Consumed

July 7, 2014
In the debut novel from the director of The Fly and The Dead Zone, lovers Naomi Seberg and Nathan Math fancy themselves journalists. They are social-media addicts obsessed with the minutia of technology and vapid sensation. Naomi becomes obsessed with the murder and subsequent consumption of French intellectual Célestine Arosteguy by her dapper husband, Aristide. Questing after the truth, Naomi pursues Aristide to Japan, and they become romantically entangled. In France, intermittently faithful Nathan falls for a doomed cancer patient. While the lovers are disconnected by geography, they are more intimately connected than either can suspect. Cronenberg may be best known for his films, but this cool, unsympathetic examination of self-absorbed intellectuals shows that his skills as a prose author are not to be discounted. Neither Naomi nor Nathan is in any way endearing, but their descent into bizarre depravity is fascinating, even darkly humorous. The convolutions of the plot are as uninhibited by plausibility as the characters are by common decency, but readers will find it impossible to look away from the grotesque spectacle. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

September 15, 2014

The murder of Celestine Arosteguy, and that she was apparently cooked and eaten by her philosopher lover Aristide, is a lure journalist Naomi cannot ignore. Naomi will pursue the story through every decadent, disturbing twist until she has gathered the details in full. Nathan, Naomi's lover, contracts a rare STD while following a story of his own and sets out to learn the secrets of his condition. Technology and flesh, philosophy and psychology, and all the strange and wonderful pieces of humanity that make us singular and social and sometimes just a little scary: movie director Cronenberg's debut novel is a deep, quite often dark, stare through a camera lens and into wonderfully unsettling corners. VERDICT This fast-paced work flows beautifully from scene to scene--no punches held, no descriptions glossed over. It will appeal to fans of Cronenberg's films and those who like a bit of the philosophical in their thrillers. [See Prepub Alert, 3/10/14.]--April Steenburgh, George F. Johnson Memorial Lib., Endwell, NY

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