Death of an Ordinary Man
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A dead man pursues the secrets of his life and death in this “dense, subtle, substantive, perfectly shaped fiction” by the author of I, Lucifer (The Guardian, UK).
Nathan Clark’s gravestone reads: At rest. But Nathan is not at rest, and knows he won’t be until he finds out why he died. How has he come to hover over his own funeral, a spectral spectator to the grief of his family and friends? Privy now to their innermost thoughts and feelings, Nathan spends the day of his wake getting to know the living as he has never known them before. But why isn’t Nathan’s young daughter Lois at the wake? Who are the two strangers at the funeral, and why does their presence fill him with dread?
Nathan knows he has only so long to unlock these mysteries, because he is drawn time and again to a room in his house he never knew existed–a room that holds a terrifying secret.
“Duncan's exhilarating, almost exhausting flood of insight into family patterns of love and habit is matched by the rich unexpectedness of his writing and the complex construction of the narrative.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It has often been said that dead men tell no tales. Nathan Clark, however, can't stop talking. In this latest brimstone-tinged novel by British writer Duncan (I, Lucifer, etc.), Clark, a recently deceased history teacher, appears at his own funeral, hovering over the mourners. Ghost-like, "a radical amputee... o body, but a maddening imposture of sensation," he glides through the action, tuning into the thoughts of his father, Frank; his wife, Cheryl; his college-age son, Luke; and his daughter, 17-year-old Gina. A suffocating sadness surrounds these characters, not only because of Nathan's untimely end but also because of the recent violent death of Lois, Nathan's youngest child. As he attempts to order his memories, Nathan ponders the many facets of his love for prickly, ambitious Cheryl, despite her affair with his best friend; for clever, sensitive Gina; for self-contained Luke, a physics student; and for Lois, lovable swimmer and violinist. Duncan's exhilarating, almost exhausting flood of insight into family patterns of love and habit ("It was a grotesque lie, that you loved all your children equally") is matched by the rich unexpectedness of his writing and the complex construction of the narrative, which mimics the structure of thought. The mystery of Lois's death and the narrator's own death symbolized by a dark room in the family house that Nathan's ghost is afraid to enter give the novel a hint of suspense, but it's the steady stream of small revelations that gives it its power to haunt.
