The Twelve
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
THE TWELVE is an extraordinary and unforgettable novel about a most unusual man. As a child, Max lives in a world of colours and numbers, not speaking until the age of six. As an adult, Max ventures on a journey of destiny to discover the secret behind the ancient Mayan prophecy about the "end of time," foretold to occur on December 21, 2012. When he is fifteen years old, Max has a near-death experience during which he has a vision that reveals the names of twelve individuals to him. While Max cannot discern the significance of these twelve names, he is unable to shake the sense that they have deep meaning. After completing his schooling at Harvard and Yale, eight years pass before Max meets the first of the twelve. With this first meeting, Max's voyage of discovery begins, as he strives to uncover the identities and implications of the twelve individuals--people he will meet during his journey toward truth, all of whom seem connected, and all of whom may hold the answer to what will happen at the exact moment the world might actually end.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gladstone's meandering debut, the latest thriller tied to the mystical date of December 12, 2012, when Mayan legend predicts the world's end, charts the life of Max Doff, starting with his conception in 1949 in Tarrytown, N.Y. After Max "dies" briefly at the age 15, he has a vision of 12 people. On returning to consciousness, he begins a decades-long quest to find them. His path takes him to Yale, where his radical philosophical ideas lead to his forced departure from campus. A formulation like " 'A is, and is not, equal to A' as the ultimate equation in explaining how to penetrate the impenetrable intellectual domain of 'understanding understanding' " is symptomatic of Max's difficulty in getting his message, whatever it actually is, across. Max then begins globe-trotting as part of the production team for a documentary on ancient astronauts. Serendipitous encounters with "the twelve" will strike many readers as more contrived than magical.
