Dare to Know: A Novel

The first two thirds of this book is superb, but the whole is let down by a predictable and drawn-out ending. I guess when you find out that you SHOULD have died ten minutes ago, but you didn't, then there's only one way the story is going to end, and sure enough... But did we have to have the long drawn out drug/dream sequences, and the hokum ancient Indian stuff? The start and the middle was both entertaining and gripping, but it looks like the author lost his way a bit. Shame really, as it was very promising for a while. Worth a read, but you can speed-read the last thirty pages.

The premise was intriguing and the writing started out very promising, but the author was apparently unable to restrain himself from destroying the world. Don't know why I stuck with it as the main character and the whole story just kept deteriorating. A very depressing, nihilistic narrative that could have been saved at various moments in the story, in fact, you kept thinking it would be, but no. So, I got to thinking, maybe it's symbolic; maybe the main character's selfishness is what destroys "his" world. Maybe all the "human sacrifices" are the people whose life he ruins -- including the unborn child he didn't know he had -- in order to have his life, which itself comes down to nothing. This doesn't save the story for me, mind you, but it does make it slightly more significant. But the thing is, he was sympathetic at first, but then he just keeps rolling downhill without learning anything much, until -- "the eschaton." Lots of crazy symbolism for nothing, if you ask me.

I wish I could give this book six stars. It’s that good. The narrator is not the most likable guy, but his first person voice is addictive, and the book humanizes his rapidly declining self in a progressively more alarming situation with flashbacks to formative bizarreness and self-induced heartbreak. In the moment, it’s not always clear how all that got him to where he is, but the ending pulls together everything in a delightfully disturbing way. I’m no good with wine vocabulary, but tasting notes for this amazing novel would include a base of Philip K. Dick (a down on his luck salesman for a company that sells you the date of your death) and Russell Hoban (regular-ish guy can’t help betraying his loves while navigating a rising tide of mystery) with notes of Lovecraft (lurking fear, not monsters) and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus trilogy (no conspiracy, but imminentizing the eschaton, maybe?). As soon as my wife reads this, I think I will read it again.

Very interesting book, was hard to put down at times! I am interested to read the next book from this author.

I’m annoyed. For so many reasons. The protagonist is the most unlikable character in my recent memory. He is whiny, entitled, a jerk, and all of his problems are self inflicted. He is estranged from his two sons. We don’t meet them directly in the book, but he will reference them occasionally in a memory. It’s never clear if he was the worst dad, if they were the worst kids, or both. He tells his sons a bedtime story that he made up, but they hate the story and make fun of him for it. Several of the stories about his kids where he tries to reach out to them and it ends with them making fun of him. What. The. Heck?? But there are other parts of the book where he thinks how they are better off without him. It is never evident if the kids are awful people in spite of him or because of him. In the end it doesn’t matter because we never see or hear from them in present tense. The whole log line of the book is that you can look up when you’re going to die! And this guy decides to look up when he’s going to die! And it turns out he was supposed to die a half hour ago! Not a spoiler. Literally what’s on the back on the book. The problem is, we don’t get to this point for about 100 pages. This book moves incredibly slowly. It is one excruciating flashback after another while the present day moves at a snail’s pace. There are plot points that are brought up that are left in the dust. For a book that moves this slowly, one would think that anything that could possibly have been trimmed would have been cut. For example: there was a flashback about a friend of his at computer camp, where they would go on nightly adventures. For some reason, the friend would/could order him to do something/anything and he would do it. Which culminated in him ripping off the head of a rat. It was odd and nothing ever really came of it. The closer I got to the end of the book, the weirder it got. Normally I’m a fan of reality and time being messed with, but apparently only when it gets wrapped up in a satisfying manner.