The Wave [Hardcover]

Walter Mosley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2006

Errol is awakened again by a strange prank caller asking for him by name and claiming to be his fatherwho has been dead for several years. It feels like a surreal call from the grave, until Erroll hears the unmistakable sound of a handset being put down on a table. Curious, and not a little unnerved, he sneaks into the graveyard where his father is buried. What he finds there will change his life forever. But once Errols been touched by the Wave, a presence infecting the planet, can anything be the same again? With the bold imagination that made Blue Light a bestseller, Walter Mosley returns to science fiction with a novel both eerie and transcendent.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Mosley's latest foray into allegorical SF is reminiscent of his 1998 novel, Blue Light, but it isn't nearly as rich and captivating. How should the book's hero, Errol, react when his late, beloved father reappears as a younger, ecstatic, incomplete version of the father's former self? How should the government respond when nearly invincible reanimated bodies claiming to be portions of a primordial life-form appear in our midst, out of an immense wave? And how can that life-form, which strives only for harmony, connect with us if it can't make itself understood to the fanatical military doctor, who takes Errol and his father prisoner, and is developing a poison to exterminate the peaceful newly arisen dead lest they overwhelm the human population? Mosley fails to sustain the deep, meaningful tone that would have brought this pensive tale to life. Even various sexual encounters and communions with the vast universe lack passion. This wave is fast and small, but it leaves little behind in its wake. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

Mosley's wandered off turf again, writing imitation Dean Koontz and calling it science fiction. Out-of-work programmer Errol Porter lives in his former garage since his wife ditched him and the house was sold. For work he maintains a pottery shop, where he has struck up a relationship with artist Nella, which is good because it gives him someone to tell about the weird phone calls he's been getting from a guy who sounds like his nine-years-dead father. He discovers it is his dad, but he's only 20 and says that he really just embodies Errol's father's memories and is actually part of the "wave" that a meteor brought to earth one and a half billion years ago. "Goofy," Errol thinks, until he is hauled away by a secret army operation that already knows about the wave because of other reanimated dead people. The army's bent on destroying the revenants and every other manifestation of the wave, including Errol if they find he has been "infected." Errol escapes and joins the wave people in fleeing and trying to hide their life source. In the process, Errol boffs several other women, gets buff, and writes this first-person account. The (mercifully undetailed) sex seems gratuitous, the wave business feels mushy, Errol's captivity and escape are like scenes from a dull-witted fifties "sci-fi" flick, and the characters aren't even strong cardboard. For Mosley completists only. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Aspect (January 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446533637
• ISBN-13: 978-0446533638
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,808,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Walter Mosley is one of America's most celebrated and beloved writers. His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones, Fear Itself, and Fear of the Dark; the novels Blue Light and RL's Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and Walkin' the Dog. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Then why does he have my father's memories?", January 4, 2006

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wave (Hardcover)

When Errol Porter is woken by night after night of strange phone calls, he has no idea how much his life will change. At first the calls are unnerving, a voice bemoaning, "Cold...naked, cold... naked." Night after night the calls come, in the waning hours of the morning. His divorce imminent, Porter is still recovering from that emotional trauma, his well-paying computer job a thing of the past, along with his broken marriage. Currently, Errol is working at Mud Brothers Pottery Studio and living in a garage-cum-living space. The only light on the horizon is a burgeoning romance with Nella, a lively Caribbean ceramicist at the studio, who inspires Errol to look beyond the painful past year with an eye to the future.

The calls are increasingly unsettling to Errol, especially as the voice becomes more familiar, eventually claiming to be Porter's father, dead for the past six years. When the voice calls him Airy, a childhood name, Errol is hooked, unable to resist rushing to the cemetery where his father is buried. Once at the graveyard, Errol discovers a stranger who is not a stranger, a man who will challenge every assumption Porter has known, thrusting him into a surreal world where the impossible is increasingly viable. The stranger draws others into Porter's life, implacable men on a mission that is both stunning and brutally efficient. His simple existence no longer relevant, another dimension offers an amazing possibility, along with a frightening pursuit by those who fear what they cannot control.

Drawing on an imaginative premise, this supernatural story transcends the acceptable boundaries of reality, fascinating and thought-provoking, a call to look beyond out petty daily concerns and question the rigid, frightened society we have wrought. Crossing the line between the known and the unknown, The Wave is a parable for our times, informed by a deep concern for the direction of humankind driven by a fear of difference and a shocking disregard for individual rights. At the heart of Errol's quest to unravel a world far beyond his ken lies his capacity to transcend the ordinary, thrust into a future of infinite potential. Luan Gaines/ 2006.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mystical Mythical Wonderful Wave, April 17, 2006

By 

Louis N. Gruber "Author of Jay" (Lexington, SC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wave (Hardcover)

Things are not going well for Errol Porter, but then he starts getting those strange incoherent phone calls in the middle of the night. Someone addressing him by his childhood pet name, "Airy." Someone who claims to be his (long deceased) father. Then it gets even stranger. Errol goes to the cemetery and finds a naked, incoherent young man who claims to BE his dead father. And knows all kinds of things about him and his family that only his late father could possibly know.

So, has the late Mr. Porter been raised from the dead? Nothing as simple as that. No, indeed. Mr. Porter's DNA and his memories have somehow been incorporated into something called "The Wave," a life-form that goes way beyond anything we know. A life-form that brings everything into mystical unity, and--well--I can't explain it. You'll just have to read the book.

If the first half of the novel builds upon familiar elements of Mosleyana--home, family, sex, race--the second half soars into another dimension--stocked with alien life forms and paranoid government agencies, and builds to an unbelievable conclusion.

Author Walter Mosley is a literary genius, and I consider myself a fan, but this is not his best work. The plot doesn't hold together well enough to ever be believable. Who or what--really--is G.T.--the young man who claims to be Errol's father? The book explains all that--but not really. Not in a way that's convincing. Still, it does read easily, flows like music, with overtones of love, betrayal, loss, sadness, and--of course--sex.

If you love Mosley's work, you'll love this one. If you're not familiar with him, this is probably not the book for you to start with. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars superb science fiction thriller, January 3, 2006

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wave (Hardcover)

Unemployed system administrator Errol Porter thinks nothing of the calls except for the inconvenience as they wake him up every night. He assumes someone is pranking him with the insistence that the caller is his father. Errol's dad died in 1996. As the calls keep coming, Errol begins to wonder if he might be a bit deranged as the person on the other end is beginning to speak and sound just like his father and more frightening the man knows insider information that only he and his father Arthur Bontemps Porter III could know.

Unable to resist Errol agrees to meet Arthur, but is stunned when he sees his dad's face, albeit a much younger Arthur than he remembers. He wonders if GT ("Good Times") is a con, but has no idea what the person would benefit from this ruse or could he be a ghost? US Army officer Dr. David Wheeler places Errol under house arrest until he can figure out how to persuade his superiors that we have been invaded by "demons from hell" and how to combat them. While David expects the invasion of the body snatchers, Errol trusts no one especially the Feds or his so-called dad, but admits while he ponders what next as the sex with David's wife is good.

As he did with FUTURELAND, Walter Mosley displays his vast skills with this superb science fiction thriller. The story line focuses mostly on Errol who keeps digging one step at a time only to find that next stride even more convoluted and confusing. Like the hero, readers will wonder what is going on until suddenly the 200 plus page novel is finished in one delightful sitting. Sci Fi fans will see why mystery readers find it easy to give THE WAVE to the great Walter Mosley.

Harriet Klausner