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The Healer (2010)

by Antti Tuomainen(Favorite Author)

3.1 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0805095543 (ISBN13: 9780805095548)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Henry Holt and Co.

review 1: Dystopian novels are probably my favourite kind of books, I also really like detective novels. So this book, a mixture of both, should have been great. I liked the idea and enjoyed reading it but when it was done I felt like parts of the story were missing. The idea is good, the book is exciting, but... it's just not quite there. I don't mean that absolutely everything should be explained, I like it when one has to read between the lines. It's more like a whole layer of the story was just left out. So, it's a great summer read... but it's just nothing more than that.
review 2: Gripping. Although this book is marketed as a crime novel I don't think that's how I would describe it (although it does contain a serial killer on the run and a mystery to solve, involvi... moreng a missing woman - the wife of the narrator). It is more reminiscent of J.G. Ballard or even Margaret Attwood - a near-future in a world collapsing due to the breakdown of social order resulting from climate change and the rise of the "marketeers". The police are unable to operate properly and the policing system has been undermined by private security firms; the health service has also been sabotaged and undermined. Some of the events are very close to what has been happening in Britain during the last few years : the breaking down of the established order, the attack on or collapse of public services - it's post-"the closing of the libraries", in which the sunlight streaming into the library in its last week symbolises the light "in a dimming, soon-to-be-dark world". The novel was published in Finland in 2010, so either it's happening everywhere or the author is prophetic! The city in which it is set is Helsinki, and the violence and fear seem so far from present reality and yet somehow believable in the times we live in. Not a comfortable book to read (and the ending is ambiguous), but a page-turner. less

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