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5.0 out of 5 stars
Second Chances: Two Sides of the Same Page,
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This review is from: Second Life: Success and Failure Are But Two Sides of the Same Page (Paperback)
What if you had the chance to start all over again? Would you take it? Would you give up the person you now are, if you had a chance at a second life? What if you did, only to discover that the "second life," wasn't all that it was cut up to be-then, what would you do? These are questions and hard choices that the main character, Dr. Harold Glockner, of Herman Franck's short but thoroughly enjoyable novel Second Life is forced by circumstances (of a supernatural sort) to face. The choices we make shape our lives, and there is often not very much that separates who ultimately become either successes or failures. Even when we are guided by angels, the final choice is always ours to make. The trouble is that we don't know until after the fact whether our choices are the "correct" ones that lead us to success, or are "incorrect" ones, that lead us to failure.
Second Life is very different from other books that Herman Franck has written that I've had the pleasure to read. For instance, though the law and prisons play an important role in this book, they are not as much of a focus as they are in Franck's novel The Nobel Prizener, which is about a Professor of Economics who wins the Nobel Prize while he is wrongfully in prison for the rape of a woman, convicted mostly on the woman's false testimony. And, in his book about San Francisco's high society, The Post Debutante, Nancy, a woman ho is a post debutatne who is on trial and gets imprisoned for a murder she didn't commit-that of the ballerina lover of her fiancé, George-law, the courts, and America's judicial system are also important to the plot. Since the author is a lawyer, writing novels where the judicial system is the focus seems to be only natural. But, in Second Life, Franck employs a more supernatural, twisted (in a good way) style that reminded me as I read of a cross between It's a Wonderful Life and an episode of The Twilight Zone. That's because at the start of the novel, the protagonist, Glockner, is sitting on a stool in a bar that his run by his brother-in-law and owned by his Polynesian wife, contemplating his life and the mess he's made of it, and also getting drunk. He had worked at Pelican Bay State Prison as its underpaid doctor, attending to the inmates, who were as often as not the victims of the prison's guards. Glockner had tried to be a whistle-blower and expose the cruel treatment inflicted upon the inmates, and doing so had ended up costing him his job there. Who should walk into the bar but (sounds kind of like the set-up for joke, doesn't it?) A man who goes by the name of Number Two, who offers Dr. Harold Glockner a second chance at life. A famous Japanese American doctor, Dr. Takahashi, who specializes in treating babies within the womb to prevent them from being born blind, is going to die soon, and Number Two suggests the possibility to Glockner of taking over Takahashi's work, thereby saving the eyesight of countless babies and getting the chance to go from being a failure to being a success. Of course, things are rarely as simple as one thinks they are, at first blush. He must undergo rehab for alcoholism, and after that, Glockner discovers to take over Takahashi's work, it means he must die at approximately the same time Takahashi does. Then his soul will enter into the other doctor's body, and complete the operation Takahashi happened to be performing. It's a delicate procedure, that of using microscopic tools to grab hold of a baby's eyeball, in utero, embedded in the baby's brain, and placing it back into its proper place surgically. Fortunately, though Glockner has never performed a surgery like that before, he is assisted by the Filipino .nurses who know what's going on, because they've worked with Number Two in the past. But then, Glockner, in Takahashi's body, still is at a major disadvantage. He doesn't even know where his office is in the hospital, or where his house is, or what his new family is like, or his "wife's" first name. Much to his chagrin, he soon finds out that his wife is a shopaholic cold fish who seems to despise him, and his daughter-who at least express her love for him-is a lesbian. Also, the only reason she expresses love for him is because Takahashi's been committing incest with her! None of this is what Glockner expected when he had agreed to Number Two's scheme, and the situation gets worse, when his "daughter" gets angry with him, and both he and Mrs. Takahashi get arrested-he for 19 counts of the rape of a minor, and she for attempted assault. Second Life is a suspenseful, supernatural, page-turning book that might make you decide-if you're ever offered a second chance at life-not to take it. It's a well-written novel about a doctor who discovers at his lowest point, that he can still make a difference in the lives of others, and go from being a failure to a success. But, is the cost worth taking the chance? If you like novels that are fast-paced, with a tinge of the supernatural about them, you're sure to love reading Herman Franck, Esq.'s novel, Second Life.
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