BLACKBOX: A Novel in 840 Chapters
by Nick Walker
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Description
Cross a road, take a train, or get on an airplane and you put your life in the hands of a stranger -- every bit as screwed up, every bit as fallible and as human as you are. Then the person turns out not to be a stranger at all, and suddenly it's much worse.In America and Britain and the sky in between, an apparently disparate group of people is connected, whether intimately or by chance, to the tragic death of a stowaway on board flight AF266.
As the action veers across countries and show more time zones, the stowaway's real identity is revealed through stolen black box recordings, answering machine messages, sitcom outtakes, and court transcripts. Told in a shifting, circular narrative, the interwoven lives make up a jolting and layered puzzle that builds to a heart-stopping, chilling climax.
An intelligent and invigorating novel with a bizarre menu of dysfunctional characters, Blackbox is the story of an attempt to erase a life on tape.
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This is the complex and highly entertaining account of a group of people connected by a tragic event aboard an aeroplane in the 1970s. Some are connected directly to the event, others more tenuously. But all are fascinating in their own way, all have their little quirks, and in a long book all have a chance to shine.
It’s a sort of take on the six degrees of separation idea, and I guess if you drew a diagram with all the characters on it, with lines showing the connections between them, the result would be the sort of horrendous tangled knot my i-pod headphones tend to get in when left in my pocket. My brain wasn’t big enough to hold all the links, or to fully understand every single facet of the story, but what I did like very much show more was the attention to detail, and the little moments of humour. Like where Sam the voice-over artiste was in a lift and was astonished to find his own voice telling him what floor he was on.
There was a serious side to it too. Death is never far from the thoughts of the characters, and in particular the last words of suicides or accident victims. At one point “Unfunny John”, a stand-up comedian whose entire act consists of him shooting himself in the head, suggests that planes should be fitted with individual blackboxes – one for each passenger “just in case they found themselves next to a stranger who meant nothing to them. They could record a message to a loved one, or to humanity. It would be a valuable contribution to the understanding of the human condition”. His companion points out that it would never happen – it would serve to make passengers more nervous – but I thought it was an interesting idea all the same.
It’s a quirky book, eschewing chapters in favour of short snappy sections numbered backwards from 840 to 0 in the manner of a countdown. Some sections consist of nothing but an ellipsis, most are no more than a paragraph or so and make the most of the author’s economical, punchy writing style. For all its quirks it is fundamentally a great read, I do hope there will be more from this author. show less
It’s a sort of take on the six degrees of separation idea, and I guess if you drew a diagram with all the characters on it, with lines showing the connections between them, the result would be the sort of horrendous tangled knot my i-pod headphones tend to get in when left in my pocket. My brain wasn’t big enough to hold all the links, or to fully understand every single facet of the story, but what I did like very much show more was the attention to detail, and the little moments of humour. Like where Sam the voice-over artiste was in a lift and was astonished to find his own voice telling him what floor he was on.
There was a serious side to it too. Death is never far from the thoughts of the characters, and in particular the last words of suicides or accident victims. At one point “Unfunny John”, a stand-up comedian whose entire act consists of him shooting himself in the head, suggests that planes should be fitted with individual blackboxes – one for each passenger “just in case they found themselves next to a stranger who meant nothing to them. They could record a message to a loved one, or to humanity. It would be a valuable contribution to the understanding of the human condition”. His companion points out that it would never happen – it would serve to make passengers more nervous – but I thought it was an interesting idea all the same.
It’s a quirky book, eschewing chapters in favour of short snappy sections numbered backwards from 840 to 0 in the manner of a countdown. Some sections consist of nothing but an ellipsis, most are no more than a paragraph or so and make the most of the author’s economical, punchy writing style. For all its quirks it is fundamentally a great read, I do hope there will be more from this author. show less
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Author Information
3 Works 187 Members
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2002
- People/Characters
- John Heron; Emma Heron; Penny Lock; Graham Johansson; Samuel Thorn; Cody Jameson (show all 15); Dr. Frankburg; Dan Bronski; Ali Bronski; Stephanie Wiltshire; Edward Wiltshire; Beth Davies; Michael Davies; Kirsten Henderson; Ronald Henderson
- Important places
- New York, New York, USA; Birmingham, England, UK
- Dedication
- To Anne
- First words
- Five miles high, over the Atlantic.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)...catch
- Blurbers
- Grippando, James
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 149
- Popularity
- 220,985
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.15)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 3
