From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Aug 31 2002 - 01:58:24 MDT
NYT book review:
Mind Catcher," by John Darnton
Ken Tucker describes John Darnton's novels as "techno-bio-
anthropological thrillers." In Darnton's new novel, explains
Tucker, a critic at large for Entertainment Weekly, "two
bristlingly hubristic men of science have perfected a
machine that downloads brain waves." The father of a 13-
year-old boy who has suffered a rock-climbing accident is
encouraged by one of the doctors to try an experimental
procedure which, writes Tucker, "essentially shuts down the
brain stem so that the organ can be repaired, while a
computer supplies the necessary neural transmissions to keep
the rest of the body alive."
"All of this is cannily accomplished," says Tucker, and
Darnton, who is cultural news editor at The Times, "also
knows how to create anxiety in the reader." But Tucker
complains that the book's chief villain is too villainous:
The novel's "best creation," he writes, is the boy, who "is
literally inert throughout the book." He "provides the novel
with a poignant soulfulness," says Tucker, "a quality that
is more in evidence in Darnton's earlier books and would
have been welcome in greater doses here."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/01/books/review/01TUCKERT.html?8bu
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