The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh
My rating: 4/5 cats
Will I remember what I did?
You won’t.
But will I know that I’ve forgotten it?
You will.
So I’ll know I did something bad, but I won’t know what it was.
You’ll know you made the decision to come to this place.
“this place” is the town of caesura, known colloquially by its residents as “the blinds;” a gated community for memory-wiped criminals, a prison where you’re free to leave, but to which you can never return, fully aware that what waits for you on the other side of the gates most likely wants to kill you.
i’ve read sternbergh’s Shovel Ready, but still – foolishly -haven’t gotten around to reading the sequel – Near Enemy, but this book here is an altogether different creature. Shovel Ready is great – it’s a noir/sci-fi mashup with a really staccato pacing and it’s a helluva ride, but this one shows he’s got some serious writer-range. it’s a much more densely-plotted piece of psychological crime fiction, with deeper characterizations and a strikingly original premise that starts out strong and only gets stronger as it goes on.
it revolves around an alternative form of witness protection; a system in place for eight years at the start of the novel, in which criminals and witnesses to crimes have chosen to have their memories selectively erased, and are relocated to a town in the middle of nowhere, texas, where, after providing the authorities with the information needed to put some very bad people away, these very bad people themselves are given new names and allowed to live out their days blissfully unaware of their own dark pasts, cut off from internet, phones, all contact with the outside world, and given a second chance to make a life for themselves among others all living under a policy of “don’t ask, don’t know, can’t tell,” not even knowing if they were the victim or the perpetrator of a terrible crime.
what could possibly go wrong?
the book covers a monday-friday timeframe, and oh, what a difference a week makes. it opens with the shock of a gunshot, but then recedes into a sort of dramatic anthropology, slowly acclimating the reader to the town’s history, its rules and inhabitants and its day-to-day routines, but as threats surface and secrets are revealed and the very foundation of the experiment is threatened, things start getting mighty intense, and once it hits that sweet spot of rapid-fire reveals and escalating violence, it just careens you through the story relentlessly and it is so, so electric.
this is a very high four star cat – i love it like crazy and i have minor complaints only, which i’m a dick for even mentioning, considering how much fun i had reading this book, but i know that years from now, someone will post a comment on this review and it will help my self-memory-wiping brain remember more details if i write the whole spectrum of reactions. there’s a little dip in momentum, in what was presumably a calculated decision, but it bugged me as a reader, even though i appreciate the irony of its being itself a caesura: the unruh backstory, while interesting and necessary, was a little draggy, and was dropped right into the middle of a rising action-cliffhanger i was desperate to see resolved, and i was all tensely coiled through this backstory i would have been interested in, but ended up reading pretty distractedly, wanting to get back to the situation unfolding in the “now.”
and there are a couple of things i didn’t buy, most notably View Spoiler »
but that’s all just quibble. this book is a wonderfully weird ride, and that action – phoar. cinematic and glorious. i could do with a sequel to this, and i promise i will read the sequel to that other one. deal?
