TheUnknown285's Full Review: Dean Koontz - Life Expectancy
My first two experiences with Dean Koontz (Phantoms and Strangers) didn’t exactly make me a life-long fan. I found the characters to be mostly uninteresting, the dialogue to be pretty wooden, and the plot to be a letdown. And, as ignorant as this sounds, I also hated the artificial, bookish tone of narration. I hated the way Koontz would, out of nowhere, drop in words like he were a middle schooler who was just so excited because he knew a “big word” and just had to throw it in, flow or logic be damned. After all, how many eight year-olds know words like “ermine” and use them in sentences?
However, even with my displeasure at Koontz, new Koontz books, such as The Taking and From the Corner of His Eye, would call out to me as I browsed the supermarket shelves, but I never heeded these calls until I was perusing a second-hand bookstore, looking for something to keep me from losing my sanity during a potentially long wait at the hospital. I came across Life Expectancy, one of the books that I had seen before on the shelves. Costing only about three bucks, I decided to give Koontz a third chance, although it didn’t occur to me until later that it might be considered bad form to read a book called Life Expectancy at a trauma center waiting room. Regardless, I wasn’t disappointed with my purchase.
On the night that Jimmy Tock is born into this world, his paternal grandfather departs it. But before Josef Tock is done living, he suddenly awakens from a coma to give five dates, five days that will try his future grandson’s soul and test his resolve and his sanity. Life Expectancy is the tale of those five days. It’s a tale of the fear of the unknown, of overcoming the hurdles and pits life throws before us, and of love and companionship.
One thing that appealed to me about Life Expectancy was the characters and their relationships. While there is some ludicrousness to it (after all, how often do you come across silver-tongued, psychopathic clowns who live in the midst of a circus class war?), the characters are vibrant, interesting, endearing when they should be, and mostly believable. You have characters like Grandma Rowena, who is wonderfully amusing and eccentric, including a penchant for adding hilariously morbid details to children’ stories, and Konrad Beezo, the aforementioned clown. Jimmy is an everyman character but is still vibrant and unique in his own right. You can easily seen the love and playful camaraderie between Jimmy and Lorrie and the love Jimmy’s parents have for him. It all seems natural.
In terms of pace, Life Expectancy is the quintessential page turner. One of the things I’m guilty about doing while reading a book is checking my progress, opening the book wide at the page I’m currently on and checking the top to see how far I’ve gone and how far I have left to go. On one instance, I was literally shocked to see how much I had read in seemingly little time. And as the book neared its finish, I found it harder and harder to put it down, not in a “I really need to hurry up and finish this damn book” way but in a “I can’t wait to see what happens next” way. That, my friends, is the definition of a page turner: when you can’t put it down and read a lot in what seems like only a short time.
I also loved the narration. Here, Koontz uses a first-person point of view, written through Jimmy’s point of view. For one thing Life Expectancy is pretty funny and witty. There were parts where I was literally laughing at loud. Additionally, the narration is intelligent without, for the most part, exhibiting the same overly bookish flaws of the other two Koontz books I’ve read. Sure, there are a few instances (like the use of the word “jackpudding,” a word I loathe), but they are much less irritating.
Relatedly, the structure of the plot is very good. One of the things I really liked was how Koontz strongly implies a major plot twists but then reveals he’s been pulling your leg and that what you thought was wrong. There are also plenty of twists and turns in there. These twists are unexpected but welcomed, with none seeming forced, illogical, or like a deus ex machina. Well almost none; I for one was not a big fan of the plot twist at the end. For that matter, the whole ending is a bit of a letdown, feeling rushed.
So, if you’re looking for a quick, satisfying read with interesting characters, an endearing narrator, and an inventive plot, give Life Expectancy a look. I recommend it with five stars.
With his bestselling blend of nail-biting intensity, daring artistry, and storytelling magic, Koontz returns with an emotional rollercoaster tale of f...More at Buy.com
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