Blackbox

Starred review from September 22, 2003
"Any one of us is only six acquaintances away from anyone else," hints stewardess Stephanie Wiltshire at the outset of Walker's high-speed, disquieting debut, which features the not-so-random interactions of 20 of the most ludicrously manic characters imaginable. As Flight SA841 touches down at Birmingham International Airport from New York, an unidentified female stowaway on another plane begins her countdown through 840 concise chapters (many are just a line or two long), each of which builds urgently toward the disclosure of her identity and her fate. Air traffic controller Michael Davies guides SA841 to its gate, then drives home listening to psychoanalyst Dr. Frankburg's smash-hit self-help tape, You Too Can Fly, which is popular among airline industry employees and aviophobes alike. Distracted by the tape, Davies nearly hits a pedestrian later revealed to be yet another piece in the puzzle, before reaching home and his phobia-obsessed wife. The rest of the cast includes an "unfunny" comic whose act features a simulated suicide, an aspiring anticorporate terrorist, a suicidal pilot, a morgue assistant and a Welsh actor coping with the suicide of a Scottish actress and friend, all of whom are connected in some way to the death of a Chinese woman more than 20 years earlier. Walker's inaugural work is so clever that it seems to be the product of years of careful contemplation, yet so electrifying that it is just as easy to imagine him writing it in one sitting. His respect for his readers' attentiveness is palpable and refreshing, and a character list included at the front of the book is helpful in sorting out any momentary confusion. (Sept.)Forecast:Walker's quick-cut styling won't appeal to everyone, but those willing to take the plunge will find the novel surprisingly easy reading; like the cult film Run, Lola, Run, it delivers a postmodern, high-power adrenaline rush.

September 15, 2003
A review of a first novel in nine sentences. 9.) While the numbers of the chapters tick off in inevitable sequence from 840 to 1, the story, which only gradually reveals itself to be about an airliner crash, circles overhead in pleasing but at times seemingly aimless, patterns. 8.) The large cast of characters involves a disparate array, everything from a counterfeit therapist to an air traffic controller to a dead actress. 7.) John Heron is a comic billed as "Unfunny John" who lives up to his name; his routine consists of succumbing to the worst case of flop sweat in theatrical history and ends with his faking suicide. 6.) Exiting stage left, Unfunny John tells the comedian waiting in the wings, "You're on." 5.) Why do we think all pilots look and act like Alan Alda? 4.) This book forces us to rethink that scenario. 3.) The author, a British writer and performer with Talking Birds, a mixed-media production company, probably won't be available for U.S. tours (he has an acute fear of flying). 2.) This intermittently funny book might be of interest to fans of Douglas Coupland who don't have any flight plans in their future. 1.) Purchase where there's an interest in quirky, experimental fiction.-Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2003
Coincidences are cheap literary devices, and this novel relies on enough of them to fill a dollar store. Forget six degrees of separation; these disparate characters don't go beyond two degrees, even though they're split between London and New York. Just to follow one crazy thread: a depressed pilot randomly picks a New York therapist who just helped a woman commit suicide in London; meanwhile, a friend of the pilot returns to England only to meet the suicide's father and assist in " his" death. On it goes, desperate lives interweaving through a narrative more fanciful than any Harry Potter book. And whether they're unbalanced comedians or jinxed actors, the characters all speak with one loopy voice that keeps reminding us we're reading words on a page. Yet anyone willing to suspend disbelief is in for a clever, darkly humorous tale--narrated in 840 bite-size chunks by an omniscient ex-stewardess from inside the wheel well of a transatlantic flight. Although it's overly showy, this rumination on lost people longing for meaning packs quite a bittersweet punch.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)