What do You think about The Nothing Man (2014)?
The Nothing Man reads like a fraternal twin of The Killer Inside Me in which Lou Ford is an alcoholic newspaperman rather than a sheriff. Like Ford, The Nothing Man's narrator Clinton Brown is deeply damaged, but in a different way. Whereas Ford suffers from psychosexual personality disorders, Brown suffers psychologically because of a physical injury - his penis was blown off in the war (hence the title: The No-thing Man) and no one else knows about Brown's condition except his former commanding officer who is now, awkwardly, his boss and editor at the paper. Like Ford again, Brown endures his impotence, takes his inward suffering and redirects it outwardly in the form of passive-aggressive bullying that escalates all the way to violent murder. The Nothing Man features a demimonde of flawed characters, a plot filled with gasp-inducing twists and revelations, and some of Thompson's strongest prose. It's also a book engaged in a dark philosophy whose chief inquiry seems to be what is life worth when something as essential as one's sexual being has been obliterated. It is a pulp novel that takes the idea of nothingness as seriously as a Russian novel would. While not quite on the level of The Killer Inside Me, The Nothing Man deserves to be considered among Thompson's very best work.
—Kenneth
Took a while to get going, and I wanted to quit several times during those 40 pages, but I kept on, because I've tried to read a couple other Thompson novels and couldn't finish them, and I wanted to at least finish one of his novels, given all the hype surrounding this guy. This was okay, it was a chore to read at times, but around page 40 it sucked me in and I vowed to finish it. The good parts were few and far in between, the narrator not that likeable. The book felt longer than it needed to be, the narrator just droning on and on. Not a book I can recommend, but it had its moments.
—Stunatra
This novel surprised me. I had never heard of it before, having only come across it in a three-novel compilation that I picked up for three dollars in a used bookstore in Boston. About halfway through, it was starting to seem like the protagonist's murders were rather gratuitous, not unlike those which soured me on Thompson's revered The Killer Inside Me. But then the ending hits, and suddenly the book is not what it had seemed. Clifton Brown is indeed a nothing man, not really existing as his own self but instead living through manipulating and tormenting others. He thinks he's winning the game, but as it turns out he's been losing all along. And the local sheriff will see to it that he continues to do so, denying him the grand exit he desires.
—Peter
