Le Quattro Dita Della Morte (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
This novel has all the makings of a book that I would love: space exploration: Mars colonization; astronaut zombies; dystopian futures; cousin IT on a killing ramage (really!); hell, it is even dedicated to Kurt Vonnegut. Knowing nothing about Rick Moody (he wrote Garden State (the book not the movie) and the Ice Storm (the book not the movie), but I really picked this up based on a few reviews and the inside cover preview.) It is at times hilarious and mostly tragic, and with all these things that it does have it is unfortunate that the one thing it doesn't have is the thing that it needs the most: a good editor. For the first four hundred pages I was able to get through Moody's unnecessary profligation of verbage, but after a while it got a little old. As I saw him coming up on a page long run-on sentence wherein he basically will explain in five hundred words that "this character is really tired" I found myself skipping through to the next paragraph where the story would pick back up. And I found that I really wasn't missing anything. The irony of all this is that the narrator (Montese Crandall) is a fictional author who is known for his three line "novels", supposedly breaking down writing to it's essential core. If Moody was using his verbosity as an ironic joke on the narrator I suppose that is vaguely funny and ironic, but really mostly it is annoying and drags the story to a crawl. All of this is especially disappointing because the story is really good! A classic tragi-comedy wherein the characters try and try repeatedly and fail and fail repeatedly. This is a tale (actually three tales) where the characters maintain their optimism despite incredible odds, and where they aren't always rewarded for it. It is the kind of tale that Kurt Vonnegut would have loved. I'm not sure how he would feel about the execution. For every ten words Moody uses, Vonnegut would have used one. And it would have had ten times more meaning. It is perhaps unfair to compare a contemporary author to the master of the genre, but hey... he brought him up. If you can get through Moody's pompous need to fill pages with words this is a great story, worth checkin out. But don't say I didn't warn you. Almost 3 stars, because the Mars story was somewhat engaging. But the more I think about it the more carelessly written that was too. By the end it was falling apart. And I am not prepared to call something "lit'rature" when it can be adequately explained as having been fueled by large quantities of drugs. Coleridge notwithstanding. I've read this wordy, semi-structured stuff before, and it was better. I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one to think of Kilgore Trout.But by the end I was speed-reading, and skipping whole pages. Hint: in Book Two, and probably Book One, any time you see a page that's all one paragraph you can safely skip it. Quarter-star bonus for the idea that - let's say "an entity" - newly raised to consciousness might be an annoying little twerp. Final thought: there might be a pretty good novella hidden in this mountain of words.
What do You think about Le Quattro Dita Della Morte (2012)?
Entertaining, but a completely overstuffed mess. This book really needed an editor.
—sayali
You have to just go with it. Some crazy moments, but it's worth the ride.
—rubalf
I don't think I'll like this book as much as I like Rick Moody.
—Dia
Wordy, funny in parts, but mostly boring.
—jamiehbrewer
