 |
Blindsided
by Barry Hoffman
(Delirium Books, $50.00, 372 pages, 2006, ISBN: 1-929653-80-8.)
Review by William P Simmons
 Combining
sensationalistic terror with poignant examinations of character, Blindsided,
the fourth book in Barry Hoffman's critically acclaimed Eyes
series, is exciting and emotionally involving, as capable of evoking
philosophical inquiry as white-knuckle suspense. Featuring a storyline
as brutal in its examination of the after-effects of violence as it
is thoughtful in the intimate treatment of such universal emotions as
fear, wonder, and culpability, this novel is at once both an unapologetic
thriller and a thoughtfully lyric expose of the hidden byways of the
human mind and heart in conflict.
A noir-inspired love-song to psychological horror, Hoffman's characters
are both victims and victimizers. This novel penetrates deeper into
the capabilities, secret histories, and motivations of his characters
than ever before. Time is a principle theme of this novel of debasement
and redemption, as are the hidden layers buried within the psyche. Both
of these motifs are carefully joined by Hoffman's emphasis on the fragmented,
morose presents that his characters (barely) suffer through, living
half-lives never allowed to truly grow because they are haunted by pasts
more potent to them than their waking lives. The painful tragedies of
the past deny his characters the ability to grow, change, or recognize
what potential they might have lurking beneath needle-tracked, self-abused
skins. Depicting their lives in a painfully believable half-light that
lends greater psychological insight and aesthetic drama to a rapid-fire
paced narrative structure, Hoffman creates a world haunted not by ghosts
but realities too potent to deny.
A painfully honest vivisection of the inhuman-human-condition, Blindsided
is appropriately named, doing just this to readers expecting nothing
more than a typical suspense outing. Hoffman's seething tale of torment
is as culturally scathing as it is honest in its depiction of the sordid,
seedy lives of people lost in the pathos of their own emotional hells.
Hoffman's prose hits like a punch to the gut. Quick-paced and richly
textured, this quest for identity and challenges typically championed
definitions of morality. It also shows the novelist veering into directions
only glanced at in Judas Eyes.
In a plot as subversively jarring as it is thoughtful, this grim expose
of secret identities focuses as much on setting as character. Deidre
Caffrey, a series favorite, is murdered. Shara, everyone's favorite
anti-hero, is depicted with impressive honesty, warts and all. Because
Hoffman depicts the ugly depth to which her soul can descend, it's easier
to appreciate the mercy of her more positive actions. When she learns
that she has been made executor to Deidre's eastate, and, even more
surprising, realizes that her ex-rival's sister is a heroin addict,
her own fate becomes entangled with Deidre's memory, revealing aspects
of the later character that lend her a believability and grim poetry
that eluded her when she was alive (a fact alluded to by Hoffman in
his epilogue). Rushing characters through unexpected if ironically fitting
ends, the urban nightmares of his back alleys, crack-houses, and uncaring
streets are both symbolic and grittily real. Hoffman's mean streets
are very mean indeed, but they are just as often beautiful in a grimy,
harsh manner. Honesty of approach makes these urban surroundings no
less penetrative and empathetic as the people who live, suffer, shoot
up, and die in them.
Hoffman invites readers to face their potentiality for violence and
pain reflected in the motivations of his all-to-human monsters. Shara,
struggling to cope with the pleasures and pains of living in a world
shattered by violence, hopes to exorcize her rage and confusion in a
life without empathy by helping Deidre's sister. The results are refreshing
in a time when many publishers shy away from honest depictions of reality
for the crowd-pleasing ethics of potboiler sentiment. There is no final
truth in Hoffman's world, no saving grace or clear-cut answers. In this,
the novel is true to life. An unflinching look into the face of identity,
adversity, and terrors that wear our own faces, Blindsided is
a fitting continuation to perhaps the most original and emotionally
satisfying series in modern crime fiction. Focusing more on the emotional
effects of violence than the act itself, Hoffman's analysis of morbid
motivations and hard-knuckled redemption are sometimes hard to accept,
yet his work succeeds as thriller fiction precisely because he inspires
reflection as well as outrage.
|
|
