Blackbox doesn’t follow the useful conventions of writing, and much like his follow up, Helloland, provides dark humour and intelligent prose at every turn.
Blackbox is as complex as anything I have read. Walker has perfected or at least refined his writing style with Helloland, but as a debut, Blackbox is refreshing and original and a darkly brilliant. Pulp Fiction (unoriginal as it is) took the same story from several perspectives and it’s up to the viewer to piece together and watch the film as the various viewpoints come to a head.
In Blackbox, Walker does something similar, although he pulls it off with a unique and entertaining style that has yet to be matched by any debut title I have read to date. It intertwines many characters many stories and histories and links them together in a melting pot of insanity.
I should make it clear that neither book by Walker is approaching light or easy reading. His books, the characters within, the topics he discusses and the prose are disturbingly funny, but also incredibly dark. I don’t mean dark in the sense that there’s lots of sadistic foreplay taking place, or that they’re bloody or violent.
They are dark in the sense that he manages to show a different, a tragic side to humanity. Deaths, tragedies, and unhappiness are dealt with sharpness instead of sympathy. It’s brutal, but it is also funny, and intelligent and it’s what keeps me glued to his books and urges me to recommend one the best modern writers in my life time.
Steph is hopeful of a resolution, Edward is a complete and utter psychopath who no longer seems to function as a normal human being
1978 and a stowaway on board a flight dies as the plane comes in to land. The victim is a Chinese woman, Lin, who fell when the wheels were prepped for landing. Linked to the death are a group of people that have tried to rebuild their lives. Fast forward twenty three years later, and the past comes back to haunt these people and their lives as the truth begins to emerge.
Much of that summary is taken from the back of the book. It’s hard to explain it any other way without giving things away. The book is not divided into chapters, but instead as a countdown, which leads to a dark but excellent ending. It’s an interesting way of writing, as the countdown begins and ends, Walker uses each second to provide a different perspective of the people that are linked to this strategy, building a complex web of coincidences that slowly brings them all back together to face the reality.
I say face the reality, but in their own way they are all linked and responsible for several deaths that occur through the book. Aside from the main link being the death in 1978, there are several subplots which also accentuate and culminate into further coincidences.
Walker’s characters are wonderfully varied. From the heart broken John Heron looking for his wife in New York who hasn’t bothered to return, who he is chasing to find and yet feels he married the wrong woman entirely and has an obsession with magic tricks, to Edward the Fireman. Edward is a pyromaniac and part time paranoid psychotic, who likes to cut his stomach open to check his liver, who tries to blow people up and join revolutions, if not burn them alive.
He burnt his sister, Beth, who was scarred for life, for which Steph (the narrator of the book) was also partly responsible for. Steph was responsible for the stowaway being on board, and is also the sister of Beth and Edward. Beth hasn’t forgiven either of them, but Steph is hopeful, and Edward only cares about fire.
As we read about one character, and how they come across that stranger, that stranger suddenly becomes a character, who happened to meet someone else who was linked to something that had some relation to an incident that occurred, which links to the death of someone, which relates back to the death 1978. Walker even mentions the idea of Six Degrees of Separation, or Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
The idea is that you can take a name, and that you can link them to someone else, and so on and so forth, until you reach six people, and the sixth person will have some link to Kevin Bacon. Six Degrees of Separation is obviously the original concept, that only six people divide two individuals who have a very remote connection. It’s an interesting theory that is played out very well with absorbing wit and charm.
It’s the mix of good, bad, and insane characters that lifts the book above the average title. Everything has a link. From the bomb threats, to the counterfeit therapist, Ali Bronski, taking credit for someone else’s work and then being involved in perhaps causing the death of more than one patient; to her father, Dan Bronski, who falls in love with Beth, who instead falls in love with John Heron, who is looking for his own wife, who doesn’t seem to love him anymore as it is.
His books, the characters within, the topics he discusses and the prose are disturbingly funny, but also incredibly dark
Not only are throwaway lines during the dialogue actually of importance and significance, but it’s also the realism that the characters portray. Beth is absolutely resentful of what has happened to her face since the fire. Steph is hopeful of a resolution, Edward is a complete and utter psychopath who no longer seems to function as a normal human being.
People live their lives through deceit, betrayal, revenge, greed, depression, death and carry on trying to continue life as if nothing has happened. It’s a difficult process and Walker, even with his harsh portrayal of some the characters evokes sympathy for all of them. These are people that have gone through hell and back, and just happen to be linked by an incident 23 years ago, which they were all indirectly responsible for or related to.
Of particular note is Walker’s ability to convince us of sub characters. Such as the know it all cab driver, or the rather nosy check-in receptionist, or the cleaning lady who by sheer coincidence starts ball rolling for the events that take place in the book with a single tape from a flight recorder (a blackbox) which gets passed around to everyone through further coincidence or through curiosity.
If you prefer your books to be light reading, you’ll do well to avoid this as you need a brain to keep up with all the incidents that are occurring, as well as trying to figure out how everyone is linked. Walker explains this as the book comes along, and at times it’s quite shocking to find out how they’re all linked, shockingly good that is.
It’s a much harder book to get involved in than say Helloland, in which Walker’s prose is a little lighter, smarter and sharper. Not to take away from the enjoyment I had reading this brilliant piece of writing, however, as there is nothing to fault this book, other than it is perhaps too dense with a very dark ending for most readers. A case of, “not a book for everyone”, but if people are open minded and intelligent enough to explore books of a different style, and a writer that seems to go from strength to strength having written only two books to date, you will not be disappointed.
Verdict: Death, misery, and tragedy. A depressing book to love.