightmarish situation and his own fevered imagination. He thinks he hears sounds or notices movement out of the corner his eye. At one point, walking down a street, he envisions a woman with no face waiting for him behind a nearby van. Then he develops his own version of ManBearPig.

Glavinic's book is ultimately a study on the power of fantasy. Jonas often meditates on a world - revealed by his many video cameras - that exists even when there are no humans around to see it. (If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?) He recreates his family and friends out of his memories of childhood, travel, dating, and ordinary moments. ("These fragments I have shored against my ruin. . .") Do humans make the world or does the world make humans? Jonas watches film after film of empty scenery, and yet his own subconscious concocts threats and hazards - physical and imagined - that do not exist.

"Night Work" is by far one of THE creepiest books I have ever read. It has a couple of irritating plot holes in that the water and electricity continue to function perfectly; plus, a world without insects is ecologically impossible. But none of that detracts from the overall story, which is gripping and fast-paced, despite its complete lack of action. Again, it probably isn't the post-apocalyptic book for everyone, but I found Glavinic's subtle, understated atmosphere far, far scarier than any shambling corpse or pessimistic war/environmental cautionary tale. "Night Work" is both an awesome book and an original take on the post-apocalyptic genre.

One day Jonas wakes up and finds all animal life on earth is gone. At first, it seems like this novel is potentially much like Matheson's "I Am Legend," or perhaps "The Langoliers" by Stephen King. I kept waiting for something to happen. My wait lasted for 375 pages.

The real problem with this novel is that nothing really happens. Jonas breaks into a lot of places, does some silly things that you could only do if the world is empty, and thinks about all the things that he did before everyone disappeared. At first, I was hoping Jonas would discover something interesting. I am unsure when I realized that nothing was ever going to happen. When I realized that nothing was ever going to happen, the only thing that kept me going was the need to be sure that nothing was ever going to happen. By the way, the ending suggests a possibility, but the possibility is subtle and I could be wrong.

Much of the story is psychological. What does one do when one is asleep? Why does one do what one does when one is asleep? These obviously deep issues and others fill untold pages in this novel. I wonder whether anyone cared about Jonas's psychological issues. I know I lost interest pretty quickly.

The story has some issues. All animal life has disappeared, and yet stuff seems to be spoiling. Does that mean the disappearances somehow missed bacteria? Jonas also caught a cold well past the time of incubation for viruses. If there is no one to transmit a disease, how did Jonas get it? It seems like power should be going down in some places, and yet everything works just fine. Many radio stations are pre-programmed, and even though power and phones seems to work, pre-programmed radio stations do not? There are other strange inconsistencies, but this should give you an idea that maybe Jonas's new world might not be the end of the world after all, but some sort of dimension like that King portrayed in "The Langoliers." However, we may never know for sure.

By the time I reached the end, I was sad that the story took so long to reach something, even if the something was unsatisfactory. Had the story been 20, 30 or even 50 pages long, I think I would have been a lot happier. Sorry, Jonas, but your mental mumblings and strange behaviors while you sleep did not fascinate me. It was interesting for a little while, but since it led nowhere, it got old way too quick.

The bottom line is that this story not fascinating or fast-paced. It is boring and slow. It is about 350 pages too long, give or take. It might have made a decent short story, but a novel?

Good luck!

My thanks to the author's representative for providing me with a review copy of this book.

It seems as if a lot of what other people disliked about NIGHT WORK are the things that most impressed me.

By now you know the basic premise, so I won't bother with a summary. The main character is, truly, as dumb as a sack of hammers in many ways. He takes risks that are totally unnecessary. He gets into elevators, taking it for granted that the electricity will continue humming along.

By the way, in the original DAWN OF THE DEAD the electricity stayed on because the nuclear power plant nearby continued to operate on 'autopilot' without any human interference.

Reading this, I kept thinking about what I would have done in his situation. But his situation is so unique that I can't really say that I would be as brilliant and logical as I normally am in that situation.

The jacket blurb compares it to I AM LEGEND and DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS but, really, there isn't anything I can come up with that's a valid comparison. The closest I could come up with is THE ROAD.

This is a great book for adventurous readers. Enjoy.