Sometime early last week I finished reading “BLACKBOX: A Novel in 840 Chapters” by Nick Walker.
For a description, I am using the review by Frank Sennett of Booklist that is found on Amazon.Com’s page on the book.
Coincidences are cheap literary devices, and this novel relies on enough of them to fill a dollar store. Forget six degrees of separation; these disparate characters don’t go beyond two degrees, even though they’re split between London and New York. Just to follow one crazy thread: a depressed pilot randomly picks a New York therapist who just helped a woman commit suicide in London; meanwhile, a friend of the pilot returns to England only to meet the suicide’s father and assist in his death. On it goes, desperate lives interweaving through a narrative more fanciful than any Harry Potter book. And whether they’re unbalanced comedians or jinxed actors, the characters all speak with one loopy voice that keeps reminding us we’re reading words on a page. Yet anyone willing to suspend disbelief is in for a clever, darkly humorous tale – narrated in 840 bite-size chunks by an omniscient ex-stewardess from inside the wheel well of a transatlantic flight. Although it’s overly showy, this rumination on lost people longing for meaning packs quite a bittersweet punch.
I use this because he hits home with it for me. OK, so I haven’t read any of the Harry Potter books, so I am not sure about it’s inclusion and if it really pertains here. Anyway, it was better then some I found. Especially one that says the ex-stewardess that narrates the book is unidentified. If I remember correctly, the reader finds about a third of the way through the book who she is.
With the 840 chapters, it seemed gimmicky. Along with all the coincidences. But it worked to make a darkly humorous tale. Sorry Frank, but as I said, he was on with his description. Well, at least I agree. Even with the whirlwind of people in the book, which actually at first I had a hard time keeping track of, especially who was related to who, and who was married/dating others. It was a bit crazy at first. Soon it settled into a good pace and even some of the characters started showing quite a bit of depth, even with lack of time to show it. No chapter was longer then two and a half pages, with most clocking in at two paragraphs at the most. I would say that three dozen of the chapters only contained three periods (“…”), and many only contained a word or two, for dramatic affect I’m sure.
Like Mr. Sennett points out in his review, there was much to go against this book, but Mr. Walker made it work to be at least entertaining. It didn’t win any prizes, and not surprisingly. It won’t be talked about or argued about it’s place in literary history (like even bad books are talked and argued about). But it was entertaining. At one point I thought I might just give up on it, rather early on. But by the time I hit the halfway mark, I was going to see it through.
I could see why some would not find this book any good. Maybe even a complete waste of time. But even with it’s confusing start, I found the pay-off for something that I wasn’t convinced would even entertain me do just that.
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