Word Made Flesh (No Exit Press 18 Years Classic) [Paperback]

Jack O'Connell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2005 | Series: No Exit Press 18 Years Classic

Why would two Eastern European meatboys want to whack an innocent cab driver? That's the question that occurs to Gilrein as Raban and Blumfeld press the gun barrel into his mouth. Does it have something to do with the ritual death-by-flencing of Leo Tani? Or does the answer involve Gilrein's ex-lover, now working as a librarian for a bibliomaniac gangster? Or maybe the whole thing has something to do with the Inspector, inventor of the notorious Methodology? And how does Bobby Oster figure in the mix, with his crew of murder-for-hire rogue cops who call themselves The Magicians? To find the answers, Gilrein will drive the night streets of his hometown and face down more than one demon from his past. From the Vacuum, where child-artists are held captive in veal pens and forced to forge graphic novels, to the Houdini Lounge, where the second annual immigrant death-match is being marketed, Gilrein will wander the underworld, collecting stories and looking for absolution. In the end, he'll brush up against "Alicia's Tale" and learn new truths about the terrifying negotiations always taking place between the storyteller and the audience in the city of Quinsigamond.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This is a wildly original novel, part hard-boiled crime novel, part literary thriller, and part postapocalyptic cartoon. Scenes, characters, and the locale of Quinsigamond, a failed industrial city west of Boston, conjure echoes of the ever-nocturnal Gotham City from Tim Burton's Batman films. Into this seething netherworld of competing ethnic gangs, cabalists, defrocked Jesuits, crooked rare-book dealers, sweatshops that produce forged comic books, and a beautiful librarian obsessed by a 200-year-old murderer, the author has placed Gilrein, a cop turned cabbie. He is being menaced by August Kroger, a Bohemian crime czar and rare-book freak, and his "meatboys," but Gilrein doesn't know why. The byzantine plot is secondary here, though; the bizarre milieu, O'Connell's gracefully orotund narrative style, and his mode of explication are the reasons readers should follow Gilrein into the dark night of Quinsigamond. Thomas Gaughan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Once again, O'Connell (The Skin Palace, 1996, etc.) tests the boundaries of noir mystery/suspense in this latest mind-boggling installment from Quinsigamond, Mass. Here's the story: A cabbie named Gilrein, who left the police force three years ago after his wife and colleague Ceil was killed in a raid on a bomb factory, picks up Leonardo Tani, a mid-level fence he's driven many times before, for what turns out to be his last ride. Tani falls afoul of a business rivalry between Hermann Kinsky, the unofficial mayor of the Bohemian Wing, and his aspiring lieutenant August Kroger, and gets taken out of the picture in the churningly vivid opening scene. Everyone involved, especially Kroger, is convinced Gilrein's in possession of a mysterious book missing from Tani's possession. Kroger and his creatures apply pressure. Jack responds by looking for the book. Now here's why you should take that familiar story with a grain of salt: Everyone in Quinsigamond is obsessed with horrors from the past. Gilrein can't forget the events that led up to Ceil's death. Otto Langer, the ventriloquist who drives a cab alongside Gilrein, is haunted by the Holocaustic sufferings of a girl named Alicia at the hands of Meyrink, the Censor of Maisel. Gilrein's ex-lover Wylie Brown, a former cop who's now serving as Kroger's librarian and archivist, ceaselessly gathers information about Quinsigamond legend Edgar Carwin Brockden, a visionary who killed his family and himself before any of the current cast were born. Inspector Emil Lacazze, the Jesuit who founded the Dunot Precinct's Eschatology Squad, lives to perfect the Methodology by which he bores into the hearts of the criminals he hunts. All of them, as O'Connell makes clear, are trapped in the inability of language to communicate, and the agonizing need to act out their messages instead of speaking or writing them. Under the conventions of crime and punishment, O'Connell's nightmarishly original vision of incarnation unflinchingly displays the various of harrowing ways words can indeed be made flesh. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: No Exit; 18th Birthday ed edition (September 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842431587
• ISBN-13: 978-1842431580
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,782,848 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jack O'Connell's first novel, Box Nine, won the Mysterious Press Discovery Award. His second novel, Wireless, was chosen by the Los Angeles Times as one of the top ten crime novels of 1993. O'Connell is also the author of The Skin Palace and Word Made Flesh. His latest novel, The Resurrectionist, was chosen by Amazon.com as one of the top-10 SF novels of 2008. The winner of Le prix Mystère de la critique and Le Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire in France, the novel was also nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award. O'Connell lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant but too brief., March 6, 2001

By 

Jacob G Corbin (Prairie Village, Kansas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Word Made Flesh (Paperback)

WORD MADE FLESH is laden with blood, violence, and horror, but the book is about none of these things. Rather, O'Connell is fascinated with the topic academics know as "semiotics": the strange and transformative relationship between an object or idea and the word we use to describe it.

The book is full of people who at some level are acting out their frustration at being unable to communicate, unable to make that fundamental connection with another human being. One character is driven mad by his inability to express the horror of an atrocity he witnessed decades ago in Eastern Europe, another is afflicted by a disease that attacks the brain's language centers, and the hero is a man broken by the death of his wife, the only person he could express himself to.

The prose is beautiful and haunting. The surface-level mystery plot makes most noir seem merely gray in comparison. And it all takes place against the backdrop of Quinsigamond, Maine, the most nihilistic city in the universe. The problem, though, is that O'Connell deploys an embarrasment of riches in his 326 pages and doesn't linger long enough on any one idea, character, or plot point to give it the emotional impact it merits. Trying to fit all his ideas into a book as slim as WORD MADE FLESH is like trying to tour the Smithsonian in a day. Also, it seems to be assumed that the reader is familiar with his earlier, impossible-to-find Quinsigamond books. Despite all this, though, the book is wonderfully worth reading -- because, though his fictional world is crude and nihilistic, O'Connell himself is not, and every word he writes is incandescent with compassion and fiery, holy rage against both the fictional hell of Quinsigamond and the real world that it holds a mirror to.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Talk about a book getting under your skin..., July 17, 2000

By 

robb0117 "robb0117" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Word Made Flesh (Hardcover)

I initially picked up this book looking for a quick, mindless horror story. I was immediately sucked into this intriguing story of darkness, despair, and pain in the world of a underground, rare books trade ring. Jack O'Connell has a great grasp of language taking a simple "detective story" and turning it into a tale of human cruelty and moral depravation. This is a great book, and creepy as hell.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Noir at Its Finest, April 26, 2004

By 

Jon M Altbergs (Epping, NH) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Word Made Flesh (Paperback)

All of the elements are here, from the gritty anti-hero to the post-industrial city to the femme fatale, you'll immediately recognize this world. However, if O'Connell were merely peddling in cliche, then "Word Made Flesh" would not be worth your time.

Thankfully, O'Connell brings a little psychosis, urban fantasy, and flat-out horror to the table--think Mieville's "King Rat," Lethem's "Motherless Brooklyn" and "Gun, With Occassional Music," just about anything by Ellison, and Lacan's "Ecrits." Yeah, it's that ecclectic. The amazing thing is that O'Connell is able to make it all work without being pretentious or dense. The balancing act alone is worth the investment, and the Hitchcockian plot will grab you by the throat, shake you like a stoolie, and leave you lying in a ditch by the side of the road.