Superb graphic novel, 07 Oct 2008
Who says British comics are dead? They're alive and well and in a new format as this excellent adaptation of Dickens' most famous work proves. Superb artwork from Mike Collins on this his 25th year as a professional comic artist. Great value for money. Would make an excellent Christmas present or a gift at any time of the year.

Classical Comics are producing some impressive books in this line. Check them all out.

Michael Collins' third novel The Keepers of Truth, shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize, is set in the American mid-west in the 1980s, as industrial decline eats away at the heart of a small town and July heat delivers a punishing drought. Once thriving with metal manufacturers, the town, "hemmed in by crops that it doesn't pay to grow any more", now boasts trainee managers. Eating is the new pastime. Bill works as a reporter for the Daily Truth, a local newspaper built in a disused foundry. Suffering from an inflated sense of his talent as a philosopher, Bill makes a verbose and often funny narrator, an inept news journalist and, as the novel progresses, a sloppy Private Eye: "I apply philosophy like one applies dressing to a wound."

When Ronny Lawton's father goes missing, Bill has to adjust to the shock of producing copy people will actually read. After a small piece of finger is found, the town rushes to vilify Ronny and trial by media ensues. Before e-mail, at the cusp of the widespread use of answer machines, news travels more slowly and the newspaper men fight a losing battle for ascendancy over television. "I lived in the slipstream of TV's immediacy," says Bill. He ironically designates the paper's editor and photographer the "keepers of truth" and wonders at their apparent ability to ride the edge between banality and scavenging. It later emerges that the women of the town keep truth of a different order.

Being from Ireland with its capacity for nostalgia, Collins handles the town's decay and loss with great pathos and fiercely energetic satire. As an outsider, he is well placed to inhabit a narrator set apart by cynicism, boredom and an intellectual view as moribund as the town's labour history. But in Bill's search for deeper meaning, he stumbles into an understanding of the Lawton murder that the media en masse fail to grasp. Collins has produced a compelling and often profound detective story that takes an athletic swipe at the confused mores of contemporary America--a society consumed. --Cherry Smyth

Superb graphic novel, 07 Oct 2008
Who says British comics are dead? They're alive and well and in a new format as this excellent adaptation of Dickens' most famous work proves. Superb artwork from Mike Collins on this his 25th year as a professional comic artist. Great value for money. Would make an excellent Christmas present or a gift at any time of the year.

Classical Comics are producing some impressive books in this line. Check them all out.

Booker Shortlistee Disappoints, 20 Mar 2008
Written by an Irishman living in America, this Booker shortlistee is a strange beast set in a Midwestern town during the long hot summer of 1979. (Some reviews place it in the early or mid-'80s, a curious mistake given the explicit allusion to the year on pages 94-5: "in a matter of months we would be watching our hostages under siege in Iran"). The book appears to be a stab at marking America's transition into hyperconsumerism and moral decay, but it's so chockablock with heavyhanded satire and symbolism that it's hard to figure out just what the intent is.

The story revolves around Bill, a 20something misanthrope who's returned to his hometown by default. Having bombed the LSATs, he's living alone in the ancestral family home his father committed suicide in, and working as the only reporter for the dying town newspaper, "The Truth." An ornery old man goes missing, providing a crime for Bill to become engrossed in, as the townspeople assume that the man's no-good son chopped him up after some kind of argument. (Is it meaningful that the suspect son is named "Ronny" and takes steroids? An allusion to the incoming President Reagan and the "muscular" foreign policy he would invoke?) Bill is the only one who thinks Ronny is innocent, and becomes entangled with Ronny, his estranged wife (an aspirational consumerist), and baby son (who only eats junk foot).

The use of the crime genre is a way for Collins to draw the reader in and keep them reading, but those expecting a neat resolution will be very disappointed. And perhaps that's part of the point, to subvert the reader's expectations just as his characters' expectations of the "American Dream" have been subverted by the shift of manufacturing to overseas. Heavy weather is made of the landscape of rapidly decaying closed factories in whose shadows drugs are dealt. Meanwhile, a semi-grotesque supporting character embodies the coming rise of the service economy, as she runs a mini-salon from her garage, mixing in other services which presage the "experience economy." Yet another running theme is the decline of print media and the rise of TV tabloid journalism.

All of this results in a mixed brew of social commentary which becomes rather repetitive and heavy-handed much of the time. There are large swathes of Bill's cynical interior thoughts that drag the book to a halt and tax the reader's patience. These are partially balanced by some quite fine descriptive passages and other bits and chunks. On the balance, though, it's pretty hard to see what all the fuss is about and it's oten hard not to feel like the book's "satire" is largely a matter of playing to European stereotypes about the American midwest.

crime story wrecked by overwriting, 17 Dec 2006
Stripped to the bone, this is an above-average tale of small town America. The author, however, attempts to bring 'literary heft' to the proceedings with weighty images that are presumably an attempt at rendering a poetic background - but these are mostly cliches describing a rundown town, none very original, none very insightful either, and many quite meaningless even if they sound 'profound'. The language that tries so hard to be fresh is often just stale recycled 'quasi-poetic' insights. He should stick to the narrative and ditch the pseudo-philosophical rambling, and maybe he has a chance to became a decent writer. On this form, pretentiousness is king in Collins's world.


As intense and emotionally draining as your worst nightmare., 04 Jan 2006
Written with passion and fury, this novel is as unrelenting as a nightmare--you can't break out of it once you are in it, and you are compelled to see it through to the end. On the surface, it is a murder mystery and investigation, but at its heart, it's a bleak case study of a community which has died since its manufacturing industries shut down and the supports for its local economy collapsed. Everything which gave dignity, meaning, and focus to the hardscrabble lives of the inhabitants is gone. In the middle of a hot, dry summer in this community in the Dust Bowl, Ronny Lawton's no 'count father disappears, and Ronny, no Boy Scout himself, is generally assumed to be his killer.

Collins sets up the framework for his themes from the outset. The main character, Bill, is the grandson of a man who made his fortune selling ice, and later manufacturing refrigerators. Bill is working haphazardly for the local newspaper and living in the basement of the family mansion because it's the coolest area of the house during these brutally hot days. He is recovering from a breakdown and hospitalization following his father's suicide.

Ronny Lawton, to whom he is drawn, at first, as a newsman, is in many ways his opposite, though they share the bond of having lost their mothers and having had cruel fathers. Ronny lives in a shack and works at Denny's, where he takes pride in his designation as Employee of the Month. Except for Bill, who believes Ronny may be innocent, everyone--the local police, the FBI, the newpaper owner, and the claque of women at the local hairdressing salon--needs to find Ronny guilty to regain control of their lives. As the spirit of frontier justice grows and the need for a scapegoat becomes more pressing, Bill and Ronny both become caught up in the out-of-control spiral which soon engulfs them both.

The pace of the novel is unrelenting. The small-town dialogue is realistic, filled with petty resentments and jealousies. The prose is vivid, full of heavy, occasionally "purple," descriptions. The pathetic setting of a community which has lost every reason for being, and the hopelessness of the lives of its inhabitants, made obsolescent by the decline of manufacturing, make this a bleak reading experience. Collins's humor, however, saves it from bathos, and the psychological credibility of the characters and the excitement of the plot make this a book that I found impossible to put down. It's easy to see why it was a Booker nominee. Mary Whipple

Well-crafted murder mystery in small-town Midwest, 27 May 2005
On one level 'The Keepers of Truth' is a well-crafted murder mystery set in a small town in America's midwest, in which Old Man Lawton has disappeared and everybody in the town is quick to point the blame at his trouble-making son, Ronny. Everybody that is except Bill, the local reporter for the town rag, 'The Truth', who seeks to discover just that. Bill is the unlikely hero and inspired narrator of this tale: he is a local, down on his luck after failing to get into law school and struggling to get over his father's suicide, who is able to rise above the gossip and jealousies of those around him. On a broader level, 'The Keepers of Truth' provides a perceptive portrayal of the social malaise in a late-70s industrial town, with factories closing and the local economy in terminal crisis. This portrayal includes memorable descriptions of late-night activity at Denny's: read this novel as a combo-meal with Eric Schlosser's non-fictional 'Fast Food Nation' and you'll never eat junk food again! Fairly obviously, the novel's setting makes for fairly bleak reading, punctuated occasionally by some humourous touches such as material concerning Darlene, the local beautician, and a number of guffaw-inducing headlines that Bill wishes he could write!! The only other Michael Collins novel that I have read to date is 'The Resurrectionists': both novels are particularly well-written with compelling storylines, whilst also confronting social issues head-on and leaving the reader with plenty to think about.

Well-crafted murder mystery in small-town Midwest, 27 May 2005
On one level 'The Keepers of Truth' is a well-crafted murder mystery set in a small town in America's midwest, in which Old Man Lawton has disappeared and everybody in the town is quick to point the blame at his trouble-making son, Ronny. Everybody that is except Bill, the local reporter for the town rag, 'The Truth', who seeks to discover just that. Bill is the unlikely hero and inspired narrator of this tale: he is a local, down on his luck after failing to get into law school and struggling to get over his father's suicide, who is able to rise above the gossip and jealousies of those around him. On a broader level, 'The Keepers of Truth' provides a perceptive portrayal of the social malaise in a late-70s industrial town, with factories closing and the local economy in terminal crisis. This portrayal includes memorable descriptions of late-night activity at Denny's: read this novel as a combo-meal with Eric Schlosser's non-fictional 'Fast Food Nation' and you'll never eat junk food again! Fairly obviously, the novel's setting makes for fairly bleak reading, punctuated occasionally by some humourous touches such as material concerning Darlene, the local beautician, and a number of guffaw-inducing headlines that Bill wishes he could write!! The only other Michael Collins novel that I have read to date is 'The Resurrectionists': both novels are particularly well-written with compelling storylines, whilst also confronting social issues head-on and leaving the reader with plenty to think about.

The Resurrectionists finds Irish-born Michael Collins returning to the wastelands of Hicksville, USA: the same terrain as his Booker-shortlisted novel The Keepers of Truth. Set predominently in an anonymous Michigan town--"the world capital of nowhere"--at the fag end of the 1970s, this is a slightly muddled, if endearing, family saga cum murder mystery. The book is narrated by Frank Cassidy, a man whose parents burned to death in suspicious circumstances when he was just a child. He has discovered that his Uncle Ward, who raised him, has recently been murdered. The prime suspect is in a coma but the police are certain he is Chester Green, the Cassidys' old neighbour (Frank always believed that Green was somehow involved in the fatal fire). There is however, one slight problem; Chester died of influenza 27 years ago. Abandoning his tedious job in a New Jersey fast food restaurant, Frank gathers up his clan--wife Honey (whose ex-boyfriend is on death row), stepson Robert Lee and dinosaur-obsessed son Ernie--steals a car and heads for Michigan in search of answers and possibly a share of Ward's farm.

Back in his Michigan hometown Frank settles down, gets a job and begins to unravel the enigmas surrounding his uncle's death with, genuinely, surprising results. Collins' might fill his tale with the kind of oddballs who tend to populate David Lynch films: one-legged encyclopaedia salesmen; rhinestone-shirted truckers, frazzled Vietnam war vets and enigmatic polyester-clad old-timers, but it is his touching, humorous descriptions of mundane family life that resonate. His television-addicted Cassidys owe a good deal to The Simpsons; their appetite for junk food, Sesame Street, The Brady Bunch and reruns of Gilligan's Island are carefully stitched into the narrative. At times Collins can mistake lists of their viewing habits for convincing period detail but this gripping, charming suspense novel offers a thoughtful snapshot of America shaking off Watergate and preparing for Reagan. --Travis Elborough

Superb graphic novel, 07 Oct 2008
Who says British comics are dead? They're alive and well and in a new format as this excellent adaptation of Dickens' most famous work proves. Superb artwork from Mike Collins on this his 25th year as a professional comic artist. Great value for money. Would make an excellent Christmas present or a gift at any time of the year.

Classical Comics are producing some impressive books in this line. Check them all out.

Booker Shortlistee Disappoints, 20 Mar 2008
Written by an Irishman living in America, this Booker shortlistee is a strange beast set in a Midwestern town during the long hot summer of 1979. (Some reviews place it in the early or mid-'80s, a curious mistake given the explicit allusion to the year on pages 94-5: "in a matter of months we would be watching our hostages under siege in Iran"). The book appears to be a stab at marking America's transition into hyperconsumerism and moral decay, but it's so chockablock with heavyhanded satire and symbolism that it's hard to figure out just what the intent is.

The story revolves around Bill, a 20something misanthrope who's returned to his hometown by default. Having bombed the LSATs, he's living alone in the ancestral family home his father committed suicide in, and working as the only reporter for the dying town newspaper, "The Truth." An ornery old man goes missing, providing a crime for Bill to become engrossed in, as the townspeople assume that the man's no-good son chopped him up after some kind of argument. (Is it meaningful that the suspect son is named "Ronny" and takes steroids? An allusion to the incoming President Reagan and the "muscular" foreign policy he would invoke?) Bill is the only one who thinks Ronny is innocent, and becomes entangled with Ronny, his estranged wife (an aspirational consumerist), and baby son (who only eats junk foot).

The use of the crime genre is a way for Collins to draw the reader in and keep them reading, but those expecting a neat resolution will be very disappointed. And perhaps that's part of the point, to subvert the reader's expectations just as his characters' expectations of the "American Dream" have been subverted by the shift of manufacturing to overseas. Heavy weather is made of the landscape of rapidly decaying closed factories in whose shadows drugs are dealt. Meanwhile, a semi-grotesque supporting character embodies the coming rise of the service economy, as she runs a mini-salon from her garage, mixing in other services which presage the "experience economy." Yet another running theme is the decline of print media and the rise of TV tabloid journalism.

All of this results in a mixed brew of social commentary which becomes rather repetitive and heavy-handed much of the time. There are large swathes of Bill's cynical interior thoughts that drag the book to a halt and tax the reader's patience. These are partially balanced by some quite fine descriptive passages and other bits and chunks. On the balance, though, it's pretty hard to see what all the fuss is about and it's oten hard not to feel like the book's "satire" is largely a matter of playing to European stereotypes about the American midwest.

crime story wrecked by overwriting, 17 Dec 2006
Stripped to the bone, this is an above-average tale of small town America. The author, however, attempts to bring 'literary heft' to the proceedings with weighty images that are presumably an attempt at rendering a poetic background - but these are mostly cliches describing a rundown town, none very original, none very insightful either, and many quite meaningless even if they sound 'profound'. The language that tries so hard to be fresh is often just stale recycled 'quasi-poetic' insights. He should stick to the narrative and ditch the pseudo-philosophical rambling, and maybe he has a chance to became a decent writer. On this form, pretentiousness is king in Collins's world.


As intense and emotionally draining as your worst nightmare., 04 Jan 2006
Written with passion and fury, this novel is as unrelenting as a nightmare--you can't break out of it once you are in it, and you are compelled to see it through to the end. On the surface, it is a murder mystery and investigation, but at its heart, it's a bleak case study of a community which has died since its manufacturing industries shut down and the supports for its local economy collapsed. Everything which gave dignity, meaning, and focus to the hardscrabble lives of the inhabitants is gone. In the middle of a hot, dry summer in this community in the Dust Bowl, Ronny Lawton's no 'count father disappears, and Ronny, no Boy Scout himself, is generally assumed to be his killer.

Collins sets up the framework for his themes from the outset. The main character, Bill, is the grandson of a man who made his fortune selling ice, and later manufacturing refrigerators. Bill is working haphazardly for the local newspaper and living in the basement of the family mansion because it's the coolest area of the house during these brutally hot days. He is recovering from a breakdown and hospitalization following his father's suicide.

Ronny Lawton, to whom he is drawn, at first, as a newsman, is in many ways his opposite, though they share the bond of having lost their mothers and having had cruel fathers. Ronny lives in a shack and works at Denny's, where he takes pride in his designation as Employee of the Month. Except for Bill, who believes Ronny may be innocent, everyone--the local police, the FBI, the newpaper owner, and the claque of women at the local hairdressing salon--needs to find Ronny guilty to regain control of their lives. As the spirit of frontier justice grows and the need for a scapegoat becomes more pressing, Bill and Ronny both become caught up in the out-of-control spiral which soon engulfs them both.

The pace of the novel is unrelenting. The small-town dialogue is realistic, filled with petty resentments and jealousies. The prose is vivid, full of heavy, occasionally "purple," descriptions. The pathetic setting of a community which has lost every reason for being, and the hopelessness of the lives of its inhabitants, made obsolescent by the decline of manufacturing, make this a bleak reading experience. Collins's humor, however, saves it from bathos, and the psychological credibility of the characters and the excitement of the plot make this a book that I found impossible to put down. It's easy to see why it was a Booker nominee. Mary Whipple

Well-crafted murder mystery in small-town Midwest, 27 May 2005
On one level 'The Keepers of Truth' is a well-crafted murder mystery set in a small town in America's midwest, in which Old Man Lawton has disappeared and everybody in the town is quick to point the blame at his trouble-making son, Ronny. Everybody that is except Bill, the local reporter for the town rag, 'The Truth', who seeks to discover just that. Bill is the unlikely hero and inspired narrator of this tale: he is a local, down on his luck after failing to get into law school and struggling to get over his father's suicide, who is able to rise above the gossip and jealousies of those around him. On a broader level, 'The Keepers of Truth' provides a perceptive portrayal of the social malaise in a late-70s industrial town, with factories closing and the local economy in terminal crisis. This portrayal includes memorable descriptions of late-night activity at Denny's: read this novel as a combo-meal with Eric Schlosser's non-fictional 'Fast Food Nation' and you'll never eat junk food again! Fairly obviously, the novel's setting makes for fairly bleak reading, punctuated occasionally by some humourous touches such as material concerning Darlene, the local beautician, and a number of guffaw-inducing headlines that Bill wishes he could write!! The only other Michael Collins novel that I have read to date is 'The Resurrectionists': both novels are particularly well-written with compelling storylines, whilst also confronting social issues head-on and leaving the reader with plenty to think about.

Well-crafted murder mystery in small-town Midwest, 27 May 2005
On one level 'The Keepers of Truth' is a well-crafted murder mystery set in a small town in America's midwest, in which Old Man Lawton has disappeared and everybody in the town is quick to point the blame at his trouble-making son, Ronny. Everybody that is except Bill, the local reporter for the town rag, 'The Truth', who seeks to discover just that. Bill is the unlikely hero and inspired narrator of this tale: he is a local, down on his luck after failing to get into law school and struggling to get over his father's suicide, who is able to rise above the gossip and jealousies of those around him. On a broader level, 'The Keepers of Truth' provides a perceptive portrayal of the social malaise in a late-70s industrial town, with factories closing and the local economy in terminal crisis. This portrayal includes memorable descriptions of late-night activity at Denny's: read this novel as a combo-meal with Eric Schlosser's non-fictional 'Fast Food Nation' and you'll never eat junk food again! Fairly obviously, the novel's setting makes for fairly bleak reading, punctuated occasionally by some humourous touches such as material concerning Darlene, the local beautician, and a number of guffaw-inducing headlines that Bill wishes he could write!! The only other Michael Collins novel that I have read to date is 'The Resurrectionists': both novels are particularly well-written with compelling storylines, whilst also confronting social issues head-on and leaving the reader with plenty to think about.

A great read, 29 Aug 2007
This is essentially a voyage of discovery as a man travels back with his family to uncover his own past after the death of his uncle. The book is filled with quirky characters and with some wonderful humour as the main character tries to work out his past and in doing so come to terms with his present as he unravels a grim tale. The book is strong on visual images and conjures up time and place as well as characters very effectively. I could not tear myself away from this book and even though I finished it some time ago, I find myself reflecting back on it a lot - the sign of a good book as far as I am concerned.

Best novel I've read in years, 02 Oct 2003
The quality of the writing marks this out as a book I will keep and re-read in years to come. Has the same ability as John Banville to write with such sily skill that the writing never intrudes onto the story but complements it fully.

"Like everything else in life…stories within stories.", 20 Oct 2002
In this absorbing and multi-layered can’t-put-it-downer, Collins provides the reader with innumerable vantage points from which to view the lives of Frank Cassidy and his quirky and dysfunctional family, to see life as Frank sees it, and to watch in fascination as each family member grows and changes. Stuck by circumstance and lack of opportunity at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, Frank, "a scavenger at the edge of existence," Honey, and their children leave New Jersey in a series of stolen cars for the Upper Michigan Peninsula, as soon as they discover that Frank’s uncle, who raised him, has died on his farm. An inheritance, however small, could change their lives.

A mystery lies at the heart of the novel. Frank’s parents died in a fire when he was five, and, through hypnosis and, eventually, treatment for a breakdown, he’s come to believe that he and his uncle were both involved in these deaths in some way. Returning to "a town nobody returns to unless under tragic circumstances," Frank starts digging into the past and disrupting lives. On the level of plot alone, the novel is full of excitement, enhanced by vibrant characters with whom one feels great empathy as they wrestle against the circumstances that keep them down, bending the rules, if not breaking them, whenever they can. The vividly described, remote farm environment, the mores of the local community, and the treacherous winter weather generate much of the action and interaction. Collins expands the scope of the novel well beyond plot and melodrama, however, by recreating the ambience of the 1970’s and using Richard Nixon, Watergate, and Jim Jones as thematic motifs which recur throughout the novel and show parallels with his characters and story.

As the title indicates, this is also a novel with religious parallels, so well integrated that many readers may not even notice them, at first. The Prodigal Son, the Book of Job, and the story of Lot’s wife are fairly obvious, while the Parable of the Loaves and Fishes (in this case a trick in which one hits a Coke machine at the right moment to get both the Coke and the money back) may be less so. References to good and evil, hope and despair, death and rebirth, and salvation and resurrection occur throughout, as Frank and his family adapt to life in a small town, try to cope with their internal conflicts, and ultimately to come out ahead.

A beautifully developed novel of big ideas, The Resurrectionists is engaging and, to me, totally satisfying on every level. Though I enjoyed Keepers of Truth, I liked this novel even better—it’s one of my favorite novels of the year. Mary Whipple

A Bleak Masterpiece in Praise of America, 07 Sep 2002
From the heat of New Jersey to the frozen wastelands of Upper Michigan, The Resurrectionists travels so many roads, literally a road novel, but also across the intellectual and political landscape of our nation from the seventies back through the fifties. Rarely has a book woven such dysfunctionality, darkness, menace and hopelessness into a masterpiece of modern life. From the white noise of reruns, to the breakdown of time and memory for the main character who cannot be sure of his actions or his take on the story, we are left in a bewildering world of truths and half truths, struggling with the narrator to discover the dark secret that lies at the heart of this novel.
The curious pace, sometimes languid, the frentic breaks all the rules of the crime genre, stradling literature, holding onto moments of mood and feeling, letting us linger in the silence of life, then weaving back into the plot.
The material with Honey, the main character's husband on death row, with his ball of dead skin, and his execution against the a rerun of Gilligan's Island stands as one of those defining moments of dark political satire I've yet read in any work. Collins mines the political and social life of our America, breaks down the divide and situates all life as politically charged and dangerous. The menace of Nixon is all through this book, haunting Robert Lee with his pez Nixon, to Honey's husband who murdered people in the aftermath of Watergate, profoundly disillusioned with America.
This is not to say this is a novel that bashes America, in fact, it's the opposite. It hilights the diversity and tension, but also the ability of America to overcome adversity, how America survives.
How the novel subtly shifts and offers redemption toward the end is done with such brillant understand of the human heart, that this book exhalts as one of those rare books that lets you stare into the abyss, but see through to the otherside.

Cinematic Masterpiece! America the Surreal, 22 Aug 2002
From the first lines, "I couldn't quite get us back without incident for the burial of my father. We ran into a little trouble along the way. It took us two stolen cars along the interstate to get us home," the unnerving tone of the narrator drives this edgy masterpiece of existential longing and search for salvation.

The road scenes are as good as any written about America, cinematic masterpieces - the limbo of rest stops, the roadside motels. There's a sense of detachment and horror that underlies the freedom and journey this family take, i.e. America takes. The American highway is a seductive and beautiful metaphor, but also a surreal place, a noman's land. As we follow along with this family, we see the pitfall of life, the moments of madness to which all can succumb. The holdup scene of the old man and his spiritual redemption even as he's getting robbed, is a quintessential moment in American fiction. Then there's Robert Lee and his miracle of the Loafs and the Fishes that centers on a Vending machine at the high school... the execution of a deathrow inmate as Gilligan's Island plays in the background, to the sleeper who lies in a coma in a sanitorium. There are so many absurd juxtapositions, so much melding and layering of history, of present time and rerun TV here, that everything takes on a density, the very nature of the plot and its subtext creates almost a modern feeling of disorientation.

This book is a haunting, tragic tale, a world of beautiful losers, a world of sin and grace.
This book shimmers with those moments, takes us to the psyche of what it truly is to be an American and why they remain the most captivating of people! It's screaming for an adaptation to the screen.

Superb graphic novel, 07 Oct 2008
Who says British comics are dead? They're alive and well and in a new format as this excellent adaptation of Dickens' most famous work proves. Superb artwork from Mike Collins on this his 25th year as a professional comic artist. Great value for money. Would make an excellent Christmas present or a gift at any time of the year.

Classical Comics are producing some impressive books in this line. Check them all out.

Booker Shortlistee Disappoints, 20 Mar 2008
Written by an Irishman living in America, this Booker shortlistee is a strange beast set in a Midwestern town during the long hot summer of 1979. (Some reviews place it in the early or mid-'80s, a curious mistake given the explicit allusion to the year on pages 94-5: "in a matter of months we would be watching our hostages under siege in Iran"). The book appears to be a stab at marking America's transition into hyperconsumerism and moral decay, but it's so chockablock with heavyhanded satire and symbolism that it's hard to figure out just what the intent is.

The story revolves around Bill, a 20something misanthrope who's returned to his hometown by default. Having bombed the LSATs, he's living alone in the ancestral family home his father committed suicide in, and working as the only reporter for the dying town newspaper, "The Truth." An ornery old man goes missing, providing a crime for Bill to become engrossed in, as the townspeople assume that the man's no-good son chopped him up after some kind of argument. (Is it meaningful that the suspect son is named "Ronny" and takes steroids? An allusion to the incoming President Reagan and the "muscular" foreign policy he would invoke?) Bill is the only one who thinks Ronny is innocent, and becomes entangled with Ronny, his estranged wife (an aspirational consumerist), and baby son (who only eats junk foot).

The use of the crime genre is a way for Collins to draw the reader in and keep them reading, but those expecting a neat resolution will be very disappointed. And perhaps that's part of the point, to subvert the reader's expectations just as his characters' expectations of the "American Dream" have been subverted by the shift of manufacturing to overseas. Heavy weather is made of the landscape of rapidly decaying closed factories in whose shadows drugs are dealt. Meanwhile, a semi-grotesque supporting character embodies the coming rise of the service economy, as she runs a mini-salon from her garage, mixing in other services which presage the "experience economy." Yet another running theme is the decline of print media and the rise of TV tabloid journalism.

All of this results in a mixed brew of social commentary which becomes rather repetitive and heavy-handed much of the time. There are large swathes of Bill's cynical interior thoughts that drag the book to a halt and tax the reader's patience. These are partially balanced by some quite fine descriptive passages and other bits and chunks. On the balance, though, it's pretty hard to see what all the fuss is about and it's oten hard not to feel like the book's "satire" is largely a matter of playing to European stereotypes about the American midwest.

crime story wrecked by overwriting, 17 Dec 2006
Stripped to the bone, this is an above-average tale of small town America. The author, however, attempts to bring 'literary heft' to the proceedings with weighty images that are presumably an attempt at rendering a poetic background - but these are mostly cliches describing a rundown town, none very original, none very insightful either, and many quite meaningless even if they sound 'profound'. The language that tries so hard to be fresh is often just stale recycled 'quasi-poetic' insights. He should stick to the narrative and ditch the pseudo-philosophical rambling, and maybe he has a chance to became a decent writer. On this form, pretentiousness is king in Collins's world.


As intense and emotionally draining as your worst nightmare., 04 Jan 2006
Written with passion and fury, this novel is as unrelenting as a nightmare--you can't break out of it once you are in it, and you are compelled to see it through to the end. On the surface, it is a murder mystery and investigation, but at its heart, it's a bleak case study of a community which has died since its manufacturing industries shut down and the supports for its local economy collapsed. Everything which gave dignity, meaning, and focus to the hardscrabble lives of the inhabitants is gone. In the middle of a hot, dry summer in this community in the Dust Bowl, Ronny Lawton's no 'count father disappears, and Ronny, no Boy Scout himself, is generally assumed to be his killer.

Collins sets up the framework for his themes from the outset. The main character, Bill, is the grandson of a man who made his fortune selling ice, and later manufacturing refrigerators. Bill is working haphazardly for the local newspaper and living in the basement of the family mansion because it's the coolest area of the house during these brutally hot days. He is recovering from a breakdown and hospitalization following his father's suicide.

Ronny Lawton, to whom he is drawn, at first, as a newsman, is in many ways his opposite, though they share the bond of having lost their mothers and having had cruel fathers. Ronny lives in a shack and works at Denny's, where he takes pride in his designation as Employee of the Month. Except for Bill, who believes Ronny may be innocent, everyone--the local police, the FBI, the newpaper owner, and the claque of women at the local hairdressing salon--needs to find Ronny guilty to regain control of their lives. As the spirit of frontier justice grows and the need for a scapegoat becomes more pressing, Bill and Ronny both become caught up in the out-of-control spiral which soon engulfs them both.

The pace of the novel is unrelenting. The small-town dialogue is realistic, filled with petty resentments and jealousies. The prose is vivid, full of heavy, occasionally "purple," descriptions. The pathetic setting of a community which has lost every reason for being, and the hopelessness of the lives of its inhabitants, made obsolescent by the decline of manufacturing, make this a bleak reading experience. Collins's humor, however, saves it from bathos, and the psychological credibility of the characters and the excitement of the plot make this a book that I found impossible to put down. It's easy to see why it was a Booker nominee. Mary Whipple

Well-crafted murder mystery in small-town Midwest, 27 May 2005
On one level 'The Keepers of Truth' is a well-crafted murder mystery set in a small town in America's midwest, in which Old Man Lawton has disappeared and everybody in the town is quick to point the blame at his trouble-making son, Ronny. Everybody that is except Bill, the local reporter for the town rag, 'The Truth', who seeks to discover just that. Bill is the unlikely hero and inspired narrator of this tale: he is a local, down on his luck after failing to get into law school and struggling to get over his father's suicide, who is able to rise above the gossip and jealousies of those around him. On a broader level, 'The Keepers of Truth' provides a perceptive portrayal of the social malaise in a late-70s industrial town, with factories closing and the local economy in terminal crisis. This portrayal includes memorable descriptions of late-night activity at Denny's: read this novel as a combo-meal with Eric Schlosser's non-fictional 'Fast Food Nation' and you'll never eat junk food again! Fairly obviously, the novel's setting makes for fairly bleak reading, punctuated occasionally by some humourous touches such as material concerning Darlene, the local beautician, and a number of guffaw-inducing headlines that Bill wishes he could write!! The only other Michael Collins novel that I have read to date is 'The Resurrectionists': both novels are particularly well-written with compelling storylines, whilst also confronting social issues head-on and leaving the reader with plenty to think about.

Well-crafted murder mystery in small-town Midwest, 27 May 2005
On one level 'The Keepers of Truth' is a well-crafted murder mystery set in a small town in America's midwest, in which Old Man Lawton has disappeared and everybody in the town is quick to point the blame at his trouble-making son, Ronny. Everybody that is except Bill, the local reporter for the town rag, 'The Truth', who seeks to discover just that. Bill is the unlikely hero and inspired narrator of this tale: he is a local, down on his luck after failing to get into law school and struggling to get over his father's suicide, who is able to rise above the gossip and jealousies of those around him. On a broader level, 'The Keepers of Truth' provides a perceptive portrayal of the social malaise in a late-70s industrial town, with factories closing and the local economy in terminal crisis. This portrayal includes memorable descriptions of late-night activity at Denny's: read this novel as a combo-meal with Eric Schlosser's non-fictional 'Fast Food Nation' and you'll never eat junk food again! Fairly obviously, the novel's setting makes for fairly bleak reading, punctuated occasionally by some humourous touches such as material concerning Darlene, the local beautician, and a number of guffaw-inducing headlines that Bill wishes he could write!! The only other Michael Collins novel that I have read to date is 'The Resurrectionists': both novels are particularly well-written with compelling storylines, whilst also confronting social issues head-on and leaving the reader with plenty to think about.

A great read, 29 Aug 2007
This is essentially a voyage of discovery as a man travels back with his family to uncover his own past after the death of his uncle. The book is filled with quirky characters and with some wonderful humour as the main character tries to work out his past and in doing so come to terms with his present as he unravels a grim tale. The book is strong on visual images and conjures up time and place as well as characters very effectively. I could not tear myself away from this book and even though I finished it some time ago, I find myself reflecting back on it a lot - the sign of a good book as far as I am concerned.

Best novel I've read in years, 02 Oct 2003
The quality of the writing marks this out as a book I will keep and re-read in years to come. Has the same ability as John Banville to write with such sily skill that the writing never intrudes onto the story but complements it fully.

"Like everything else in life…stories within stories.", 20 Oct 2002
In this absorbing and multi-layered can’t-put-it-downer, Collins provides the reader with innumerable vantage points from which to view the lives of Frank Cassidy and his quirky and dysfunctional family, to see life as Frank sees it, and to watch in fascination as each family member grows and changes. Stuck by circumstance and lack of opportunity at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, Frank, "a scavenger at the edge of existence," Honey, and their children leave New Jersey in a series of stolen cars for the Upper Michigan Peninsula, as soon as they discover that Frank’s uncle, who raised him, has died on his farm. An inheritance, however small, could change their lives.

A mystery lies at the heart of the novel. Frank’s parents died in a fire when he was five, and, through hypnosis and, eventually, treatment for a breakdown, he’s come to believe that he and his uncle were both involved in these deaths in some way. Returning to "a town nobody returns to unless under tragic circumstances," Frank starts digging into the past and disrupting lives. On the level of plot alone, the novel is full of excitement, enhanced by vibrant characters with whom one feels great empathy as they wrestle against the circumstances that keep them down, bending the rules, if not breaking them, whenever they can. The vividly described, remote farm environment, the mores of the local community, and the treacherous winter weather generate much of the action and interaction. Collins expands the scope of the novel well beyond plot and melodrama, however, by recreating the ambience of the 1970’s and using Richard Nixon, Watergate, and Jim Jones as thematic motifs which recur throughout the novel and show parallels with his characters and story.

As the title indicates, this is also a novel with religious parallels, so well integrated that many readers may not even notice them, at first. The Prodigal Son, the Book of Job, and the story of Lot’s wife are fairly obvious, while the Parable of the Loaves and Fishes (in this case a trick in which one hits a Coke machine at the right moment to get both the Coke and the money back) may be less so. References to good and evil, hope and despair, death and rebirth, and salvation and resurrection occur throughout, as Frank and his family adapt to life in a small town, try to cope with their internal conflicts, and ultimately to come out ahead.

A beautifully developed novel of big ideas, The Resurrectionists is engaging and, to me, totally satisfying on every level. Though I enjoyed Keepers of Truth, I liked this novel even better—it’s one of my favorite novels of the year. Mary Whipple

A Bleak Masterpiece in Praise of America, 07 Sep 2002
From the heat of New Jersey to the frozen wastelands of Upper Michigan, The Resurrectionists travels so many roads, literally a road novel, but also across the intellectual and political landscape of our nation from the seventies back through the fifties. Rarely has a book woven such dysfunctionality, darkness, menace and hopelessness into a masterpiece of modern life. From the white noise of reruns, to the breakdown of time and memory for the main character who cannot be sure of his actions or his take on the story, we are left in a bewildering world of truths and half truths, struggling with the narrator to discover the dark secret that lies at the heart of this novel.
The curious pace, sometimes languid, the frentic breaks all the rules of the crime genre, stradling literature, holding onto moments of mood and feeling, letting us linger in the silence of life, then weaving back into the plot.
The material with Honey, the main character's husband on death row, with his ball of dead skin, and his execution against the a rerun of Gilligan's Island stands as one of those defining moments of dark political satire I've yet read in any work. Collins mines the political and social life of our America, breaks down the divide and situates all life as politically charged and dangerous. The menace of Nixon is all through this book, haunting Robert Lee with his pez Nixon, to Honey's husband who murdered people in the aftermath of Watergate, profoundly disillusioned with America.
This is not to say this is a novel that bashes America, in fact, it's the opposite. It hilights the diversity and tension, but also the ability of America to overcome adversity, how America survives.
How the novel subtly shifts and offers redemption toward the end is done with such brillant understand of the human heart, that this book exhalts as one of those rare books that lets you stare into the abyss, but see through to the otherside.

Cinematic Masterpiece! America the Surreal, 22 Aug 2002
From the first lines, "I couldn't quite get us back without incident for the burial of my father. We ran into a little trouble along the way. It took us two stolen cars along the interstate to get us home," the unnerving tone of the narrator drives this edgy masterpiece of existential longing and search for salvation.

The road scenes are as good as any written about America, cinematic masterpieces - the limbo of rest stops, the roadside motels. There's a sense of detachment and horror that underlies the freedom and journey this family take, i.e. America takes. The American highway is a seductive and beautiful metaphor, but also a surreal place, a noman's land. As we follow along with this family, we see the pitfall of life, the moments of madness to which all can succumb. The holdup scene of the old man and his spiritual redemption even as he's getting robbed, is a quintessential moment in American fiction. Then there's Robert Lee and his miracle of the Loafs and the Fishes that centers on a Vending machine at the high school... the execution of a deathrow inmate as Gilligan's Island plays in the background, to the sleeper who lies in a coma in a sanitorium. There are so many absurd juxtapositions, so much melding and layering of history, of present time and rerun TV here, that everything takes on a density, the very nature of the plot and its subtext creates almost a modern feeling of disorientation.

This book is a haunting, tragic tale, a world of beautiful losers, a world of sin and grace.
This book shimmers with those moments, takes us to the psyche of what it truly is to be an American and why they remain the most captivating of people! It's screaming for an adaptation to the screen.

Bleak, Funny, Real, 24 Nov 2001
Anyone who grew up in Ireland before the '90's will find this harsh novel resonates with tehm on many levels. Though many have tried to represent the oppresiveness and bleakness of the country at this time, few have been so successful at showing how a combination of poverty and theocracy stifled creativity and often induced psychosis of various sorts.

Though it's hard not to feel for the depressive protagonist, it's also difficult not to be impressed by the ferocious intelligence that permeates the book. It's written beautifully, with an eye for detail that reminds one of Updike at his best.

Superb graphic novel, 07 Oct 2008
Who says British comics are dead? They're alive and well and in a new format as this excellent adaptation of Dickens' most famous work proves. Superb artwork from Mike Collins on this his 25th year as a professional comic artist. Great value for money. Would make an excellent Christmas present or a gift at any time of the year.

Classical Comics are producing some impressive books in this line. Check them all out.

Booker Shortlistee Disappoints, 20 Mar 2008
Written by an Irishman living in America, this Booker shortlistee is a strange beast set in a Midwestern town during the long hot summer of 1979. (Some reviews place it in the early or mid-'80s, a curious mistake given the explicit allusion to the year on pages 94-5: "in a matter of months we would be watching our hostages under siege in Iran"). The book appears to be a stab at marking America's transition into hyperconsumerism and moral decay, but it's so chockablock with heavyhanded satire and symbolism that it's hard to figure out just what the intent is.

The story revolves around Bill, a 20something misanthrope who's returned to his hometown by default. Having bombed the LSATs, he's living alone in the ancestral family home his father committed suicide in, and working as the only reporter for the dying town newspaper, "The Truth." An ornery old man goes missing, providing a crime for Bill to become engrossed in, as the townspeople assume that the man's no-good son chopped him up after some kind of argument. (Is it meaningful that the suspect son is named "Ronny" and takes steroids? An allusion to the incoming President Reagan and the "muscular" foreign policy he would invoke?) Bill is the only one who thinks Ronny is innocent, and becomes entangled with Ronny, his estranged wife (an aspirational consumerist), and baby son (who only eats junk foot).

The use of the crime genre is a way for Collins to draw the reader in and keep them reading, but those expecting a neat resolution will be very disappointed. And perhaps that's part of the point, to subvert the reader's expectations just as his characters' expectations of the "American Dream" have been subverted by the shift of manufacturing to overseas. Heavy weather is made of the landscape of rapidly decaying closed factories in whose shadows drugs are dealt. Meanwhile, a semi-grotesque supporting character embodies the coming rise of the service economy, as she runs a mini-salon from her garage, mixing in other services which presage the "experience economy." Yet another running theme is the decline of print media and the rise of TV tabloid journalism.

All of this results in a mixed brew of social commentary which becomes rather repetitive and heavy-handed much of the time. There are large swathes of Bill's cynical interior thoughts that drag the book to a halt and tax the reader's patience. These are partially balanced by some quite fine descriptive passages and other bits and chunks. On the balance, though, it's pretty hard to see what all the fuss is about and it's oten hard not to feel like the book's "satire" is largely a matter of playing to European stereotypes about the American midwest.

crime story wrecked by overwriting, 17 Dec 2006
Stripped to the bone, this is an above-average tale of small town America. The author, however, attempts to bring 'literary heft' to the proceedings with weighty images that are presumably an attempt at rendering a poetic background - but these are mostly cliches describing a rundown town, none very original, none very insightful either, and many quite meaningless even if they sound 'profound'. The language that tries so hard to be fresh is often just stale recycled 'quasi-poetic' insights. He should stick to the narrative and ditch the pseudo-philosophical rambling, and maybe he has a chance to became a decent writer. On this form, pretentiousness is king in Collins's world.


As intense and emotionally draining as your worst nightmare., 04 Jan 2006
Written with passion and fury, this novel is as unrelenting as a nightmare--you can't break out of it once you are in it, and you are compelled to see it through to the end. On the surface, it is a murder mystery and investigation, but at its heart, it's a bleak case study of a community which has died since its manufacturing industries shut down and the supports for its local economy collapsed. Everything which gave dignity, meaning, and focus to the hardscrabble lives of the inhabitants is gone. In the middle of a hot, dry summer in this community in the Dust Bowl, Ronny Lawton's no 'count father disappears, and Ronny, no Boy Scout himself, is generally assumed to be his killer.

Collins sets up the framework for his themes from the outset. The main character, Bill, is the grandson of a man who made his fortune selling ice, and later manufacturing refrigerators. Bill is working haphazardly for the local newspaper and living in the basement of the family mansion because it's the coolest area of the house during these brutally hot days. He is recovering from a breakdown and hospitalization following his father's suicide.

Ronny Lawton, to whom he is drawn, at first, as a newsman, is in many ways his opposite, though they share the bond of having lost their mothers and having had cruel fathers. Ronny lives in a shack and works at Denny's, where he takes pride in his designation as Employee of the Month. Except for Bill, who believes Ronny may be innocent, everyone--the local police, the FBI, the newpaper owner, and the claque of women at the local hairdressing salon--needs to find Ronny guilty to regain control of their lives. As the spirit of frontier justice grows and the need for a scapegoat becomes more pressing, Bill and Ronny both become caught up in the out-of-control spiral which soon engulfs them both.

The pace of the novel is unrelenting. The small-town dialogue is realistic, filled with petty resentments and jealousies. The prose is vivid, full of heavy, occasionally "purple," descriptions. The pathetic setting of a community which has lost every reason for being, and the hopelessness of the lives of its inhabitants, made obsolescent by the decline of manufacturing, make this a bleak reading experience. Collins's humor, however, saves it from bathos, and the psychological credibility of the characters and the excitement of the plot make this a book that I found impossible to put down. It's easy to see why it was a Booker nominee. Mary Whipple

Well-crafted murder mystery in small-town Midwest, 27 May 2005
On one level 'The Keepers of Truth' is a well-crafted murder mystery set in a small town in America's midwest, in which Old Man Lawton has disappeared and everybody in the town is quick to point the blame at his trouble-making son, Ronny. Everybody that is except Bill, the local reporter for the town rag, 'The Truth', who seeks to discover just that. Bill is the unlikely hero and inspired narrator of this tale: he is a local, down on his luck after failing to get into law school and struggling to get over his father's suicide, who is able to rise above the gossip and jealousies of those around him. On a broader level, 'The Keepers of Truth' provides a perceptive portrayal of the social malaise in a late-70s industrial town, with factories closing and the local economy in terminal crisis. This portrayal includes memorable descriptions of late-night activity at Denny's: read this novel as a combo-meal with Eric Schlosser's non-fictional 'Fast Food Nation' and you'll never eat junk food again! Fairly obviously, the novel's setting makes for fairly bleak reading, punctuated occasionally by some humourous touches such as material concerning Darlene, the local beautician, and a number of guffaw-inducing headlines that Bill wishes he could write!! The only other Michael Collins novel that I have read to date is 'The Resurrectionists': both novels are particularly well-written with compelling storylines, whilst also confronting social issues head-on and leaving the reader with plenty to think about.

Well-crafted murder mystery in small-town Midwest, 27 May 2005
On one level 'The Keepers of Truth' is a well-crafted murder mystery set in a small town in America's midwest, in which Old Man Lawton has disappeared and everybody in the town is quick to point the blame at his trouble-making son, Ronny. Everybody that is except Bill, the local reporter for the town rag, 'The Truth', who seeks to discover just that. Bill is the unlikely hero and inspired narrator of this tale: he is a local, down on his luck after failing to get into law school and struggling to get over his father's suicide, who is able to rise above the gossip and jealousies of those around him. On a broader level, 'The Keepers of Truth' provides a perceptive portrayal of the social malaise in a late-70s industrial town, with factories closing and the local economy in terminal crisis. This portrayal includes memorable descriptions of late-night activity at Denny's: read this novel as a combo-meal with Eric Schlosser's non-fictional 'Fast Food Nation' and you'll never eat junk food again! Fairly obviously, the novel's setting makes for fairly bleak reading, punctuated occasionally by some humourous touches such as material concerning Darlene, the local beautician, and a number of guffaw-inducing headlines that Bill wishes he could write!! The only other Michael Collins novel that I have read to date is 'The Resurrectionists': both novels are particularly well-written with compelling storylines, whilst also confronting social issues head-on and leaving the reader with plenty to think about.

A great read, 29 Aug 2007
This is essentially a voyage of discovery as a man travels back with his family to uncover his own past after the death of his uncle. The book is filled with quirky characters and with some wonderful humour as the main character tries to work out his past and in doing so come to terms with his present as he unravels a grim tale. The book is strong on visual images and conjures up time and place as well as characters very effectively. I could not tear myself away from this book and even though I finished it some time ago, I find myself reflecting back on it a lot - the sign of a good book as far as I am concerned.

Best novel I've read in years, 02 Oct 2003
The quality of the writing marks this out as a book I will keep and re-read in years to come. Has the same ability as John Banville to write with such sily skill that the writing never intrudes onto the story but complements it fully.

"Like everything else in life…stories within stories.", 20 Oct 2002
In this absorbing and multi-layered can’t-put-it-downer, Collins provides the reader with innumerable vantage points from which to view the lives of Frank Cassidy and his quirky and dysfunctional family, to see life as Frank sees it, and to watch in fascination as each family member grows and changes. Stuck by circumstance and lack of opportunity at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, Frank, "a scavenger at the edge of existence," Honey, and their children leave New Jersey in a series of stolen cars for the Upper Michigan Peninsula, as soon as they discover that Frank’s uncle, who raised him, has died on his farm. An inheritance, however small, could change their lives.

A mystery lies at the heart of the novel. Frank’s parents died in a fire when he was five, and, through hypnosis and, eventually, treatment for a breakdown, he’s come to believe that he and his uncle were both involved in these deaths in some way. Returning to "a town nobody returns to unless under tragic circumstances," Frank starts digging into the past and disrupting lives. On the level of plot alone, the novel is full of excitement, enhanced by vibrant characters with whom one feels great empathy as they wrestle against the circumstances that keep them down, bending the rules, if not breaking them, whenever they can. The vividly described, remote farm environment, the mores of the local community, and the treacherous winter weather generate much of the action and interaction. Collins expands the scope of the novel well beyond plot and melodrama, however, by recreating the ambience of the 1970’s and using Richard Nixon, Watergate, and Jim Jones as thematic motifs which recur throughout the novel and show parallels with his characters and story.

As the title indicates, this is also a novel with religious parallels, so well integrated that many readers may not even notice them, at first. The Prodigal Son, the Book of Job, and the story of Lot’s wife are fairly obvious, while the Parable of the Loaves and Fishes (in this case a trick in which one hits a Coke machine at the right moment to get both the Coke and the money back) may be less so. References to good and evil, hope and despair, death and rebirth, and salvation and resurrection occur throughout, as Frank and his family adapt to life in a small town, try to cope with their internal conflicts, and ultimately to come out ahead.

A beautifully developed novel of big ideas, The Resurrectionists is engaging and, to me, totally satisfying on every level. Though I enjoyed Keepers of Truth, I liked this novel even better—it’s one of my favorite novels of the year. Mary Whipple

A Bleak Masterpiece in Praise of America, 07 Sep 2002
From the heat of New Jersey to the frozen wastelands of Upper Michigan, The Resurrectionists travels so many roads, literally a road novel, but also across the intellectual and political landscape of our nation from the seventies back through the fifties. Rarely has a book woven such dysfunctionality, darkness, menace and hopelessness into a masterpiece of modern life. From the white noise of reruns, to the breakdown of time and memory for the main character who cannot be sure of his actions or his take on the story, we are left in a bewildering world of truths and half truths, struggling with the narrator to discover the dark secret that lies at the heart of this novel.
The curious pace, sometimes languid, the frentic breaks all the rules of the crime genre, stradling literature, holding onto moments of mood and feeling, letting us linger in the silence of life, then weaving back into the plot.
The material with Honey, the main character's husband on death row, with his ball of dead skin, and his execution against the a rerun of Gilligan's Island stands as one of those defining moments of dark political satire I've yet read in any work. Collins mines the political and social life of our America, breaks down the divide and situates all life as politically charged and dangerous. The menace of Nixon is all through this book, haunting Robert Lee with his pez Nixon, to Honey's husband who murdered people in the aftermath of Watergate, profoundly disillusioned with America.
This is not to say this is a novel that bashes America, in fact, it's the opposite. It hilights the diversity and tension, but also the ability of America to overcome adversity, how America survives.
How the novel subtly shifts and offers redemption toward the end is done with such brillant understand of the human heart, that this book exhalts as one of those rare books that lets you stare into the abyss, but see through to the otherside.

Cinematic Masterpiece! America the Surreal, 22 Aug 2002
From the first lines, "I couldn't quite get us back without incident for the burial of my father. We ran into a little trouble along the way. It took us two stolen cars along the interstate to get us home," the unnerving tone of the narrator drives this edgy masterpiece of existential longing and search for salvation.

The road scenes are as good as any written about America, cinematic masterpieces - the limbo of rest stops, the roadside motels. There's a sense of detachment and horror that underlies the freedom and journey this family take, i.e. America takes. The American highway is a seductive and beautiful metaphor, but also a surreal place, a noman's land. As we follow along with this family, we see the pitfall of life, the moments of madness to which all can succumb. The holdup scene of the old man and his spiritual redemption even as he's getting robbed, is a quintessential moment in American fiction. Then there's Robert Lee and his miracle of the Loafs and the Fishes that centers on a Vending machine at the high school... the execution of a deathrow inmate as Gilligan's Island plays in the background, to the sleeper who lies in a coma in a sanitorium. There are so many absurd juxtapositions, so much melding and layering of history, of present time and rerun TV here, that everything takes on a density, the very nature of the plot and its subtext creates almost a modern feeling of disorientation.

This book is a haunting, tragic tale, a world of beautiful losers, a world of sin and grace.
This book shimmers with those moments, takes us to the psyche of what it truly is to be an American and why they remain the most captivating of people! It's screaming for an adaptation to the screen.

Bleak, Funny, Real, 24 Nov 2001
Anyone who grew up in Ireland before the '90's will find this harsh novel resonates with tehm on many levels. Though many have tried to represent the oppresiveness and bleakness of the country at this time, few have been so successful at showing how a combination of poverty and theocracy stifled creativity and often induced psychosis of various sorts.

Though it's hard not to feel for the depressive protagonist, it's also difficult not to be impressed by the ferocious intelligence that permeates the book. It's written beautifully, with an eye for detail that reminds one of Updike at his best.

a gripping read, 07 Sep 2008
I like Michael Collins' books and this one ranks up there with the best. Certain themes re-emerge - the lonely outsider trying to make sense of the world; horrible secrets buried in small communities; silent witnesses unable to talk through illness. I make it sound like a horror story but it is far from that. It is grim and very gritty and leaves you feeling that you have just been trapped in a very dysfunctional community, ill at ease with itself and with outsiders trying to unravel their murky past. Some humour peeps through on occasions but this is a bleak book - but one well worth reading.

Superb graphic novel, 07 Oct 2008
Who says British comics are dead? They're alive and well and in a new format as this excellent adaptation of Dickens' most famous work proves. Superb artwork from Mike Collins on this his 25th year as a professional comic artist. Great value for money. Would make an excellent Christmas present or a gift at any time of the year.

Classical Comics are producing some impressive books in this line. Check them all out.

Booker Shortlistee Disappoints, 20 Mar 2008
Written by an Irishman living in America, this Booker shortlistee is a strange beast set in a Midwestern town during the long hot summer of 1979. (Some reviews place it in the early or mid-'80s, a curious mistake given the explicit allusion to the year on pages 94-5: "in a matter of months we would be watching our hostages under siege in Iran"). The book appears to be a stab at marking America's transition into hyperconsumerism and moral decay, but it's so chockablock with heavyhanded satire and symbolism that it's hard to figure out just what the intent is.

The story revolves around Bill, a 20something misanthrope who's returned to his hometown by default. Having bombed the LSATs, he's living alone in the ancestral family home his father committed suicide in, and working as the only reporter for the dying town newspaper, "The Truth." An ornery old man goes missing, providing a crime for Bill to become engrossed in, as the townspeople assume that the man's no-good son chopped him up after some kind of argument. (Is it meaningful that the suspect son is named "Ronny" and takes steroids? An allusion to the incoming President Reagan and the "muscular" foreign policy he would invoke?) Bill is the only one who thinks Ronny is innocent, and becomes entangled with Ronny, his estranged wife (an aspirational consumerist), and baby son (who only eats junk foot).

The use of the crime genre is a way for Collins to draw the reader in and keep them reading, but those expecting a neat resolution will be very disappointed. And perhaps that's part of the point, to subvert the reader's expectations just as his characters' expectations of the "American Dream" have been subverted by the shift of manufacturing to overseas. Heavy weather is made of the landscape of rapidly decaying closed factories in whose shadows drugs are dealt. Meanwhile, a semi-grotesque supporting character embodies the coming rise of the service economy, as she runs a mini-salon from her garage, mixing in other services which presage the "experience economy." Yet another running theme is the decline of print media and the rise of TV tabloid journalism.

All of this results in a mixed brew of social commentary which becomes rather repetitive and heavy-handed much of the time. There are large swathes of Bill's cynical interior thoughts that drag the book to a halt and tax the reader's patience. These are partially balanced by some quite fine descriptive passages and other bits and chunks. On the balance, though, it's pretty hard to see what all the fuss is about and it's oten hard not to feel like the book's "satire" is largely a matter of playing to European stereotypes about the American midwest.

crime story wrecked by overwriting, 17 Dec 2006
Stripped to the bone, this is an above-average tale of small town America. The author, however, attempts to bring 'literary heft' to the proceedings with weighty images that are presumably an attempt at rendering a poetic background - but these are mostly cliches describing a rundown town, none very original, none very insightful either, and many quite meaningless even if they sound 'profound'. The language that tries so hard to be fresh is often just stale recycled 'quasi-poetic' insights. He should stick to the narrative and ditch the pseudo-philosophical rambling, and maybe he has a chance to became a decent writer. On this form, pretentiousness is king in Collins's world.


As intense and emotionally draining as your worst nightmare., 04 Jan 2006
Written with passion and fury, this novel is as unrelenting as a nightmare--you can't break out of it once you are in it, and you are compelled to see it through to the end. On the surface, it is a murder mystery and investigation, but at its heart, it's a bleak case study of a community which has died since its manufacturing industries shut down and the supports for its local economy collapsed. Everything which gave dignity, meaning, and focus to the hardscrabble lives of the inhabitants is gone. In the middle of a hot, dry summer in this community in the Dust Bowl, Ronny Lawton's no 'count father disappears, and Ronny, no Boy Scout himself, is generally assumed to be his killer.

Collins sets up the framework for his themes from the outset. The main character, Bill, is the grandson of a man who made his fortune selling ice, and later manufacturing refrigerators. Bill is working haphazardly for the local newspaper and living in the basement of the family mansion because it's the coolest area of the house during these brutally hot days. He is recovering from a breakdown and hospitalization following his father's suicide.

Ronny Lawton, to whom he is drawn, at first, as a newsman, is in many ways his opposite, though they share the bond of having lost their mothers and having had cruel fathers. Ronny lives in a shack and works at Denny's, where he takes pride in his designation as Employee of the Month. Except for Bill, who believes Ronny may be innocent, everyone--the local police, the FBI, the newpaper owner, and the claque of women at the local hairdressing salon--needs to find Ronny guilty to regain control of their lives. As the spirit of frontier justice grows and the need for a scapegoat becomes more pressing, Bill and Ronny both become caught up in the out-of-control spiral which soon engulfs them both.

The pace of the novel is unrelenting. The small-town dialogue is realistic, filled with petty resentments and jealousies. The prose is vivid, full of heavy, occasionally "purple," descriptions. The pathetic setting of a community which has lost every reason for being, and the hopelessness of the lives of its inhabitants, made obsolescent by the decline of manufacturing, make this a bleak reading experience. Collins's humor, however, saves it from bathos, and the psychological credibility of the characters and the excitement of the plot make this a book that I found impossible to put down. It's easy to see why it was a Booker nominee. Mary Whipple

Well-crafted murder mystery in small-town Midwest, 27 May 2005
On one level 'The Keepers of Truth' is a well-crafted murder mystery set in a small town in America's midwest, in which Old Man Lawton has disappeared and everybody in the town is quick to point the blame at his trouble-making son, Ronny. Everybody that is except Bill, the local reporter for the town rag, 'The Truth', who seeks to discover just that. Bill is the unlikely hero and inspired narrator of this tale: he is a local, down on his luck after failing to get into law school and struggling to get over his father's suicide, who is able to rise above the gossip and jealousies of those around him. On a broader level, 'The Keepers of Truth' provides a perceptive portrayal of the social malaise in a late-70s industrial town, with factories closing and the local economy in terminal crisis. This portrayal includes memorable descriptions of late-night activity at Denny's: read this novel as a combo-meal with Eric Schlosser's non-fictional 'Fast Food Nation' and you'll never eat junk food again! Fairly obviously, the novel's setting makes for fairly bleak reading, punctuated occasionally by some humourous touches such as material concerning Darlene, the local beautician, and a number of guffaw-inducing headlines that Bill wishes he could write!! The only other Michael Collins novel that I have read to date is 'The Resurrectionists': both novels are particularly well-written with compelling storylines, whilst also confronting social issues head-on and leaving the reader with plenty to think about.

Well-crafted murder mystery in small-town Midwest, 27 May 2005
On one level 'The Keepers of Truth' is a well-crafted murder mystery set in a small town in America's midwest, in which Old Man Lawton has disappeared and everybody in the town is quick to point the blame at his trouble-making son, Ronny. Everybody that is except Bill, the local reporter for the town rag, 'The Truth', who seeks to discover just that. Bill is the unlikely hero and inspired narrator of this tale: he is a local, down on his luck after failing to get into law school and struggling to get over his father's suicide, who is able to rise above the gossip and jealousies of those around him. On a broader level, 'The Keepers of Truth' provides a perceptive portrayal of the social malaise in a late-70s industrial town, with factories closing and the local economy in terminal crisis. This portrayal includes memorable descriptions of late-night activity at Denny's: read this novel as a combo-meal with Eric Schlosser's non-fictional 'Fast Food Nation' and you'll never eat junk food again! Fairly obviously, the novel's setting makes for fairly bleak reading, punctuated occasionally by some humourous touches such as material concerning Darlene, the local beautician, and a number of guffaw-inducing headlines that Bill wishes he could write!! The only other Michael Collins novel that I have read to date is 'The Resurrectionists': both novels are particularly well-written with compelling storylines, whilst also confronting social issues head-on and leaving the reader with plenty to think about.

A great read, 29 Aug 2007
This is essentially a voyage of discovery as a man travels back with his family to uncover his own past after the death of his uncle. The book is filled with quirky characters and with some wonderful humour as the main character tries to work out his past and in doing so come to terms with his present as he unravels a grim tale. The book is strong on visual images and conjures up time and place as well as characters very effectively. I could not tear myself away from this book and even though I finished it some time ago, I find myself reflecting back on it a lot - the sign of a good book as far as I am concerned.

Best novel I've read in years, 02 Oct 2003
The quality of the writing marks this out as a book I will keep and re-read in years to come. Has the same ability as John Banville to write with such sily skill that the writing never intrudes onto the story but complements it fully.

"Like everything else in life…stories within stories.", 20 Oct 2002
In this absorbing and multi-layered can’t-put-it-downer, Collins provides the reader with innumerable vantage points from which to view the lives of Frank Cassidy and his quirky and dysfunctional family, to see life as Frank sees it, and to watch in fascination as each family member grows and changes. Stuck by circumstance and lack of opportunity at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, Frank, "a scavenger at the edge of existence," Honey, and their children leave New Jersey in a series of stolen cars for the Upper Michigan Peninsula, as soon as they discover that Frank’s uncle, who raised him, has died on his farm. An inheritance, however small, could change their lives.

A mystery lies at the heart of the novel. Frank’s parents died in a fire when he was five, and, through hypnosis and, eventually, treatment for a breakdown, he’s come to believe that he and his uncle were both involved in these deaths in some way. Returning to "a town nobody returns to unless under tragic circumstances," Frank starts digging into the past and disrupting lives. On the level of plot alone, the novel is full of excitement, enhanced by vibrant characters with whom one feels great empathy as they wrestle against the circumstances that keep them down, bending the rules, if not breaking them, whenever they can. The vividly described, remote farm environment, the mores of the local community, and the treacherous winter weather generate much of the action and interaction. Collins expands the scope of the novel well beyond plot and melodrama, however, by recreating the ambience of the 1970’s and using Richard Nixon, Watergate, and Jim Jones as thematic motifs which recur throughout the novel and show parallels with his characters and story.

As the title indicates, this is also a novel with religious parallels, so well integrated that many readers may not even notice them, at first. The Prodigal Son, the Book of Job, and the story of Lot’s wife are fairly obvious, while the Parable of the Loaves and Fishes (in this case a trick in which one hits a Coke machine at the right moment to get both the Coke and the money back) may be less so. References to good and evil, hope and despair, death and rebirth, and salvation and resurrection occur throughout, as Frank and his family adapt to life in a small town, try to cope with their internal conflicts, and ultimately to come out ahead.

A beautifully developed novel of big ideas, The Resurrectionists is engaging and, to me, totally satisfying on every level. Though I enjoyed Keepers of Truth, I liked this novel even better—it’s one of my favorite novels of the year. Mary Whipple

A Bleak Masterpiece in Praise of America, 07 Sep 2002
From the heat of New Jersey to the frozen wastelands of Upper Michigan, The Resurrectionists travels so many roads, literally a road novel, but also across the intellectual and political landscape of our nation from the seventies back through the fifties. Rarely has a book woven such dysfunctionality, darkness, menace and hopelessness into a masterpiece of modern life. From the white noise of reruns, to the breakdown of time and memory for the main character who cannot be sure of his actions or his take on the story, we are left in a bewildering world of truths and half truths, struggling with the narrator to discover the dark secret that lies at the heart of this novel.
The curious pace, sometimes languid, the frentic breaks all the rules of the crime genre, stradling literature, holding onto moments of mood and feeling, letting us linger in the silence of life, then weaving back into the plot.
The material with Honey, the main character's husband on death row, with his ball of dead skin, and his execution against the a rerun of Gilligan's Island stands as one of those defining moments of dark political satire I've yet read in any work. Collins mines the political and social life of our America, breaks down the divide and situates all life as politically charged and dangerous. The menace of Nixon is all through this book, haunting Robert Lee with his pez Nixon, to Honey's husband who murdered people in the aftermath of Watergate, profoundly disillusioned with America.
This is not to say this is a novel that bashes America, in fact, it's the opposite. It hilights the diversity and tension, but also the ability of America to overcome adversity, how America survives.
How the novel subtly shifts and offers redemption toward the end is done with such brillant understand of the human heart, that this book exhalts as one of those rare books that lets you stare into the abyss, but see through to the otherside.

Cinematic Masterpiece! America the Surreal, 22 Aug 2002
From the first lines, "I couldn't quite get us back without incident for the burial of my father. We ran into a little trouble along the way. It took us two stolen cars along the interstate to get us home," the unnerving tone of the narrator drives this edgy masterpiece of existential longing and search for salvation.

The road scenes are as good as any written about America, cinematic masterpieces - the limbo of rest stops, the roadside motels. There's a sense of detachment and horror that underlies the freedom and journey this family take, i.e. America takes. The American highway is a seductive and beautiful metaphor, but also a surreal place, a noman's land. As we follow along with this family, we see the pitfall of life, the moments of madness to which all can succumb. The holdup scene of the old man and his spiritual redemption even as he's getting robbed, is a quintessential moment in American fiction. Then there's Robert Lee and his miracle of the Loafs and the Fishes that centers on a Vending machine at the high school... the execution of a deathrow inmate as Gilligan's Island plays in the background, to the sleeper who lies in a coma in a sanitorium. There are so many absurd juxtapositions, so much melding and layering of history, of present time and rerun TV here, that everything takes on a density, the very nature of the plot and its subtext creates almost a modern feeling of disorientation.

This book is a haunting, tragic tale, a world of beautiful losers, a world of sin and grace.
This book shimmers with those moments, takes us to the psyche of what it truly is to be an American and why they remain the most captivating of people! It's screaming for an adaptation to the screen.

Bleak, Funny, Real, 24 Nov 2001
Anyone who grew up in Ireland before the '90's will find this harsh novel resonates with tehm on many levels. Though many have tried to represent the oppresiveness and bleakness of the country at this time, few have been so successful at showing how a combination of poverty and theocracy stifled creativity and often induced psychosis of various sorts.

Though it's hard not to feel for the depressive protagonist, it's also difficult not to be impressed by the ferocious intelligence that permeates the book. It's written beautifully, with an eye for detail that reminds one of Updike at his best.

a gripping read, 07 Sep 2008
I like Michael Collins' books and this one ranks up there with the best. Certain themes re-emerge - the lonely outsider trying to make sense of the world; horrible secrets buried in small communities; silent witnesses unable to talk through illness. I make it sound like a horror story but it is far from that. It is grim and very gritty and leaves you feeling that you have just been trapped in a very dysfunctional community, ill at ease with itself and with outsiders trying to unravel their murky past. Some humour peeps through on occasions but this is a bleak book - but one well worth reading.

Apollo 11 astronaut tells how he went to the moon, 27 Sep 2000
It is worth noting from the outset that this is a book written for children, and to set your expectations accordingly. That aside, Michael Collins (the Apollo 11 command module pilot) has produced a well-written and very readable book, which focuses on his experiences in the Gemini and Apollo programmes with NASA, but also includes some of his experiences in the air force and as a test pilot.

He has included many anecdotes that were new to me and where he has chosen to include more detailed explanations of some of the science behind the story he has done so in a very clear way. It is also well illustrated, with a good selection of photographs throughout the book.

However, two things limited my enjoyment of this book: firstly, the style of writing is suitable for children, but ultimately I found this slightly laboured style tiring to read; secondly, this is a simplified version of the Apollo 11 story. Much of the pleasure I derive from these books (for example, Gene Cernan's excellent 'Last Man on the Moon') comes from the detailed insights and opinions of the men who were there. In simplifying the narrative, much of this detail has been lost. The introduction notes that Michael Collins has also written 'Carrying the Fire: an Astronaut's Journey', so I'm going to look for a copy of that next (assuming it's still available).

In summary, this is a good introduction for younger readers and more mature readers will still find it interesting, but those seeking deeper insights may wish to look elsewhere.

Superb graphic novel, 07 Oct 2008
Who says British comics are dead? They're alive and well and in a new format as this excellent adaptation of Dickens' most famous work proves. Superb artwork from Mike Collins on this his 25th year as a professional comic artist. Great value for money. Would make an excellent Christmas present or a gift at any time of the year.

Classical Comics are producing some impressive books in this line. Check them all out.

Booker Shortlistee Disappoints, 20 Mar 2008
Written by an Irishman living in America, this Booker shortlistee is a strange beast set in a Midwestern town during the long hot summer of 1979. (Some reviews place it in the early or mid-'80s, a curious mistake given the explicit allusion to the year on pages 94-5: "in a matter of months we would be watching our hostages under siege in Iran"). The book appears to be a stab at marking America's transition into hyperconsumerism and moral decay, but it's so chockablock with heavyhanded satire and symbolism that it's hard to figure out just what the intent is.

The story revolves around Bill, a 20something misanthrope who's returned to his hometown by default. Having bombed the LSATs, he's living alone in the ancestral family home his father committed suicide in, and working as the only reporter for the dying town newspaper, "The Truth." An ornery old man goes missing, providing a crime for Bill to become engrossed in, as the townspeople assume that the man's no-good son chopped him up after some kind of argument. (Is it meaningful that the suspect son is named "Ronny" and takes steroids? An allusion to the incoming President Reagan and the "muscular" foreign policy he would invoke?) Bill is the only one who thinks Ronny is innocent, and becomes entangled with Ronny, his estranged wife (an aspirational consumerist), and baby son (who only eats junk foot).

The use of the crime genre is a way for Collins to draw the reader in and keep them reading, but those expecting a neat resolution will be very disappointed. And perhaps that's part of the point, to subvert the reader's expectations just as his characters' expectations of the "American Dream" have been subverted by the shift of manufacturing to overseas. Heavy weather is made of the landscape of rapidly decaying closed factories in whose shadows drugs are dealt. Meanwhile, a semi-grotesque supporting character embodies the coming rise of the service economy, as she runs a mini-salon from her garage, mixing in other services which presage the "experience economy." Yet another running theme is the decline of print media and the rise of TV tabloid journalism.

All of this results in a mixed brew of social commentary which becomes rather repetitive and heavy-handed much of the time. There are large swathes of Bill's cynical interior thoughts that drag the book to a halt and tax the reader's patience. These are partially balanced by some quite fine descriptive passages and other bits and chunks. On the balance, though, it's pretty hard to see what all the fuss is about and it's oten hard not to feel like the book's "satire" is largely a matter of playing to European stereotypes about the American midwest.

crime story wrecked by overwriti