Customer Reviews

Shank

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is brilliant because the main character Dan Cody is incredibly deep and complex. You think you understand him - his story is at first a little hard to swallow, but eventually you believe him. Then slowly you are brought to question his sanity. Very subtly, you are shown so many sides and angles to him, that youre not sure which is real.

Previous reader with negative review must have a brain the size of a pea.

After having doing some work inside a prision, I found this but to portray life for the inmates in a realistic way.

Read this book; it'll shock you and disturb you, but it will make you think!

Dan Cody is doing life without the possibility of parole for the murder of his wife. He claims that she was HIV Positive, and he was saving her from future misery, however, we only have his word on the matter. This novel is told in the first person by Mr. Cody, and he proves to be a truly 'Unreliable Narrator', in that the reader can never fully ascertain whether one is listening to a psychopath, or someone who has been wronged by fate. He claims that he is now in a mutual love affair with the prison nurse, Carol, and she has orchestrated an escape so that they can start a new life. And, they only need to get at a stash of several hundred thousand dollars which Dan may or may not be able to recover. A crazy plot, but the book is absorbing to the bitter end. This type of a story is better manifested in Jim Thompson's POP 1280, or Mark Hudson's THE MUSIC IN MY HEAD. A self-deluding, or pathological liar who tells the tale always makes for a disorienting and engrossing read.

After reading the other comments, I was shocked. "Shank" is a story that will always keep you wondering if Dan Cody is worth supporting. The novel's setup was fresh, instead of the same old third person omnisant appraoch. Great story!

After reading Anscombe's The Interview Room, I moved Shank to the top of my "must read" list. While Shank is another example of Anscombe's ability to develop complex and well-developed characters, its plot, which presents a gripping portrayal of prison life, moves along at a much too slow pace. After a while I found myself skimming long passages with the hope of getting to some excitement. All in all, I'm not sorry I read Shank; however, it is not a book I'd recommend highly to you.

I thought Roderick's experience with mental health and forensics really offer an insight into the mind of a person with severe schizophrenic paranoid delusions - if you're not careful you even start believing the main character. The ending has a nice twist. For a person who wishes to one day work with people serving in maximum security prisons, I thought it was good.

Shank was the worst novel I have ever read. Meaningless detail, meaningless detail, meaningless detail. Boring, boring, boring. Stereotypical and non-realistic. A third grader could've written more interesting dialogue. After I finished Shank, I ripped it up and trashed it.