Life Expectancy

Don’t get me wrong. I, like everyone else, thought Dean Koontz was the poor man’s Stephen King - a second rate hack. And maybe he is since this the first of his I‘ve read, but this book was terrific! Yes, there’s suspense, violence, and an element of the supernatural, but mostly there are extremely well drawn characters, an appealing setting, and humor! I love a quirky novel, and this one is quirky in spades. There’s also just the right amount of “wow didn’t see THAT coming” which I also like. Seriously, I am so glad I picked this one out on a whim, though I don’t yet know if any of his other books are this charming. Loved it. It contains multitudes. Prepare to be enchanted.

LIFE EXPECTANCY Review I'm about to spoil the hell out of this piece of garbage in the hopes that you run screaming from its pages as if the longevity of your genitals depended on it. 
 
The Good: This book is readable. Meaning, you can read it. Moving on.
 
The Bad: The synopsis is terrific: engaging, intriguing, enticing, everything a book description should be. So why isn't this up there with The Good? Because the synopsis fucking lies like a rug under a steam roller. You see, Jimmy Tock's grandpappy predicted some shit on his deathbed. Supposedly, his grandson is to have five terribly, horrible, no good, very bad days. The thing is, Koontz spends the entire novel finding ways around these five days, in turn rendering the show more grandfather's predictions utterly useless. Bad shit happens, mind you, just not on those days. The worst stuff happens on the day before. You might think that would make the book unpredictable, but after the first date, the book is as see through as the glass in a Windex factory. What would have made this book epic is if Koontz had managed to actually achieve what the packaging promises, therein surprising us with unforeseeable twists which occur on the days Deathbed Granddaddy predicted. But no. Not Koontz. He aims for the mundane and nails that motherfucker between the eyes. 
 
The Ugly: LIFE EXPECTANCY is filled with your average meandering Koontz: verbose descriptions of everyday bullshit sprinkled with brief glimpses of interesting detritus buried under an insane knowledge of pastry and off-the-wall diseases he spends nine pages explaining. The writing is so light and dense at the same time it might as well be a Cronut. The words breeze by because Koontz has been doing this shit for nigh on four decades, but no matter how hard he tries, I will never, ever, evereverevereverever, enjoy a detailed examination of goddamn baked goods.
 
The Unforgivable: Let me preface this bit by saying I've never given a readable book less than two stars. Why? Because the author put enough words together properly so that I might be able to understand what they are saying. I reserve one-star ratings for unedited garbage written by illiterate monkeys with a penchant for banging on typewriters. Well, Dean, you fucking did it, mister. You managed to make me hate a well-written book so much that I cannot in good faith give you anything over a single, solitary, emotionally-crippled star. This book lacks everything even remotely resembling character development. I didn't give a shit about Jimmy, his wife What's-Her-Fuck, the three mostly-forgotten-about children (one of which comes down with cancer in the later part of the book, to which I responded, "Who are you, and who gives a fuck?"), the stupid clown family, the insane aerialists, or even the death of some innocent old lady, because they're all stick figures caricatures of another one of Koontz protagonists from a completely different book. Yes, everyone in this novel is witty and sarcastic. Basically, the cast is overrun with unlikable and forgettable Odd Thomases. 
 
But wait, there's more! The plot, for lack of a better word, becomes so convoluted in the last one hundred pages that I think my brain seeped from my ear to vacation in Aruba when Jimmy Tock (the main character) is revealed as the villain's fraternal twin brother.
 
But wait, there's even more! When that ending didn't pack enough of a punch for Koontz's liking, we find out that Jimmy and the villain are really the product of an incestuous relationship between their biological grandfather/father and his daughter/their mother. 
 
And if you place an order in the next thirty seconds, we'll throw in lots more! Four chapters from the end, Jimmy's first-person POV switches to the wife's first-person POV so that Koontz can attempt to trick us into believing that Jimmy dies. But Jimmy doesn't die. What a hoot, huh? A real rib-tickler of a twist!
 
To quote the book:
 
"Okay, we yanked your chain again, like we did back in chapter twenty-four. How much fun would it have been, there in the big top, if you'd been absolutely certain that I had survived?"
 
Are you joshing me? Pulling E.'s leg, perhaps? Legitimately, you're going to break the fourth wall to say that shit? I should punch you in your cocksucker with a hot-water bottle full of nitroglycerin. It wasn't funny. It sure as shit wasn't cute. It was pretentious. Pure, lazy-ass, unoriginal, amateur bullshit. You, your editor, your publisher, and anyone who recommends this book to a human being who isn't their most reviled enemy should have to read this book over and over and over again, forever and ever, amen. 
 
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My mother picked this one up for me, not knowing I'd listened to the unabridged audiobook only a few weeks ago. This is the review I wrote at the time (which is why it mentions the reader, John Bedford Lloyd):

On a stormy night in 1974, Josef Tock sits up in his hospital bed and makes a series of predictions about his grandson, Jimmy, who is about to be born just down the hall. The bulk of these predictions consist of a list of "five terrible days" in Jimmy's life, the first occurring in his twentieth year. Moments after speaking, Josef dies. The night of mixed grief and joy quickly turns to terror as a crazed clown, whose wife died in childbirth that very night, guns down two hospital employees.

Jimmy himself narrates the story, going show more through each "terrible day" one by one. As one might expect from a story beginning with prognostication and a deranged circus performer, the plot takes a series of unlikely and frankly ridiculous turns. But it's also very funny. Jimmy's commentary, though it occasionally gets a bit long on the introspection, is vivid and full of amusing asides. The other characters are just as memorable, and this is due in no small part to the excellent reader. His intuitive grasp of the characters' personalities made for spot-on inflection of some very bizarre lines.

As the roller coaster plot careened along, I was able to predict almost all of the strange twists ahead of time, but this actually added to the charm, like I was playing a trivia game. Usually I don't like knowing what happens next (hence the reason I don't do much rereading) but in a few cases (like this one) the journey is just as much fun whether you know the destination or not. Koontz is usually a reliable spooky read, but this was a rare view of his humorous side. Highly recommended. show less

Coulrophobia is an abnormal or exaggerated fear of clowns. According to a Wikipedia page devoted to the subject, this Bozo-phobia plauges some adults as well as children and has inspired a number of stories featuring clowns-gone-bad. I wasn't a coulrophobic before reading Life Expectancy. Now I am.

Jimmy Tock is born on a dark and stormy night in the same hospital where his grandfather is dying and where evil clown number one, Konrad Beezo, awaits the birth of his own son. The dying words of Jimmy's grandfather form a dark prophesy, foretelling the precise calendar dates of five terrible days in Jimmy's life. As if this dark prophesy weren't enough, the death of Konrad's wife during the birth of his own son, Punchinello Beezo, sends show more Konrad into a murderous frenzy that claims the life of the doctor and casts a pall over what should have been a joyous event for the Tock family.

Jimmy Tock's idyllic childhood as son of a pastry chef gives way to the first of the five terrible days, which begin in his early twenties and end in his early thirties. Not surprisingly, the Beezo clown duo, on the run from justice all these years, proves instrumental in lending terror to these terrible days. While the narrative flow is broken by the need to flash forward several years in time to get from one terrible day to the next, Koontz uses Jimmy's comic first-person narrative voice and various motifs to achieve a smooth storytelling experience. I particularly liked his nurture-over-nature view of childrearing, his inquiries into what drives men (including clowns) to embrace evil, and the way he uses narrative humor to complement the farcical plot. He also makes you understand how coulrophobia may stem from a clown's ability to mask evil emotions behind an artificial smiley facade.

While Life Expectancy doesn't dethrone Odd Thomas as my favorite Koontz novel, it is his most humorous and one of his most suspenseful offerings. Strongly recommended. show less

On the stormy night that Jimmy Tock is born, not only does his dying grandfather correctly predict the facts of his birth, including the fact that he will be born with fused toes, but he also predicts that there will be five horrible days ahead in Jimmy's life. Armed with the five dates, the adult Jimmy, now a baker by profession, must face those five days. As each date approaches, Jimmy feels the sword of Damocles dangling by an invisible thread over his head. What will each horrible day bring, and when during the day will the sword drop?

The story is full of twists and turns and tension-filled moments. It is populated with quirky characters including pastry chefs, a tornado chaser, a morbidly pessimistic Grandma, demented circus show more performers, and a pet portrait painter. Recommended as a riveting and satisfying read that both chills and radiates the warmth of a freshly baked loaf of bread. show less

Much in the vein of 'Velocity', I felt that this book was a 'light' read. However, this book is a bit better than Velocity and gets a solid 4/5 stars. The plot feels just a bit silly to me, but that touch of creativity and lightness here actually make for a solid and entertaining read. It's interesting to read about a family that led a different lifestyle than most others and how they were so happy and content. A bit cheesy to some of you maybe, but hey, I liked it.

And the whole clown thing and the revelations that came later (poor, poor Natalie and you even gotta feel bad for Punchinello) on were also entertaining if a bit fantastic and some of them rather surprising. Mr. Koontz manages a solid and entertaining read that had me show more interested from beginning to end. Yep. show less

Not the best Koontz, but close, and much better than some. I find I like DK's novels that feature an unusual hero and spend a lot of time in his head (like Odd Thomas, of course). I loved the quirky family history and the time DK takes to explore it, especially the family dinners, and the scene he comes back to again and again of his birth and his grandfather's predictions.

Another thing this book does, that not all DK's aspire to, is dip a toe in bigger things than just man against evil (though that's the frame on which all his books are hung). There's fate and predestination, group-dynamic evil, and the defining power of vocation.