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The Resurrectionists: na (Paperback)

by Michael Collins (Author) "I couldn't quite get us back without incident for the burial of my father ..." (more)
4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
Price: £6.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Phoenix (31 May 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 075284928X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0752849287
  • ASIN: 075381370X
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 626,938 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #11 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > C > Collins, Michael

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Congratulations to Michael Collins who has won the Novel of the Year Award 2003 as awarded by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Assocation for The Resurrectionists. We have a set a June press date for this title. Michael will alsobe attending the Edinburgh Festival at the end of August, where he will be promoting his new book Lost Souls as well as the paperback of The Resurrectionists. Proofs for his next book, Lost Souls, are now with us so do take a look- it's a real treat! We have set a June press date for reviews. "Booker-shortlisted Michael Collins's latest novel is a brilliant evocation of depressed rural America as a modern-day heart of darkness."WATERSTONES BOOKS QUARTERLY "The plot is masterly and the writing dazzles; only the hopeless plight of the wretched protagonists fails to lift the spirits in this terrific story."GOOD
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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
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4.9 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars "Like everything else in life…stories within stories.", 19 Oct 2002
By Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: The Resurrectionists: na (Hardcover)
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

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Best novel I've read in years, 2 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.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Bleak Masterpiece in Praise of America, 7 Sep 2002
This review is from: The Resurrectionists: na (Hardcover)
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Dexterous prose
Frank Cassidy is a man with a past. When he was five-years-old his parents died in a fire and he was brought up by his Uncle Ward - a harsh mid-western farmer in a remote... Read more
Published 4 months ago by E. Shaw

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read
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. Read more
Published on 29 Aug 2007 by the scribbler

5.0 out of 5 stars Cinematic Masterpiece! America the Surreal
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. Read more
Published on 21 Aug 2002 by jack carroll

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant!
Collins follows up a flawless murder mystery in The Keepers of Truth with an even more crafted and insightful book, The Resurrectionists. Read more
Published on 1 Aug 2002 by gary wilson

5.0 out of 5 stars Existentialism in America
Collins shortlisted for the 2000 Booker explored late seventies America in The Keepers of Truth, and here goes back further to catch the psyche of America, which he argues lies in... Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2002

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