The Resurrectionist

In four previous novels, Jack O'Connell has established a reputation as an author of literary-suspense and thriller-noir. This time, with The Resurrectionist, he has consolidated and surpassed that reputation with a story so mesmerizing that the reader can't figure out what is real and what's imaginary, what is threatening and what is make-believe.

The wraparound story in this multi-layered tale is about Sweeney, a pharmacist by trade, and his young son, Danny, the victim of an accident that has left him in a coma. Sweeney moves Danny to a hospital specializing in comatose patients, the Peck Clinic. The Doctors Peck, father and daughter, claim to have "resurrected" two patients from the void of deep coma. Prior to Danny's accident, he and Sweeney had been reading a fantasy series of comic books called Limbo, and it is around these stories that things get really interesting. There are circus freaks, weird stunts, an apparent "resurrection" or two, a long odyssey in search of a lost father--any number of plot lines and characters overlapping between what is real in Sweeney's life, and what might be a dream or drugged reality, and what is storybook fiction.

Alongside all the strange and convoluted events of the novel there is a compelling meditation on the power of story, the meaning of madness and sanity and the very nature of consciousness. This is more than fantasy; it is a masterful and wholly imaginative invention based on the sad reality of a father and son trying to find one another again. --Valerie Ryan