Blackbox
A Novel in 840 Chapters
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3.2 • 5 Ratings
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- $0.99
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- $0.99
Publisher Description
Cross a road, take a train, or get on an airplane and you put your life in the hands of a stranger -- every bit as screwed up, every bit as fallible and as human as you are. Then the person turns out not to be a stranger at all, and suddenly it's much worse.
In America and Britain and the sky in between, an apparently disparate group of people is connected, whether intimately or by chance, to the tragic death of a stowaway on board flight AF266.
As the action veers across countries and time zones, the stowaway's real identity is revealed through stolen black box recordings, answering machine messages, sitcom outtakes, and court transcripts. Told in a shifting, circular narrative, the interwoven lives make up a jolting and layered puzzle that builds to a heart-stopping, chilling climax.
An intelligent and invigorating novel with a bizarre menu of dysfunctional characters, Blackbox is the story of an attempt to erase a life on tape.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Any one of us is only six acquaintances away from anyone else," hints stewardess Stephanie Wiltshire at the outset of Walker's high-speed, disquieting debut, which features the not-so-random interactions of 20 of the most ludicrously manic characters imaginable. As Flight SA841 touches down at Birmingham International Airport from New York, an unidentified female stowaway on another plane begins her countdown through 840 concise chapters (many are just a line or two long), each of which builds urgently toward the disclosure of her identity and her fate. Air traffic controller Michael Davies guides SA841 to its gate, then drives home listening to psychoanalyst Dr. Frankburg's smash-hit self-help tape, You Too Can Fly, which is popular among airline industry employees and aviophobes alike. Distracted by the tape, Davies nearly hits a pedestrian later revealed to be yet another piece in the puzzle, before reaching home and his phobia-obsessed wife. The rest of the cast includes an "unfunny" comic whose act features a simulated suicide, an aspiring anticorporate terrorist, a suicidal pilot, a morgue assistant and a Welsh actor coping with the suicide of a Scottish actress and friend, all of whom are connected in some way to the death of a Chinese woman more than 20 years earlier. Walker's inaugural work is so clever that it seems to be the product of years of careful contemplation, yet so electrifying that it is just as easy to imagine him writing it in one sitting. His respect for his readers' attentiveness is palpable and refreshing, and a character list included at the front of the book is helpful in sorting out any momentary confusion.
