UnderSurface [Hardcover]

Mitch Cullin (Author), Peter I. Chang (illustrator) (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2002

From acclaimed author Mitch Cullin, whose previous books have been described by The New York Times as "brilliant and beautiful...rhythmic and telling," comes Undersurface, a chilling page-turner that recalls Alfred Hitchcock and novelist Kobo Abe at his most existential. Probing the complex relationship between outward appearances and inward states of profound want, it is a story that at turns is intriguing and sordid, poetic and allusive, told in a compact yet intense manner, offering a distinctive take on a society far more complicated than what Americans often gather from their televisions and newspaper headlines.

Based roughly on real events, this fictional account follows its oblique protagonist as he moves through the loitering subculture found within public toilets and pornographic arcades, and, in the process, finds himself loosing everything he values, including his own grip on reality.

A mystery of both memory and mistaken identity, Undersurface is a starkly written, haunting novel about double lives, compulsion, and human sexuality, where secret desires lead to devastating circumstances.

As the carefully crafted plot twists in ever suspenseful directions, we are drawn toward a startling, possibly unavoidable conclusion, one which resonates long after the book has been set aside.

Complimented by the richly evocative imagery of artist Peter I. Chang, MITCH CULLIN has once again written a subtly detailed, affecting, provocative story that explores the sometimes harsh days of a man on the run, the enigmatic pull of the taboo, and the nature of transient life amongst a growing suburban culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cullin's latest (after The Cosmology of Bing) is a brief but incisive account of a Tucson teacher's descent into the lurid, furtive world of illicit gay sex, which lands him in the wrong place at the wrong time when a murder is committed. John Connor is the ordinary, sensitive narrator whose descent begins when he finds himself frequenting adult video stores after his sex life with his wife sours. Despite his guilt, Connor becomes a regular at the restrooms in public parks where he finds like-minded men for quick, anonymous sex. Cullin's grim description of Connor's increasingly risky encounters turns lyrical when Connor hits it off with a fellow middle-class lover he calls Polo, but the tone shifts when a murder occurs during one of their meetings in a public restroom. Stricken by guilt after fleeing, Connor approaches a Tucson detective, not knowing that the police have already connected him to the crime. When his arrest becomes imminent and his wife leaves with their two children, he goes underground, living homeless on the edge of Tucson as he tries to puzzle his way through his bizarre dilemma. Cullin packs a lot of literary power into relatively few pages. As a crime narrative based on a true story, the book is a chilling if somewhat dated tale of a misstep morphing into free fall; as a literary character study, Connor's attempt to come to terms with his situation is both haunting and compelling. Perhaps best of all is Cullin's poetic but economical description of the plight of the homeless as John Connor enters their world in this memorable novel.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In Cullin's novels, the desert-bound cities of the Southwest are the settings of scenarios of sex and humiliation in which protagonists find new hope--or degradation. In UnderSurface, a homeless man sleeps in an arroyo on the edge of a city and pals with a crazed but harmless old man. In ever lengthier flashbacks, Cullin reveals the man as a high-school English teacher who, sexually bored with his wife, discovered anonymous male-male sex in adult-video arcades and public rest rooms. He developed a habit and later a regular rendezvous with another married man. They were about to engage one night when a shot rang out. Fleeing, the protagonist sees a dead man at the urinals. The victim was a cop on vice duty, and eventually, trying to help the murder investigation, the protagonist became a suspect. He ran, and he runs, in an increasingly hallucinatory conclusion, into genuine culpability that expunges all hope for him. A gritty morality play such as Hubert Selby might stage in the more crowded desert called Brooklyn. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Permanent Pr Pub Co (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579620779
• ISBN-13: 978-1579620776
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,843,520 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creepy Cool, August 26, 2004

By 

Tim Johnson "Tim" (Portland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: UnderSurface (Hardcover)

This book freaked me out but in the best possible way. It was like reading a Cronenberg movie except it offered far more insight into the human side of the character than expected. On one level this is a groundbreaking novel exploring the complicated mentality of male sexuality and on another level it reads like a mystery but the outcome isn't as important as the journey. Dark stuff. Recommendeded with reservations, but it stuck in my head like few books have.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A genre-melding ride, April 8, 2003

By 

Mountain Ann's Books (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: UnderSurface (Hardcover)

As unsettling as it is revealing, Undersurface is bold attempt at merging Hitchcockian mystery with social commentary. On one level it is a simple tale of mistaken identity, in which the protagonist finds himself living in sewage tunnels to escape capture for a crime he may or may not have committed; on another level it is a heartbreaking, sometimes surreal character study of a man losing his grip on reality. More than anything, it is the insight into the character's mind that drives this novel along. To say more could ruin the ending. I'll only add that this vivid, finely written book won't be for everyone, but for those who enjoy the melding of genres and well-envisioned plot twists it certainly won't be a disappointment.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good intentions....bad plot, April 3, 2003

By 

Jeffrey S. Newman (Mt. Laurel, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: UnderSurface (Hardcover)

I wanted to like this book, I truly did. But in the end, it left me completely unfulfilled.
Here is my main problem with the book. Many novels, as does this one, start in the present and then flashback to the past to see how the protagonist actually made it to this current place. However, in order for this to work, a reader's attention must be grabbed at the very beginning to make us truly wonder and care about how things became the way they are. In this book, the present (as it starts out) is very bland and uneventful. The past, as we find out later, actually had some good twists and turns. However, by the time we get to the previous events, we really don't care about the main character or his predicament.
While some of the descriptions are quite good and vivid, this short book will leave most readers completely unmoved.