‘A funny, horribly accurate portrait of a life in California in the Fifties’ Rolling Stone
Jack Isidore is a ‘crap artist’, a collector of crackpot ideas and worthless objects. His beliefs make him a man apparently unsuited for real life and so his sister, an edgy and aggressive woman, and his brother-in-law, a crass and foul-mouthed businessman, feel compelled to rescue him from it. But, observed through Jack’s murderously innocent gaze, Fay and Charley Hume are seen to be just as obsessed as Jack. Their obsessions may be a little more acceptable than Jack’s but they are uglier. And, in the end and thanks to Jack’s intervention, theirs lead to tragedy …
Jack Isidore is a ‘crap artist’, a collector of crackpot ideas and worthless objects. His beliefs make him a man apparently unsuited for real life and so his sister, an edgy and aggressive woman, and his brother-in-law, a crass and foul-mouthed businessman, feel compelled to rescue him from it. But, observed through Jack’s murderously innocent gaze, Fay and Charley Hume are seen to be just as obsessed as Jack. Their obsessions may be a little more acceptable than Jack’s but they are uglier. And, in the end and thanks to Jack’s intervention, theirs lead to tragedy …
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Reviews
A funny, horribly accurate portrait of a life in California in the Fifties
Philip K Dick's best books always describe a future that is both entirely recognisable and utterly unimaginable
What Raymond Chandler did for the neon-lit Los Angeles of the forties, Philip K Dick did for the Bay Area teetering on the brink of the sixties
A stunning novel ... at times surreal and at times very funny it is also something of a tragedy ... a pleasure to read
Dick is entertaining us about reality and madness, time and death, sin and salvation ... We have our own homegrown Borges