The Contortionist's Handbook

Modern noir with some stylistic nods to both Fight Club & The Usual Suspects.

It's tightly written & well-told. The story never flags & you weave in & out of the main character's life, or really lives, as he has created & lived under numerous aliases. The central plot is that the main character (as Daniel Fletcher, one of his many aliases) is being assessed by a mental health professional to determine if he's a suicide risk after being admitted to the hospital for a barbiturate overdose. Fletcher claims he mistakenly took too many pills because of a migraine. (This is not the first time it has happened to our main character, but the doctor doesn't know that because previous times have occurred under different aliases.) The doctor show more assessing him doesn't realize that this 20-something-year-old is a master forger (who happens to have eleven fingers), has a photographic memory, & has spent years memorizing psychology books & others on how to "act normal", among other things. During the interview, it's really the assessor being assessed. A cat & mouse game. In the meantime, the book reveals Fletcher's real background, interwoven with different aliases & "lives" he's lived. The book is broken into sections titled with some of his different identities.

Tight, crisp, & fascinating. High praise & a recommendation from me. show less

Solid 5 stars for this one.
The main character, John Vincent Dolan, is the most clever character I ever had the pleasure of meeting. I relished in his journey, quickly hopping from one predicament to the next, I sat on pins and needles waiting for him to get out of the crazy situation he kept putting himself in.
This is basically an intricately written version of the movie Catch Me If You Can.
I enjoyed the hell out of this story and tried my best to relish it slowly, as I know it will stick out in my mind as one of my most favorite novels. It went so quick, Now I wish we had a sequel!

When I was first recommended this book, I had no idea what to expect. For whatever reason, I was mainly going by the cover art and relying on that to tell me what this book was mainly about. A contortionist. Wrong. Never judge a book by it's cover folks.

The book is about John Vincent. John is a man who suffers from such severe headaches that he usually ends up overdosing on painkillers and various prescription pills in an effort to stop the torture. When this happens, nine times out of ten, he gets picked up by paramedics and brought to the hospital in an effort to save his life. Once revived, it's mandatory that he meets with a psychiatrist to determine whether or not the OD was accidental or an attempt to end his life. Knowing that show more this will most certainly happen again (as this is the only way he knows how to deal with the headaches), he's forced to create an entirely new identity so that if he is picked up again by medics, he's not tossed in a mental institution.

The narrative jumps all over the place from the present (a conversation with an evaluator due to his most recent overdose) to the various identities he's stolen in the past. Usually, I can be a little thrown off by this but with the trend I've been taking with authors lately, it seems to be the status quo.

As good as this book was, I had this feeling that Vincent was never really in any sort of danger of being caught. The man is just so good at what he does, he seems like he's leaps and bounds ahead of any potential threat. However, I guess that's not really what the book is about as Clevenger seems to spend more time with his relationship with his father and the women in his life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I was pretty much glued to these pages throughout. It's just, I can't really figure out why I was.

Clevenger is an excellent writer, the man really has some talent. I'm genuinely surprised that this hasn't been picked up by someone in Hollywood yet. It seems like the perfect movie for someone like David Fincher. I guess with the ending being some anti-climatic, it may create some problems. show less

John Dylan Vincent considers himself a "contortionist" but not in the typical sense. He is the master of changing identity...and every time he changes he feels like the man he saw put himself into a little suitcase, stay in there for some time then come out all refreshed with no signs of his experience on him. Vincent is very very good and very clever...but suffers from intense migraines & tends to accidentally overdose from pain medication trying to fix his problem. And with the overdose comes psychiatric scrutiny...but each time he picks up a different persona...a new identity.

I very very much liked this book ...this guy is so paranoid you start wondering who he really is and how he manages to stay afloat mentally.

The Contortionist's Handbook is an engrossing adventure story. The drugs, the sex, the criminal underworld portions could have been cut out and it still would be great. The conflict is between the individual and the system. Where the novel shines is in the first-person narration and the description made by that individual of what the State has been to him.

Bureaucrats, psychiatrists in white robes, the police, judges are the individuals on the other side of the line. In his side of the line, he mostly stands alone. The narrator has a very unique voice and the author writes so well that we get into the narrator's head very easily. The use of flashbacks is also great.

The prose has been described as reminiscent of Palahniuk's. There is show more truth to this, but then again Palahniuk's prose isn't really that unique if you think about it. Palahniuk's style is noir-ish, and reading the CH, I am reminded of the stylish visuals of the neo-noir film 'The Salton Sea' starring Val Kilmer. show less

I read a recommendation for this from a website based on a search for postmodern crime fiction, specifically the notion of the fractured self. The protagonist (and narrator) in this novel is written brilliantly. His 'contortions' have to do with forging new identities (and the official documents that go with them) for himself in order to survive. It's a fascinating read and it challenges traditional narrative form but moreover how reading is constructed and complicit.

The Contortionist's Handbook is a novel that is stylishly written in a minimalist style that evokes Chuck Palahniuk. I've given the novel 4 stars primarily because of Clevenger's sense of style, mood, and dialogue, but unfortunately the tale never pays off with an emotionally satisfying or enlightening ending.