Rate this book

The Four Fingers Of Death (2010)

by Rick Moody(Favorite Author)

3.34 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0316118915 (ISBN13: 9780316118910)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Little, Brown and Company

review 1: I'd like to say one thing: boy was this a long read! Now that that is out of the way, I can say that the book is definitely interesting. Interesting in the sense that it is the adaption of a horrible sci-fi movie to a novel with modern concepts on our future. It's not a bad read; but it also isn't great one. In terms of trying to imagine the picture Moody was trying to paint, I honestly think I would watch it if the story was a film. Mainly with feelings of disgust, intrigue, boredom and humor- things that I typically like when I have a stroke of watching bad movies for the sake that they are bad. I'm sure it's what Moody wanted, and it's what I'll give him.
review 2: “The Four Fingers of Death” by Rick Moody, published in 2010, weighs in at 725 pages in ... moreits hardbound edition, the edition I read. A paperback edition, I imagine, would run about 1,000 pages. These are a lot of pages to get through, and there should be a good reason why a book is very long. Ultimately, all these hours reading the book are worthwhile only if the book provides a massive amount of information or a great intellectual and/or emotional payoff when a reader finishes. Unfortunately, I can’t say that this novel does either. To be sure, there are moments of keen satire throughout. On the very first page are references to a book reading at an “old-fashioned used-media outlet” and being seated in “a cluster of uncomfortable petrochemical multi-use furniture nodules.” A flea market is described as taking up “more than a dozen city blocks.” Moody’s depiction of Imperial America in decline in the middle of the 21st century (with widespread poverty, gasoline shortages, and mandatory evening power shutoffs) and world domination by the “Sino-Indian Economic Compact” is grimly humorous. This Third World life may indeed be the future of Americans considering economic and political trends since 1980. NASA is portrayed as being militarized – and what isn’t being dominated by the military-industrial complex, corporations, and “free” markets these days? But these sparkling gems of satire are scattered. The bulk of the book – about 90 percent – is a purported novelization by Montese Crandall, the first-person narrator, of a 2025 movie about a disastrous Mars landing and the aftermath when the Mars spacecraft crashes into the Southwest desert and only an arm with four fingers survives. This misbegotten space adventure is intermittently gripping, but runs on much too long. Crandall tells readers early on that he wrote a 45-page erotic novel and cut it to just one sentence: “Go get some eggs, you dwarf.” Moody would have done better to follow his narrator’s practice. This book – the rare dystopian novel that is (occasionally) funny – doesn’t need that severe a trimming, but it would be more effective, in my opinion, at half the length. less

Download links for: The Four Fingers of Death

Advertising