Overview
Welcome to the America of manufactured disorders! Enter for the cure.Sunless is one of the lucky few. He has problems--don't we all, these days? His mother's pill-popping has left her soulless. His father went missing a long time ago. The story is a harrowing one, to be sure. But surely he can make his way in life, in America, into adulthood. Only the future stands before him now--or is it the past?
He has been accepted for treatment by a famous psychiatrist who wants him to take a brand new medication. So S unless boards the Pharmalak train in Salt Lake City for his appointments in the Pharmalak hospital where the esteemed Doctor Fargoon prescribes him Pharmalak pills. Sunless may be the sanest person on the planet, or he may be sick, but so is the system that treats him.
In Sunless, Gerard Donovan--the author of Julius Winsome and Schopenhauer's Telescope--takes us on a journey into the mind of the bedeviled and the benighted, into a world of pain so great that the only balm is medical. Now all we have to do is find the way back out.
Synopsis
Welcome to the America of manufactured disorders! Enter for the cure.
Sunless is one of the lucky few. He has problems--don't we all, these days? His mother's pill-popping has left her soulless. His father went missing a long time ago. The story is a harrowing one, to be sure. But surely he can make his way in life, in America, into adulthood. Only the future stands before him now--or is it the past?
He has been accepted for treatment by a famous psychiatrist who wants him to take a brand new medication. So S unless boards the Pharmalak train in Salt Lake City for his appointments in the Pharmalak hospital where the esteemed Doctor Fargoon prescribes him Pharmalak pills. Sunless may be the sanest person on the planet, or he may be sick, but so is the system that treats him.
In Sunless, Gerard Donovan--the author of Julius Winsome and Schopenhauer's Telescope--takes us on a journey into the mind of the bedeviled and the benighted, into a world of pain so great that the only balm is medical. Now all we have to do is find the way back out.
Publishers Weekly
Irish writer Donovan's confounding third novel (after Julius Winsome) revolves around the overmedication of America, but fails to rise above a convoluted satire. Sunless-the novel's self-named narrator-recounts the crumbling of his life in Salt Lake City. After Sunless's baby brother is stillborn, his mother turns to prescription drugs. Later, his father is diagnosed with a terminal lung disease and is turned away from a clinical trial at Pharmalak (the pharmaceutical "castle" in Park City) for not having health insurance, leaving Sunless to watch his father slowly succumb to the "vines" that have invaded his chest. Spiraling down into his own addictions-first stealing pills from his mother's stash and later learning to cook crystal meth-Sunless drifts through life in a drug-induced haze before finding himself back at Pharmalak under the care of the mysterious Dr. Fargoon, who is conducting a test of wonder drug Elevax. Donovan's narrative minimalism is at odds with the myriad topics he addresses-drug culture in America; the fluid boundaries between life, death, the past and the present; Mormonism; the pharmaceutical industry; health insurance conglomerates-and the narrative thread can get lost in the jumble. This novel was well-received in the U.K., but U.S. readers may find it too simplistic. (Oct.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationEditorials
Publishers Weekly
Irish writer Donovan's confounding third novel (after Julius Winsome) revolves around the overmedication of America, but fails to rise above a convoluted satire. Sunless-the novel's self-named narrator-recounts the crumbling of his life in Salt Lake City. After Sunless's baby brother is stillborn, his mother turns to prescription drugs. Later, his father is diagnosed with a terminal lung disease and is turned away from a clinical trial at Pharmalak (the pharmaceutical "castle" in Park City) for not having health insurance, leaving Sunless to watch his father slowly succumb to the "vines" that have invaded his chest. Spiraling down into his own addictions-first stealing pills from his mother's stash and later learning to cook crystal meth-Sunless drifts through life in a drug-induced haze before finding himself back at Pharmalak under the care of the mysterious Dr. Fargoon, who is conducting a test of wonder drug Elevax. Donovan's narrative minimalism is at odds with the myriad topics he addresses-drug culture in America; the fluid boundaries between life, death, the past and the present; Mormonism; the pharmaceutical industry; health insurance conglomerates-and the narrative thread can get lost in the jumble. This novel was well-received in the U.K., but U.S. readers may find it too simplistic. (Oct.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information