Well, at first I thought it was a good but still freshman attempt by this newcomer to the literary world. The sentences were rich in imagery, but too loose. He could have done a couple of more drafts in my opinion. Fran loaned me her paperback, and I found myself, though slightly interested in the plot, skimming through chapters because it just didn't strike me as much as some other books I've read. Then, halfway through, an interesting event took place.

I found the unabridged audio recording from The Best audio book group: Recorded Books, Inc., at the library. George Guidell, a great emotional reader, was narrating. I began listening to The Notebook in my car at the point I left off in the written version. I quickly came to a realization -- well one of two possible realizations: I was reading this book all wrong. Get an established professional like Mr. Guidell, and suddenly the color and depth of The Notebook came to light. Of course, the other realization could be this: That George Guidell is such a great reader that he can make even a mediocre story shine like a Pulitzer prizer. I prefer the former, that I just wasn't reading it right. Who knows. In either case, once I picked up the story with the audio version, I was truly moved. The damned story almost made me cry. Almost. It didn't, though. Really.

The story is a dual-perspective of two people who lost, then found each other once more. Noah and Allie had a summer of love in their late teens. He was a middle class working stiff, she a wealthy family daughter. Quickly separated, but never forgotten to each other. We begin the tale, which in the book's first half is actually a flashback from a story written in a note book, and being dictated by an old man, whom we learn about later and spend almost the entire second half of the book with. Noah is living in an old, stylish fixer upper, 12 years after losing his only true love, when who should drive up to his doorstep? Allie, of course. Warning: there are no monsters, no bad guys, no explosions in this book. There's lots and lots of love, however. Not the regular argument/kiss/makeup kind of love we're used to being shown. This is full-blown, in your face romance, the epitome, the paragon of what everyone thinks of as two hearts destined to be together in a beautiful world of wine and roses. Because of this, the story's almost unbelieveable. But you won't care. I promise. What Mr. Sparks gives us is a vision of the absolute perfect image of the human potential for love. It is how people would be like, if the rose-colored vision new lovers have for each other actually proved true for a life time. But it's not syrupy… OK, it IS syrupy, but you won't find yourself wiping your sleeve to get it off. You'll almost wish this short novel could go on forever. If you're the emotional type, keep a hankie next to your bed. Especially in the second half, when we come back to the present day and… well, you'll see.

Let me say that I listened to this on an unabridged audio tape, and this had one thing going for it and one against. For: if I had to spend the next 4 months reading this at night before bed I likely wouldn't - not because it was too scary but because it was.. too long? Too bizarre? Too thick with the stench of the dark side of humanity? Against: the gentleman who did the reading absolutely sucked at it. He had this bizarre, twisted cockney accent (Recorded Books obviously felt since Barker is British, the reader should be). I simply hate British readers. They have this pompous, higher than thou tone to their voices (which is expected in their culture, I guess… it simply irritates me). The reader for A Year In Provence had that kind of voice as well, and it was tough getting through. Sacrament's reader (I didn't note his name) also sounded, with every sentence, like he was about to crack up laughing. So, this hurt my enjoyment of the book I'm sure. The fact that Barker seemed to be making this book up as he went along certainly didn't help.

Did I like this book? No. I didn't. I don't think I did. The odd thing is: I read/listened to the entire book all the way through. That got me wondering why. I have to give Barker credit, he can write. In fact, as far as style and flair he's right up there with the best. It's WHAT he writes. I just never walk away from his books (I read Imajica a few years back) feeling like I've gotten something special out of it. "New" yes, special no, Dark and bizarre yes. Original? Yes. In fact, I walked away from this book feeling like I was dirty head to toe in some staining muck. His prose is good, but dark. Barker doesn’t hesitate for an instant to bring the reader into every detail of the world his characters move about it, and it's this world, not so much the action, that is the dark element. Existential. Everything is just so damned negative. Sacrament is about a man named Will Rabjohns, freelance photojournalist who spends his days around the world taking snaps of endangered animals. When he brings his crew to… somewhere, I was never really sure where it was, Greenland?… to photograph polar bears, he eventually gets mauled by one and almost dies. In his coma, he travels back at the request of a mysterious entity to a turning point in his childhood, when he meets up with a strange couple by the name of Jacob Steep and Rosa McGee. These people, we soon learn, are not what they first appear. Vampires? No, much worse. In fact, though, not even they truly understand what they are. Will's follies with them culminate in a scene which, believe it or not, I fast-forwarded through because it was just too distressing. The fact that I did this made me listen to the rest of this voluminous book, simply because I was impressed with its effect on me. This book is full of interesting, albeit slightly left of center characters, including a talking fox, a long-dead painter, lots of gay men, some of whom are dying. On this point, let me say this - Clive Barker is gay. He has to be. This is the second book I've read of his and the second where the main character is gay. The main character Will is devoutly homosexual, and if you’re homophobic, then don't read this book. Barker treats love in the gay community as directly and smoothly as other authors treat love scenes between men and women. Moments in the book where you would "normally" have the lead character making love to the woman love-interest, here you have him with another man. Barker does this well, and not at all in an exploiting manner. The parts in the book where Will deals with the "plague," a.k.a AIDS, and how it is slowly destroying the world he loves most, including a former lover, are the best emotionally. It definitely puts the epidemic in a new light, brings you closer.

I don't rate these books like I do movies and music, but if I did, it would be an A-. Why? This is one of the best written books in the genre of suspense in a long time. I mean the writing, the prose. Every sentence is rich with images and phrases that flow incredibly smoothly. It's kind of an odd pairing, since the story is a bravado buddy tale of two men out to stop the ultra-violent bad guy who incapacitates his victims by first mixing up their marbles with electricity shooting from his fingertips (with the help of some wires and a hidden battery). This mix of poetry and violence, I think, gives this character-driven action tale an interesting twist. The plot is good, with interesting characters and lots of action. It's somewhat predictable with a few elements, some foreshadowing that's a bit obvious, but overall it was an enjoyable read. Like I said, it's a character-driven story. The bad guy is the sociopath son of a talk-show diva who got where she was by marrying a cruise line mogul. He follows his 'list' towards an ultimate plan: to destroy this man who married his mother and his empire. Next on the scene is the woman whose latest hair-do inspired the book's title. She's a recluse who ran away from a rich home and is trying to lay low in the Florida Keys. But our bad guy has other plans. And in a bizarre but interesting twist, the good guys of the book, a man named Thorne and his best friend Sugarman become entangled in an effort to stop the bad guy before he succeeds in his ultimate plan.

It's an interesting plot all the way through. Just as you learn a great deal about a character something happens to make you realize there's more than meets the 'eye.' It's a good page-turner. The problem I had with this book comes at the end. Not that the actual final scene is bad, but it seems like Mr. Hall lost his way at the end. There are two or three chapters that just fall flat. We're led up to a peak of action only to have everything stop for a while. It was odd, and by the time the action returned you're kind of scratching your head saying 'what was that all about?'

I very much enjoyed this book but my reasons for enjoying it are numerous and sometimes completely unrelated. What is this book about? Well, note that I did not refer to it as a novel. It is not. At least I'm very sure he did not intend it to be. The premise, however, is that Kurt Vonnegut wrote the book Timequake (which may or may not be true), but it failed miserably and succumbed to criticism's hammer (my horrible metaphor, not his). This part is fictitious, since Timequake has never been around in any other form. According to Vonnegut, he chopped out most of the book, and added as 'filler' personal opinions and views on just about every subject matter that seemingly ever mattered to him. This 'filler', which is 80% of the book, is more the personal memoirs of Kurt Vonnegut, as only this author could carry it off: with a jumbled time-sequence and a loose grasp of linear plot development. But it works. He refers to his book as Timequake II, since Timequake I was such a flop.

The premise of Timequake I: the universe stops expanding in the year 2001, contracts a little, then continues expanding once again. The result? A timequake which forces every living thing to experience the last ten years of their life (1991 - 2001) all over again. Everyone is completely aware of what is happening. Problem is they can't change anything that happened the first time around. For ten years all anyone can do is just watch every thing go on as it had done, on 'automatic pilot' as he refers to it. The two main characters are Vonnegut himself, referring to himself either in 1996 as he's writing this, or in 2001, after 'free will kicks in again.' The other is a long-obscure science fiction writer named Kilgore Trout. Now, mind you, the story involving Kilgore Trout is not what Timequake is about. Or it is, but the Timequake in the story, not the Timequake you hold in your hands. See?

Timequake (the one you should go out and buy) is Kurt Vonnegut waxing on his life from his boyhood to his current age of seventy-something, wondering why he's still writing after all these years. We learn a great deal about the man/father/husband, his life as a writer and reporter and college student/professor and General Electric employee. More pertinent to the tale, we learn about his brother, parents, extended family, uncles and aunts, and what they meant to him. Using the character of Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut examines the world around us in a somewhat existential yet boisterously humorous light. The guy's a card, though at times a bit cynical, with a wit razor-sharp and the tongue to use it (yet another wonderful metaphor for you, folks).

It's been about a year since I read this, so excuse me if I leave off details (like the characters' names). This is a great, great book. I'm always a sucker for good-guy-goes-undercover stories. I've become a big fan of Stuart Woods since reading this book, and even more so after reading one of his earlier novels, LA Times (see mini-review below).