The Prisoner [Hardcover]

Thomas M. Disch (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Dobson Books Ltd (March 30, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 023472059X
• ISBN-13: 978-0234720592
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice Change from the Ordinary Science Fiction, December 27, 2003

By 

Sissalou "sissalou" (SAINT CLAIR, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Prisoner (Paperback)

I thoroughly enjoyed Thomas M. Disch's book, "The Prisoner." Like some of the other reviewers, I watched many "The Prisoner" episodes on television several decades ago. As a youngster, I never understood the television series and I won't claim to understand this book, but I liked the show because it was a change from the "norm."

In a nutshell (pun intended), I enjoyed this book soley for its entertainment merit. I wasn't looking for something "new" that was not revealed in the television episodes. I was looking for a "story" and found one.

Do you want to buy this book? I would say "yes" if you are looking for a change of entertainment pace--regardless of the story itself and Note: you don't need to be familiar with the TV series to understand the story.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What is real? A meditation on individuality and free thought, January 13, 2011

By 

TChris (Tzer Island) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Prisoner: A Novel (Paperback)

Puzzling over their differing memories of their lives before arriving in the Village, Lorna (or is her name Liora?) asks: "What is real? Who am I? Do I wake or dream?" Those questions are at the heart of The Prisoner: both the original television series and Thomas Disch's novelization of the cult classic.

The television series can be viewed as anti-authoritarian, as a tribute to individuality and free thought, as an existential exercise in futility, as a statement about the nature of liberty and as a condemnation of secrecy and bureaucracy. It can be seen as a fable or an allegory. The great and maddening beauty of The Prisoner is that the audience was never given definitive answers: the location of the Village, the identities of the Village masters, the information the prisoner possessed and the reason for his resignation as a clandestine agent, whether the prisoner finally escaped ... we'll never know, and that's exactly what Patrick McGoohan wanted. (You don't have to believe me about this; you can read McGoohan's interview in The Prisoner: A Televisionary Masterpiece, a coffee table book that also includes a detailed episode guide.) Thomas Disch's novel captures the spirit of the television series, if not its scope.

That the book is a novelization of the show seems to have escaped some of the reviewers who gripe that the novel is too much like the show. What did they expect from a novelization? To be fair, the novel is not a scene by scene replay of the television series: it begins differently; the location of the prisoner's capture is altered; the prisoner's escape attempts in the first and second episodes are carried out more ingeniously in the novel; the woman who (supposedly) escapes in the second episode is replaced by an entirely new character in the book, a love interest who appears early in the novel. There are enough differences to make the novel fresh and appealing to the show's fans while remaining true to McGoohan's vision. And of course, with only 242 pages, the novel cannot cover all 17 episodes of the show; it wisely makes no attempt to do so.

Some reviewers complain that that the book doesn't answer the questions left unanswered by the series. Why would it? This is, again, a novelization of the series (it says so on the back cover). Why would the novel destroy the careful ambiguity of the original?

As for the reviewer who recommends the novel to "those who want a break from reading the dictionary," Disch always aspired to write literature, not the pulp fiction that characterized science fiction in the 1960's, when this novel was written. Instead of following the journalistic tradition of using words that are accessible to eighth graders, Disch makes use of the richness of the English language. The novel is beautifully written. Enlarging one's vocabulary by consulting a dictionary or the internet when encountering an unfamiliar word while reading a novel isn't really a bad thing.

My only complaint is that a 242 page novel can't do justice to the television series. As I said, Disch captured the spirit but not the scope of the original work. The novel is nonetheless well worth reading, for fans of the show and for those who have never seen it. I would give The Prisoner 4 1/2 stars if Amazon made that option available.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointing, August 10, 2003

By 

Peter L. Winkler "Word King" (North Hollywood, California USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Prisoner (Paperback)

I bought a used copy of Disch's Prisoner novel because I greatly enjoyed Disch's nonfiction book on sf, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, had never read his fiction, and also hungered for a new story about No. 6. This novel was a great disappointment. It seems to combine elements from several Prisoner TV episodes (like the dream visualization technique and the female doctor from A,B&C) to no great advantage. Apart from those elements, the story has no great premise or narrative drive, and even the conclusion was confusing. Disch may be a great prose stylist, but if he is elsewhere, he isn't here.