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EUROPE'S MOST VISITED SF/F WEB SITE |
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Journal Of Nicholas The American by Leigh Kennedy check out website: www.bigengine.co.uk
This is the first person narrative of an extremely private young student who is verging on paranoia. His perpetual drinking helps deaden the flood of others' feelings that would otherwise incapacitate his emotions.
Given the surreal nature of the subject, the story verges on the domestic, dealing with the problems of avoiding empath hunters, changing address and trying to have a sex life without letting a woman get too close. The fact that his girlfriend is called Jack doesn't help focus on her plight either and Kolya's obsession with her mother who is dying of cancer can pass from empathic to disconcerting. The device of using a diary written by someone who is so self-absorbed can be tedious unless the reader is an addict of Mrs Dale or Samuel Pepys and invites a need to sharpen the point of an otherwise pedestrian story. The writing is not bad but, because it is in first person, can come over as introverted and obsessive. The author convinces you that this unlikely empathy actually occurs and the gloominess of the situation is suitably Russian in tenor. Living with the emotional toll of having involuntary access to the inner feelings of other people is not only wearing for the main character, it can pull the reader down as well. The continual ambivalence of Kolya towards Jack, the woman he professes
to love, one moment clinging, the next rejecting her to lavish attention
on her sick mother can also become tiresome. Kolya does the obligatory bonking and generally displays aspects of male petulance and intolerance. Sometimes this comes over as going through the motions and leaves the feeling that the writer could go deeper by moving back - much further back. It is easy to see how his quandary would be more interesting if it came from several different perspectives and not just through the first person. From a distance, Kolya could be a deeply enigmatic young man. From inside, he is little more than an emotional mess given in to his own introverted needs. His ability to know anyone's every emotion and motive
does little to help make him sympathetic. The empath in Science Fiction may have
since become something of a cipher, but thankfully one more in tune with the Universe
and other people's frailties. It is a painless and sometimes enjoyable
read despite this and eventually does offer the hope of a solution. Jane
Palmer
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OTHER REVIEWS - February 2003
NEW NOVELS The
Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh Buffy
The Vampire: The Cordelia Collection Volume 1 by Nancy Krulik Tourniquet
Heart edited by Christopher C. Teague The
Devil In Green (Book One of The Dark Age) by Mark Chadbourn Angel: The Longest Night by Pierce Askegren Dark
Angel: Before The Dawn by Max Allen Collins Guilty
Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton The
Divine Comedies: Here Comes The Sun & Odds And Ends by Tom Holt The
Drawing Of The Dark by Tim Powers. Fantasy Masterworks # 33 The
Far Enough Window: The Reclaiming Of Fairyland by John Grant and illustrated
by Ron Tiner The
Ruins of Ambrai (Exiles Volume 1) by Melanie Rawn The
Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson (SF Masterworks # 51) HARDBACKS INTO PAPERBACKS Wizard's
Funeral (The Red Pavilions Book Two) by Kim Hunter Wanderers
And Islanders (Legends Of The Land Book One) by Steve Cockayne Effendi (The Second Arabesk) by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
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Kolya
(Nicholas) Alexandrovich is a tele-empath being pursued by an 'umbrella
man' - a psychiatrist.
Not
a lovely character but not totally obnoxious either, just difficult
to sympathise with on occasions.
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