Under Radar - Hardcover

MICHAEL TOLKIN is a novelist, screenwriter, director and former journalist whose 1988 novel The Player became a highly praised movie adaptation by Robert Altman. In addition to writing and directing The Rapture and The New Age, Tolkin is the author of a second novel, Among the Dead. Tolkin was also the co-writer for the 2001 movie Changing Lanes, starring Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson.

The author of the acclaimed, Robert Altman-adapted The Player fumbles with this rambling chronicle of a man's life and the retribution he faces after committing a senseless murder. With money made through insurance fraud, jaded and misanthropic Tom Levy takes his wife, Rosalie, and two young daughters to Jamaica. Bored by the tame surroundings of the family-themed resort, he starts fantasizing about Debra, a woman he spies on the beach. At a reggae party, Debra's husband, Barry, innocently persuades Tom's four-year-old daughter, Alma, to dance, and she starts gyrating her hips provocatively. An infuriated Tom takes Barry's interaction with the girl as "burning a child's dignity for laughs" and decides to kill him while both families take a guided tour of the island. Since his earlier felonies, Tom has been obsessed with going to prison, and he buys himself a life sentence by pushing Tom off a waterfall, in full view of everyone. From there, the novel devolves into some lengthy mythic storytelling as Tom emerges from nearly seven years of self-imposed silence, his hair shocked white from a condemned prisoner's spiritual allegory. When he clumsily recites the dead man's tale to the other prisoners, they are all miraculously set free, and Tom tries to reclaim the family that has gone on without him. Though pitched as a thought-provoking story about life's "infinite battalion of choice and consequence," it is marred by its uneven pacing, belabored existential tone and absurd premise not to mention its unsympathetic protagonist. Agent, Kim Witherspoon. (June) Forecast: Though the success of The Player is a definite selling point, Tolkin's latest will likely remain in the area described by its title.
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