This is perhaps easier to do than what Lehane sets out to achieve. After all, the sheer shock value of a Harrisian set up can drive you through far enough. It’s much more difficult to put a dampener on the book and still lift it out of the ordinary. Lehane very nearly pulls it off, and misses only narrowly. I’m not quite sure why. It’s shocking enough, in its own way, but not, I think, adequately ambiguous. There’s a good ten pages or more in which the reader is allowed to acclimatize and there follows a sense of inevitability. This is thin line, certainly, a delicate balance between mere contrivance and plausibility. Lehane seems anxious to avoid the former but, in the bargain, might just have compromised the book, ever so slightly. But this is perhaps just cavilling, and not reason enough to skip the book.
Musings of a suist in mufti on books, music and film at Bibliophage; Gravity Denied - The Hidden Paw’s Blog at mcavity.com
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