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The Kills #1-4
The Kills
This is The Kills: Sutler, The Massive, The Kill, The Hit. The Kills is an epic novel of crime and conspiracy told in four books. It begins with a man on the run and ends with a burned body. Moving across continents, characters and genres, there will be no more ambitious or exciting novel in 2013. In a ground-breaking collaboration between author and publisher, Richard House has also created multimedia content that takes you beyond the boundaries of the book and into the characters’ lives outside its pages.http://www.panmacmillan.com/thekills
1024 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
74 people are currently reading
1990 people want to read
About the author
Richard House
44 books18 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
Richard House is an author, film maker, artist and university lecturer. As well as the digital-first novel The Kills, he has written two previous novels (Bruiser and Uninvited), which were published by Serpent’s Tail in the 1990s. He is a member of the Chicago-based collaborative Haha. He is the editor of a digital magazine, Fatboy Review: www.fatboyreview.net
Born in Cyprus, Richard House is an artist and writer. His first novel, Bruiser, was short-listed for the Ferro Grumley Gay Fiction Award in the USA. The Kills has been longlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize. He currently teaches at Birmingham University, UK.
Richard House is an author, film maker, artist and university lecturer. As well as the digital-first novel The Kills, he has written two previous novels (Bruiser and Uninvited), which were published by Serpent’s Tail in the 1990s. He is a member of the Chicago-based collaborative Haha. He is the editor of a digital magazine, Fatboy Review: www.fatboyreview.net
Born in Cyprus, Richard House is an artist and writer. His first novel, Bruiser, was short-listed for the Ferro Grumley Gay Fiction Award in the USA. The Kills has been longlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize. He currently teaches at Birmingham University, UK.
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May 16, 2016
If you are going to tell your story in such a tired, affectless, slumped way, you better have plenty of stuff happening. If you don’t have much happening (look, this guy thought about doing some online banking, but then he didn’t) , then you better have some good jokes or at least some local colour that we can’t get from a travel guide or a tv documentary. If you don’t make me care about who stole what money from which government and who did or didn’t get blown up by which fake organisation then I will write you a review like this one. Your prose is so flat I want to see the iron you used on it, I want to get my shirts like that. Your characters are so interchangeable I figured they must be each other. Your dialogue, however – that was very realistic. “What’s the time?” “I don’t know, I don’t wear a watch.” “Where are you travelling to?” “I haven’t made up my mind.”
This was Number Three in my Absurdly Long Novels project and the third one star in a row. * I am seeing a pattern here. Could it be the same as what happened to bands in the late 60s/early 70s, when they turned from smart 3 minute singles about mods and clothes with a neat 8 bar guitar break to double albums about when people evolve into dolphins and set sail for a better planet and oboes, oboes, oboes?
* First two were Parallel Stories and Miss MacIntosh, My Darling
November 30, 2013
The Kills is a quartet of novels that is meant to transcend such limiting labels as a particular genre. And in some respects it achieves that lofty goal.
Take the first of the four parts, Sutler. It's definitely not a thriller. At one point the main character misses a bus. He then hangs around a bit, then catches the next bus. At another point he tries to do some online banking, but the webpage times out, so he doesn't bother. This is the kind of gritty realism that I could get from a high definition documentary about small stones. It's about as thrilling as making a sandwich. Less so, if the sandwich involves bacon.
The second part, The Massive definitely isn't a drama. It's a bit like that film Jarhead: a group of young men stationed in the middle of nowhere, Iraq, and finding that the only foe they have to combat is abject boredom. It's woefully tedious to get through, explains most of the ending at its beginning, and the reward for powering through it all? The explanation of an unresolved and forgotten plot point from the first part.
The penultimate part (the novel put me off reading so much that I had to think of part three as “the penultimate part” to trick myself into thinking I was nearly finished) is not a mystery. Much like the rest of the book, we're led to believe that nefarious machinations are going on behind the scenes, but our perspective is limited to characters who don't have the faintest idea what the hell is going on. Any real mystery the novel provokes is through the deliberate concealing of events, not through a deft touch.
The final part ties up all the loose ends. Hah! Not really. It's just another story vaguely linked through events and themes to the other three. It doesn't deign to wrap anything up, which I suppose is supposed to be artsy and clever because, like, you know, real life doesn't wrap things up. Oh no, wait, this is a story. The last two parts of the quartet aren't even bad stories, just kind of okay. But any hopes it had of clawing up to two stars went down the toilet on the final page when . Or at least that's how I read it, but by then I was just glad to be done with the whole thing.
Oh, and the afterword really shouldn't be an afterword. Having slogged through over a thousand pages of not-very-enjoyable fiction, I don't particularly want to find a little note informing me that The Kills is not just a book, it's a multimedia experience, and that I should go to these URLs when I reach these pages to enrich the experience. For one thing I read books to get away from computer screens and videos, and for another thing if I did want to stop reading to watch little video clips, it would have been really useful to know these links existed before I started reading the book.
Take the first of the four parts, Sutler. It's definitely not a thriller. At one point the main character misses a bus. He then hangs around a bit, then catches the next bus. At another point he tries to do some online banking, but the webpage times out, so he doesn't bother. This is the kind of gritty realism that I could get from a high definition documentary about small stones. It's about as thrilling as making a sandwich. Less so, if the sandwich involves bacon.
The second part, The Massive definitely isn't a drama. It's a bit like that film Jarhead: a group of young men stationed in the middle of nowhere, Iraq, and finding that the only foe they have to combat is abject boredom. It's woefully tedious to get through, explains most of the ending at its beginning, and the reward for powering through it all? The explanation of an unresolved and forgotten plot point from the first part.
The penultimate part (the novel put me off reading so much that I had to think of part three as “the penultimate part” to trick myself into thinking I was nearly finished) is not a mystery. Much like the rest of the book, we're led to believe that nefarious machinations are going on behind the scenes, but our perspective is limited to characters who don't have the faintest idea what the hell is going on. Any real mystery the novel provokes is through the deliberate concealing of events, not through a deft touch.
The final part ties up all the loose ends. Hah! Not really. It's just another story vaguely linked through events and themes to the other three. It doesn't deign to wrap anything up, which I suppose is supposed to be artsy and clever because, like, you know, real life doesn't wrap things up. Oh no, wait, this is a story. The last two parts of the quartet aren't even bad stories, just kind of okay. But any hopes it had of clawing up to two stars went down the toilet on the final page when . Or at least that's how I read it, but by then I was just glad to be done with the whole thing.
Oh, and the afterword really shouldn't be an afterword. Having slogged through over a thousand pages of not-very-enjoyable fiction, I don't particularly want to find a little note informing me that The Kills is not just a book, it's a multimedia experience, and that I should go to these URLs when I reach these pages to enrich the experience. For one thing I read books to get away from computer screens and videos, and for another thing if I did want to stop reading to watch little video clips, it would have been really useful to know these links existed before I started reading the book.
July 20, 2014
A perplexing read. Usually half way through a book I will read the goodreads reviews and find myself vociferously agreeing with all those reviews which have the good taste to reflect my own views. This time I agreed with the one star reviews and with the five star reviews. At times this book felt like reading a "war and peace" for our times. In the Kills Tolstoys broad sweep of history propelling the characters inexorably forward is replaced by a sort of chaos theory where the greed of one individual unleashes a butterfly effect of misery across four intertwined books and groups of people. Unfortunately for me those moments were few and far between, the majority of the time was spent slogging through the writers cleverness, reams and reams of cleverness, affectation and complexity.
I am glad I read it can't say I particularly enjoyed it though.
I am glad I read it can't say I particularly enjoyed it though.
April 6, 2014
I don't need a book to end with a nicely wrapped package and a big bow, but come ON! The way this book was marketed, I thought that things would come together and that there would be some sense to the thing. I feel mislead. This book could have, should have, been edited way down. There were hundreds of pages of rolling pin reading - just going back over the same thing over and over and over again. So why didn't I just put it down? Because the book started off so good. I thought the author was going to come around after all the drivel and deliver. Nope. Can't think of anyone I'd recommend this book to at the moment.
January 13, 2015
Note: Minus one star for the inordinate number of typos and missing words. Evidence of sloppy copy editing, it is highly irritating in a novel of such length and complexity. Having said that, this is the fastest I have ever burned through a novel of over 1 000 pages. The Kills is simply incendiary. Once you begin reading, it is nigh impossible to stop.
I gave a grim little smile and heaved a huge sigh of relief when I reached the end (well, what counts for the ending in a meta-novel that constitutes four separate, but devilishly intertwined, short novels).
Richard House has written a fiendish anti-thriller that is essentially a serpentine, languorous meditation on cause and effect. Devotees of writers like Jeffrey Deaver and Jonathan Kellerman are likely to be befuddled at the lack of resolution here, despite the overall length.
It all begins in the Iraq desert, where the monolithic HOSCO (a pseudonym for Halliburton?) is siphoning off funds from the US government for infrastructure projects that exist only on paper. Sutler (which, of course, is not his real name) becomes the fall guy in a massive fraud, and flees for his life after a mysterious explosion destroys critical records.
That flight sets in motion a series of events and repercussions that reverberate throughout The Kills, becoming ever more complicated and byzantine. Volume three, ‘The Kill’, takes in a grisly murder in Naples (the link to volume one, ‘Sutler’, is a fictional account of that murder read by a student on a bus that Sutler bumps into).
Reviews from Out and Lambda Literary have made much of the fact that Richard House is a ‘gay’ writer operating in the very macho, black-and-white thriller genre. Author Philip Hensher, a judge for the 2013 Man Booker price (and who himself is gay), urged readers to embrace The Kills. Yes, there are gay characters here. However, House performs a rather sly conjuring trick by making their orientation incidental, but the consequences of their actions critical to the plot.
My favourite novel of the four is ‘The Massive’, a jaw-dropping account of the men who operate the ‘burn pits’ at Camp Liberty in Iraq. Following this almost over-the-top apocalypse, ‘The Kill’, about the Naples murder, is a much quieter interlude that seems to bleed all the momentum from the narrative, but it quickly segues into outright horror. ‘The Hit’ brings together and resolves many of the plot strands, but raises as many questions as it answers.
I must say I found the ‘extra’ digital content included on the Pan Macmillan website to be more of a distraction than it was worth. I actually gave up following the e-book links after the first two volumes, as I was anxious for the story to unfold as quickly as possible. I think the key to such ‘extra’ content is to make it indispensable to the narrative itself; here, as with Marissa Peshl’s recent Night Film, the added bits-and-pieces are decorative as opposed to being structural.
House’s deliberate strategy here of leaving characters and plot strands dangling, and refracting events constantly through a prism of disinformation and paranoia, could prove too alienating for many readers. I was fascinated by how far he could logically take this. House goes so much further than I could have imagined; the novel slowly accretes a kind of grim mythic power that stays with the reader long after the last page is turned.
I gave a grim little smile and heaved a huge sigh of relief when I reached the end (well, what counts for the ending in a meta-novel that constitutes four separate, but devilishly intertwined, short novels).
Richard House has written a fiendish anti-thriller that is essentially a serpentine, languorous meditation on cause and effect. Devotees of writers like Jeffrey Deaver and Jonathan Kellerman are likely to be befuddled at the lack of resolution here, despite the overall length.
It all begins in the Iraq desert, where the monolithic HOSCO (a pseudonym for Halliburton?) is siphoning off funds from the US government for infrastructure projects that exist only on paper. Sutler (which, of course, is not his real name) becomes the fall guy in a massive fraud, and flees for his life after a mysterious explosion destroys critical records.
That flight sets in motion a series of events and repercussions that reverberate throughout The Kills, becoming ever more complicated and byzantine. Volume three, ‘The Kill’, takes in a grisly murder in Naples (the link to volume one, ‘Sutler’, is a fictional account of that murder read by a student on a bus that Sutler bumps into).
Reviews from Out and Lambda Literary have made much of the fact that Richard House is a ‘gay’ writer operating in the very macho, black-and-white thriller genre. Author Philip Hensher, a judge for the 2013 Man Booker price (and who himself is gay), urged readers to embrace The Kills. Yes, there are gay characters here. However, House performs a rather sly conjuring trick by making their orientation incidental, but the consequences of their actions critical to the plot.
My favourite novel of the four is ‘The Massive’, a jaw-dropping account of the men who operate the ‘burn pits’ at Camp Liberty in Iraq. Following this almost over-the-top apocalypse, ‘The Kill’, about the Naples murder, is a much quieter interlude that seems to bleed all the momentum from the narrative, but it quickly segues into outright horror. ‘The Hit’ brings together and resolves many of the plot strands, but raises as many questions as it answers.
I must say I found the ‘extra’ digital content included on the Pan Macmillan website to be more of a distraction than it was worth. I actually gave up following the e-book links after the first two volumes, as I was anxious for the story to unfold as quickly as possible. I think the key to such ‘extra’ content is to make it indispensable to the narrative itself; here, as with Marissa Peshl’s recent Night Film, the added bits-and-pieces are decorative as opposed to being structural.
House’s deliberate strategy here of leaving characters and plot strands dangling, and refracting events constantly through a prism of disinformation and paranoia, could prove too alienating for many readers. I was fascinated by how far he could logically take this. House goes so much further than I could have imagined; the novel slowly accretes a kind of grim mythic power that stays with the reader long after the last page is turned.
August 12, 2014
So I saw this in the WSJ review of books- they liked it. Saw the Booker prize mention and always fall for that. Carefully read all the 3 star reviews. What sealed the buy was that when I read the Amazon sampler I blew thru the whole thing and I wanted to keep going. Figured out that Sutler was a patsy and I liked the writer's style.
I have now finished the first story of the 4 and took advantage of Amazon to let me return the book for a refund. Harsh, I know, but I wasn't going to finish based on how the first story went. A shame too, because I liked the author's narrative style, but not his choices.
What was good was that the author doesn't waste time setting a scene with typical "it was a dark and stormy night" stuff but focused on what his characters were actually thinking and doing. So the narrative always had somewhere to go. The main problem was that the narrative wasn't going anywhere all that interesting. Midway I felt like I was in a hamster wheel just spinning inside an infinite circular track.
And so many possibilities, the character, Geezler, who kicked off the whole embezzlement scheme that implicated Sutler was ignored in favor of a boy who Sutler met briefly and who tragically disappeared. Another character who was to investigate Sutler was also interesting, but his arc dwindled off without any confrontation with Sutler. Instead we're left with a mother searching for her son and two videographers caught up with Sutler's incompetence and little of the two journalists who could have made the story a lot more interesting.
So I suppose to sum up, the story went off in the least interesting direction it could, that of following Sutler's whims of identity and chronic indecision so he could fade out to white in the closing snowstorm. Sigh.
I have now finished the first story of the 4 and took advantage of Amazon to let me return the book for a refund. Harsh, I know, but I wasn't going to finish based on how the first story went. A shame too, because I liked the author's narrative style, but not his choices.
What was good was that the author doesn't waste time setting a scene with typical "it was a dark and stormy night" stuff but focused on what his characters were actually thinking and doing. So the narrative always had somewhere to go. The main problem was that the narrative wasn't going anywhere all that interesting. Midway I felt like I was in a hamster wheel just spinning inside an infinite circular track.
And so many possibilities, the character, Geezler, who kicked off the whole embezzlement scheme that implicated Sutler was ignored in favor of a boy who Sutler met briefly and who tragically disappeared. Another character who was to investigate Sutler was also interesting, but his arc dwindled off without any confrontation with Sutler. Instead we're left with a mother searching for her son and two videographers caught up with Sutler's incompetence and little of the two journalists who could have made the story a lot more interesting.
So I suppose to sum up, the story went off in the least interesting direction it could, that of following Sutler's whims of identity and chronic indecision so he could fade out to white in the closing snowstorm. Sigh.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 13, 2014
"The Kills" is a sprawling quartet of gut wrenching thrillers. While each can be read separately, it's apparent they're meant to be read as one whole book. In "Sutler", the title character is a consultant for a construction company in Iraq, on the run after embezzling millions of dollars. Or maybe he's a fall guy for a larger conspiracy . . . "The Massive" centers around a company of working stiffs at an illegal burn site in the midddle of the Iraqi desert. Exposed to dangerous toxic waste, cut off from the outside world and duped by the people they work for, they begin to turn on one another. The third book, "The Kills" follows an aspiring film maker in Naples who hopes to turn a book about a grisly thrill killing (maybe an elaborate prank involving horse blood and body parts from the local morgue) into a movie. During his research, the killing from the book is reenacted by a pair of thrill killers. The final book "The Hit" sees another iteration of the reenacted thrill killing, this time involving German officials on Cyprus who are looking for a a mysterious swindler on the run.
This is a difficult book on many levels, Heinous acts are committed (we only see them after the fact). The truth, or rather reality is often murky. Charaters in one book reappear in others in slightly different modes. The reader is often forced to second guess him/herself. I've seen a couple of reviews comparing "The Kils" to Le Carre and Bolano, but a better analogy would be Derek Raymond and Italo Calvino teaming up to write an epic,gory conspiracy thriller. Often confusing (owing to it's density, not to slipshod construction), "The Kills" is a book about observation, hunter and prey, author and reader. Worth reading a second time.
This is a difficult book on many levels, Heinous acts are committed (we only see them after the fact). The truth, or rather reality is often murky. Charaters in one book reappear in others in slightly different modes. The reader is often forced to second guess him/herself. I've seen a couple of reviews comparing "The Kils" to Le Carre and Bolano, but a better analogy would be Derek Raymond and Italo Calvino teaming up to write an epic,gory conspiracy thriller. Often confusing (owing to it's density, not to slipshod construction), "The Kills" is a book about observation, hunter and prey, author and reader. Worth reading a second time.
December 31, 2017
I'm a sucker for an ambitiously-scoped project - but I wonder why this novel was the way it was. Clear cues from Bolaño (2666) and a dash of Durrellian structure (THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET) with spiritual homages to a ton of other things... I enjoyed parts of the puzzle, I particularly appreciated the focus being on contractors and innocents instead of the typical villains of war, but I wonder if I should've just watched MICHAEL CLAYTON again to get some of the same spiritual effect.
September 9, 2013
My favourite book in the Booker 2013 Longlist, and possibly my favourite book/s read in 2013 so far.
This Telegraph review sums up my feelings pretty well - an epic read, bursting with complexity, brutality, and meticulous planning, without sacrificing on giving even the smallest and most tangential characters heart and three-dimensionality. I found the multimedia aspect (I read the 'expanded editions') a little jarring and tagged-on at first, but by somewhere in the second book was completely on board with them; I don't think the same type of extras would work very well for most authors, but in House's capable hands, they certainly added extra depth and dimension to a text which didn't already need it. (Skip them if you like - doesn't hurt the story to just read, not play - but if you can just "go with it" you won't be disappointed.)
That aside, I just loved it. My first book/s by this author, but I will definitely now be seeking out and devouring everything else I can get my hands on.
Full marks. Do it.
*side note - things I loved the most: the stark environments of book 1, "a question much like yes or no" from the same book, the opening chapter of book 2, the heads-or-tails interactivity at the start of book 3 (I tossed a coin and read 'heads' by the way!), the voicemails in book 1, the world war 2 back-story moment, Lila's story, and the momentum at the start of book 4 when you have no idea wtf is going on but suddenly a whole lot of threads from throughout books 1-3 start returning in a big way. So many tiny, seemingly-irrelevant details reflected and bounced around all four books over and over in different situations... so much planning and care in every scene and sentence. LOVED IT.
This Telegraph review sums up my feelings pretty well - an epic read, bursting with complexity, brutality, and meticulous planning, without sacrificing on giving even the smallest and most tangential characters heart and three-dimensionality. I found the multimedia aspect (I read the 'expanded editions') a little jarring and tagged-on at first, but by somewhere in the second book was completely on board with them; I don't think the same type of extras would work very well for most authors, but in House's capable hands, they certainly added extra depth and dimension to a text which didn't already need it. (Skip them if you like - doesn't hurt the story to just read, not play - but if you can just "go with it" you won't be disappointed.)
That aside, I just loved it. My first book/s by this author, but I will definitely now be seeking out and devouring everything else I can get my hands on.
Full marks. Do it.
*side note - things I loved the most: the stark environments of book 1, "a question much like yes or no" from the same book, the opening chapter of book 2, the heads-or-tails interactivity at the start of book 3 (I tossed a coin and read 'heads' by the way!), the voicemails in book 1, the world war 2 back-story moment, Lila's story, and the momentum at the start of book 4 when you have no idea wtf is going on but suddenly a whole lot of threads from throughout books 1-3 start returning in a big way. So many tiny, seemingly-irrelevant details reflected and bounced around all four books over and over in different situations... so much planning and care in every scene and sentence. LOVED IT.
November 28, 2013
Modelled on a masterpiece (Roberto Bolano's cerebral epic 2666) this is a similarly monumental book (over 1000 pages long) that likewise takes an oblique approach to storytelling. In short, it's a stunner. It eschews beautiful prose for confident writing that gets the job done, but often this job is the creation of a clammy, suspenseful atmosphere that infuses into the reader's life, and it's fascinating to see writing of this kind put to that use. Clouds of dread hang over the best pages of The Kills, and I was reminded a little of another 21st century classic, Michael Haneke's film Hidden. House's novel, although books play such a large role in its many twists and turns, is intensely cinematic - it's no surprise when eventually we find a film crew working on the margins of the story. Gripping this novel remains until the last sentence, though once you've digested that last sentence you're left with an (entirely intentional) sense of blank space - and I think that truly classic novels, Bolano's included, never leave you at all.
Want to read
April 11, 2016The probability that I'm going to ever read this book is nonexistent. If anyone in the US would like to have my hardcover copy, it's yours. I'm happy to give it away because it takes up like three books worth of space. Just leave a message & pm me with an address and it's yours. I will pay postage.
October 5, 2013
Had The Kills not been included in the Man Booker Prize long list, I might not have heard of it. But that fact, combined with the premise of conspiracy and murder spanning the world (and 1,000 pages), was enough to get me to pay attention.
As to be expected from a behemoth of a story, which unfolds in four parts that were first released as separate e-books, the work as a whole is uneven. I averaged out my ratings of each of the books and ended up with 3 lukewarm stars.
Book One, “Sutler,” gets 3 stars. This one is a perfectly competent political thriller that gets you to care enough to stick around to find out what happens next. Is characterization deep? No. But the haziness and unknown motives work well here.
We follow Stephen Sutler, aka John Jacob Ford, as he goes on the run from Iraq to Turkey to Malta. He had assumed the fake of identity of Sutler and was working as a contractor to transform a burn pit site into a gleaming new Iraqi city for HOSCO, a civilian company that’s cornered the market on rebuilding the country after the war. But in no time, he gets a tip from the nefarious villain who had convinced him to take on this pretense in the first place, Paul Geezler, to disappear and use the money that he’ll be able to access to stay disappeared. Sutler soon finds out that he’s been accused of absconding with $53 million and he’s a pawn in a larger conspiracy orchestrated by Geezler.
Book Two, “The Massive,” gets 1 star. This one is infuriatingly obscure—opacity for the sake of opacity. The bigger crime, though, is how House takes what should be a fascinating topic ripe for plumbing—civilian and government malfeasance, exploitation, war and post-war efforts through the eyes of civilian contractors—and manages to make it unbearably tedious, dull, and exasperatingly pointless.
This section focuses on what happened before Sutler shows up as well as a bit of what happens after he disappears. We spend time with some down-on-their-luck men from the US who take up a job at the burn pits in Iraq as contractors for HOSCO, destroying all of the trash that comes from the rebuilding. HOSCO knows of the hazards this will wreak on their health and pretends to shut down the pits even as Geezler from Book One had just sent in this group of men. When they return to America, they’ll all end up getting sick and die.
This section was torturous to get through. It took me the longest to read and in the course of doing so, I was lamenting how much I hated the book and hated my life. This is not normal, is it? After having sunk into this book both money and time, I was reluctant to stop though. (Foolish, foolish.) The writing was super stilted. The characters were one-dimensional. The main character who’s the leader of the burn pit group, Rem Gunnerson, is a guy whose motivations, relationship with his wife, and actions were all opaque in a way that was not compelling but merely frustrating when it wasn’t just plain dull. As if the time spent with these guys wasn’t boring enough, the mind-numbing torture escalates each time we have to follow Rem’s wife back at home as she investigates the burn pits scandal, intent on exposing the harm that they’re causing to these men’s health.
This is petty but I have to mention that when House writes the dialogues and perspectives of the American characters, he kept using British-isms that would never occur to an American to utter. He frequently used the contraction of “I have” when “have” is the main verb—as in “I’ve a dog back at home,”—or treating collective nouns as plural as in “HOSCO have sent their men to blah, blah, blah,” or using adjunct phrases like, “in future.” It drove me bats. If I had been engrossed in a good story, I might not have fixated on this so much, but when a person feels like they’re going to die of boredom, these things take on an outsized quality of wrongness, man.
Book Three, “The Kill,” gets 4 stars. I was surprised that the person who wrote Book Two was the same one who wrote this book. This is the only time that I felt the comparison to Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, which has been mentioned by others, was closest. The characterization seemed deeper despite the proliferation of them here in bursts. There was a sense of tension and dread that simmered menacingly throughout to make it a delicious read.
Here we focus on a story that has little to do with the first two sections, except as vague references to the incidents here that characters in the previous books make. We’re in Naples following a whole host of characters who are enmeshed in a twisted game of murder: a Polish immigrant, two prostitutes, an Italian language student from Japan, and a naïve writer to name a very few. There’s a book called “The Kill” that chronicles a supposed murder committed in the post-WWII period in Naples; years later two sick brothers come to Naples and appear to have committed a copycat murder; a few years after that, a young man visits Naples to write about the copycat cases and goes missing; and a few years after that another young man is abducted supposedly by those same people, but this time against a backdrop of a Hollywood filming of a movie based on those brothers’ actions.
The characterization of the various denizens orbiting the scene of the crime, the ways that they’re implicated, saved, or destroyed by the crime were head and shoulders above what’s found in the previous two sections. I didn’t care that we hopscotched from one character to another to another and back; each was a captivating enough character that I couldn’t help but be absorbed in their lives, all while the sinister threat of murder and perversion infused every part of the story, ratcheting up the dread we feel as we turn the pages.
Book Four, “The Hit,” gets 3 stars. The storylines from the previous books come together. There’s the eeriness from Book Three combined with the mysteriousness of the conspiracy from Books One and Two. This time we’re in Cyprus with a German diplomat’s family; the search for Sutler continues, and we get a clearer idea of what Paul Geezler has up his sleeves. I liked most of it because we’re introduced to a creepy guy whose stories will sound familiar to us from Book Three. But as the number of unrealistically stupid choices made by the diplomat’s sister-in-law started to pile up, the story lost me a little.
The common thread uniting all of the books is idea of the potency of storytelling, the myriad ways, uses, and effects of storytelling. Characters tell stories about their fake identities; fall under the spell of others’ stories; or use stories to manipulate people. And then there’s the idea of choice. Characters can choose to take one direction or the other, but there are always consequences. They choose to go out alone (and get attacked). They choose to trust someone (and get into a bind). Even when they just stand still, they’re still choosing because there are repercussions from the non-choice. At the end, House actually tries to tie all of the disparate plotlines together with this idea of choice, which I find a bit forced, but don’t mind too much. All in all this was a mixed-bag of a reading experience. I'm too exhausted to care about checking out the supplementary videos that people have said were pretty good.
As to be expected from a behemoth of a story, which unfolds in four parts that were first released as separate e-books, the work as a whole is uneven. I averaged out my ratings of each of the books and ended up with 3 lukewarm stars.
Book One, “Sutler,” gets 3 stars. This one is a perfectly competent political thriller that gets you to care enough to stick around to find out what happens next. Is characterization deep? No. But the haziness and unknown motives work well here.
We follow Stephen Sutler, aka John Jacob Ford, as he goes on the run from Iraq to Turkey to Malta. He had assumed the fake of identity of Sutler and was working as a contractor to transform a burn pit site into a gleaming new Iraqi city for HOSCO, a civilian company that’s cornered the market on rebuilding the country after the war. But in no time, he gets a tip from the nefarious villain who had convinced him to take on this pretense in the first place, Paul Geezler, to disappear and use the money that he’ll be able to access to stay disappeared. Sutler soon finds out that he’s been accused of absconding with $53 million and he’s a pawn in a larger conspiracy orchestrated by Geezler.
Book Two, “The Massive,” gets 1 star. This one is infuriatingly obscure—opacity for the sake of opacity. The bigger crime, though, is how House takes what should be a fascinating topic ripe for plumbing—civilian and government malfeasance, exploitation, war and post-war efforts through the eyes of civilian contractors—and manages to make it unbearably tedious, dull, and exasperatingly pointless.
This section focuses on what happened before Sutler shows up as well as a bit of what happens after he disappears. We spend time with some down-on-their-luck men from the US who take up a job at the burn pits in Iraq as contractors for HOSCO, destroying all of the trash that comes from the rebuilding. HOSCO knows of the hazards this will wreak on their health and pretends to shut down the pits even as Geezler from Book One had just sent in this group of men. When they return to America, they’ll all end up getting sick and die.
This section was torturous to get through. It took me the longest to read and in the course of doing so, I was lamenting how much I hated the book and hated my life. This is not normal, is it? After having sunk into this book both money and time, I was reluctant to stop though. (Foolish, foolish.) The writing was super stilted. The characters were one-dimensional. The main character who’s the leader of the burn pit group, Rem Gunnerson, is a guy whose motivations, relationship with his wife, and actions were all opaque in a way that was not compelling but merely frustrating when it wasn’t just plain dull. As if the time spent with these guys wasn’t boring enough, the mind-numbing torture escalates each time we have to follow Rem’s wife back at home as she investigates the burn pits scandal, intent on exposing the harm that they’re causing to these men’s health.
This is petty but I have to mention that when House writes the dialogues and perspectives of the American characters, he kept using British-isms that would never occur to an American to utter. He frequently used the contraction of “I have” when “have” is the main verb—as in “I’ve a dog back at home,”—or treating collective nouns as plural as in “HOSCO have sent their men to blah, blah, blah,” or using adjunct phrases like, “in future.” It drove me bats. If I had been engrossed in a good story, I might not have fixated on this so much, but when a person feels like they’re going to die of boredom, these things take on an outsized quality of wrongness, man.
Book Three, “The Kill,” gets 4 stars. I was surprised that the person who wrote Book Two was the same one who wrote this book. This is the only time that I felt the comparison to Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, which has been mentioned by others, was closest. The characterization seemed deeper despite the proliferation of them here in bursts. There was a sense of tension and dread that simmered menacingly throughout to make it a delicious read.
Here we focus on a story that has little to do with the first two sections, except as vague references to the incidents here that characters in the previous books make. We’re in Naples following a whole host of characters who are enmeshed in a twisted game of murder: a Polish immigrant, two prostitutes, an Italian language student from Japan, and a naïve writer to name a very few. There’s a book called “The Kill” that chronicles a supposed murder committed in the post-WWII period in Naples; years later two sick brothers come to Naples and appear to have committed a copycat murder; a few years after that, a young man visits Naples to write about the copycat cases and goes missing; and a few years after that another young man is abducted supposedly by those same people, but this time against a backdrop of a Hollywood filming of a movie based on those brothers’ actions.
The characterization of the various denizens orbiting the scene of the crime, the ways that they’re implicated, saved, or destroyed by the crime were head and shoulders above what’s found in the previous two sections. I didn’t care that we hopscotched from one character to another to another and back; each was a captivating enough character that I couldn’t help but be absorbed in their lives, all while the sinister threat of murder and perversion infused every part of the story, ratcheting up the dread we feel as we turn the pages.
Book Four, “The Hit,” gets 3 stars. The storylines from the previous books come together. There’s the eeriness from Book Three combined with the mysteriousness of the conspiracy from Books One and Two. This time we’re in Cyprus with a German diplomat’s family; the search for Sutler continues, and we get a clearer idea of what Paul Geezler has up his sleeves. I liked most of it because we’re introduced to a creepy guy whose stories will sound familiar to us from Book Three. But as the number of unrealistically stupid choices made by the diplomat’s sister-in-law started to pile up, the story lost me a little.
The common thread uniting all of the books is idea of the potency of storytelling, the myriad ways, uses, and effects of storytelling. Characters tell stories about their fake identities; fall under the spell of others’ stories; or use stories to manipulate people. And then there’s the idea of choice. Characters can choose to take one direction or the other, but there are always consequences. They choose to go out alone (and get attacked). They choose to trust someone (and get into a bind). Even when they just stand still, they’re still choosing because there are repercussions from the non-choice. At the end, House actually tries to tie all of the disparate plotlines together with this idea of choice, which I find a bit forced, but don’t mind too much. All in all this was a mixed-bag of a reading experience. I'm too exhausted to care about checking out the supplementary videos that people have said were pretty good.
Read
October 12, 2013This was part of my read of Man Booker-nominated books. I started with Harvest, which I really liked, and that one was a pretty quick read, so I was feeling confident. Plenty of time to read several before the shortlist was announced!, I thought. And then The Kills happened. This book by Richard House was one I wasn't sure would get on the shortlist, but it sounded pretty experimental and like it was hard work, which I thought the judges might value after that whole "readability" row a couple of years back. Plus, my library system seemed to have only a single copy, so I thought I'd best order it immediately, in case it took a while. It didn't; in fact, it arrived pretty much as soon as I finished Harvest, before anything else. I started it, and got totally bogged down.
I thought initially that this was purely due to physical reasons. It's a 1,000-page beast, and the actual act of reading it was a complete pain. It was such a heavy book that I couldn't carry it around and say, read it during my commute. Fine, I could read it on those relatively few evenings I spend at home, maybe daytime on the weekends. If I put a cushion on my lap and rested the book on it, it would be ok. Well, it took me a whole month to read 400 pages. Blame Sybil the cat. If I'm sitting on my reading sofa, she's become accustomed to curling up on my lap. And obviously, if Syb was there, I couldn't use the cushion, and holding the book in the air was impossible. Syb does go off to do stuff (like sit on the cable box and jump at nothing at all) in between snoozes, though, and then I'd pick up the book, but it felt like every time I did that she'd immediately come back, leap onto the back of the sofa and look at me balefully until I put the book aside and let her climb back on. She'd sleep for 5 more minutes, then rinse and repeat. I may have told her off a couple of times. I ended up biting the bullet and just buying the ebook, even though it was quite expensive. And then I realised it wasn't just a problem with the format.
Backtracking a bit: the book is made up of 4 independent but connected 250-page books. The first one, Sutler, is about a man on the run from one of those behemoth civilian contractors who work for the US military in Iraq. When he absconded after an explosion, under instructions from the man who hired him, he thought he was doing something only mildly dodgy, but it turns out he's been set up as the fall guy for a multi-million dollar embezzlement. The second book The Massive, goes back to Iraq with a bunch of civilian contractors, whom the same shadowy figure who hired Sutler has arranged work for at a remote burn pit. The third book, The Kill, changes tone and setting radically, and moves to Naples, where a strange murder takes place. Several of the characters in books 1 and 2 are reading a book about a murder based on a book based on a murder (I think I got that right!), and this is apparently that first book I mentioned.
I honestly don't know what the 4th book is about, because I never got that far. I struggled up to page 650, not caring much about any of the characters and only mildly curious about what was going on. I did have a bit of curiosity about if and how book 4 was going to tie it all together, but not much. And then the shortlist was announced, and The Kills wasn't on it, blast it! I immediately put it aside, thinking maybe I'd come back to it after reading the other 5 books, but I can say now that I'm not going to do that. I don't mind working hard, but during the big chunk I read, I got no joy at all for all that hard work, and have no great faith it's going to be such a great ending that it'll compensate for that. So, a DNF, and it really should have become one sooner.
I thought initially that this was purely due to physical reasons. It's a 1,000-page beast, and the actual act of reading it was a complete pain. It was such a heavy book that I couldn't carry it around and say, read it during my commute. Fine, I could read it on those relatively few evenings I spend at home, maybe daytime on the weekends. If I put a cushion on my lap and rested the book on it, it would be ok. Well, it took me a whole month to read 400 pages. Blame Sybil the cat. If I'm sitting on my reading sofa, she's become accustomed to curling up on my lap. And obviously, if Syb was there, I couldn't use the cushion, and holding the book in the air was impossible. Syb does go off to do stuff (like sit on the cable box and jump at nothing at all) in between snoozes, though, and then I'd pick up the book, but it felt like every time I did that she'd immediately come back, leap onto the back of the sofa and look at me balefully until I put the book aside and let her climb back on. She'd sleep for 5 more minutes, then rinse and repeat. I may have told her off a couple of times. I ended up biting the bullet and just buying the ebook, even though it was quite expensive. And then I realised it wasn't just a problem with the format.
Backtracking a bit: the book is made up of 4 independent but connected 250-page books. The first one, Sutler, is about a man on the run from one of those behemoth civilian contractors who work for the US military in Iraq. When he absconded after an explosion, under instructions from the man who hired him, he thought he was doing something only mildly dodgy, but it turns out he's been set up as the fall guy for a multi-million dollar embezzlement. The second book The Massive, goes back to Iraq with a bunch of civilian contractors, whom the same shadowy figure who hired Sutler has arranged work for at a remote burn pit. The third book, The Kill, changes tone and setting radically, and moves to Naples, where a strange murder takes place. Several of the characters in books 1 and 2 are reading a book about a murder based on a book based on a murder (I think I got that right!), and this is apparently that first book I mentioned.
I honestly don't know what the 4th book is about, because I never got that far. I struggled up to page 650, not caring much about any of the characters and only mildly curious about what was going on. I did have a bit of curiosity about if and how book 4 was going to tie it all together, but not much. And then the shortlist was announced, and The Kills wasn't on it, blast it! I immediately put it aside, thinking maybe I'd come back to it after reading the other 5 books, but I can say now that I'm not going to do that. I don't mind working hard, but during the big chunk I read, I got no joy at all for all that hard work, and have no great faith it's going to be such a great ending that it'll compensate for that. So, a DNF, and it really should have become one sooner.
September 8, 2013
At over 1,000 pages, The Kills is by far the longest novel on the 2013 Man Booker Prize longlist. It is by novelist, Richard House, and comes trumpeted as a multimedia experience, for House is also a filmmaker and there are short films that add to The Kills experience when viewed online or embedded in the digital edition.
The Kills is actually four novellas grouped together (the spine of the hardback states that these are Books 1 – 4, novellas individually titled Sutler, The Massive, The Kill and The Hit, and all were, it seems, published individually as ebooks before being grouped together for physical publication.) Then there are those online films – the book provides the URLs and tells you when they should be watched. If you buy the book on your iPad you can watch the films at the right spots. These films are extras, things that enhance what you know already, or offer a side story connected to the main plot, and though they are not necessary to your enjoyment of The Kills, it is true that they add something when viewed in tandem with the reading. I read Sutler without watching any, and then made a point of watching them when it was time to.
This is a massive undertaking. The first two parts – Sutler and The Massive – are interconnected, stories about contractors working in Iraq, one of whom has gone on the run with a huge amount of stolen cash – but the wrong man might be on the run. In The Massive, the toxic clouds caused by the burning of rubbish causes death around the burn pits at Camp Liberty. These two parts provide a unique perspective on the Iraq conflict, a point of view rarely put across in fiction of that conflict. There are no soldiers here, no insurgents, but simply middle-men, contractors trying to make a living.
The third part is perhaps the most difficult to appreciate. The action shifts to Naples, and we meet all the gory elements of Neapolitan lowlife – the prostitutes, the dealers, the murder rooms and tortured dogs. It is a brutal, violent world House conjures in this part, and quite often it turns the stomach.
The final part returns us to the mystery of Sutler, when the sister-in-law of a German diplomat becomes embroiled in the disappearance of Sutler.
What The Kills shows, time and again, is House’s ability to create vivid characters. These characters breathe on the page, and very quickly the reader is involved in their story. His style is pared down, direct, but never dull. He has also managed as well to do that rare thing, to create a digital edition that is worth reading over the print version.
The Kills is actually four novellas grouped together (the spine of the hardback states that these are Books 1 – 4, novellas individually titled Sutler, The Massive, The Kill and The Hit, and all were, it seems, published individually as ebooks before being grouped together for physical publication.) Then there are those online films – the book provides the URLs and tells you when they should be watched. If you buy the book on your iPad you can watch the films at the right spots. These films are extras, things that enhance what you know already, or offer a side story connected to the main plot, and though they are not necessary to your enjoyment of The Kills, it is true that they add something when viewed in tandem with the reading. I read Sutler without watching any, and then made a point of watching them when it was time to.
This is a massive undertaking. The first two parts – Sutler and The Massive – are interconnected, stories about contractors working in Iraq, one of whom has gone on the run with a huge amount of stolen cash – but the wrong man might be on the run. In The Massive, the toxic clouds caused by the burning of rubbish causes death around the burn pits at Camp Liberty. These two parts provide a unique perspective on the Iraq conflict, a point of view rarely put across in fiction of that conflict. There are no soldiers here, no insurgents, but simply middle-men, contractors trying to make a living.
The third part is perhaps the most difficult to appreciate. The action shifts to Naples, and we meet all the gory elements of Neapolitan lowlife – the prostitutes, the dealers, the murder rooms and tortured dogs. It is a brutal, violent world House conjures in this part, and quite often it turns the stomach.
The final part returns us to the mystery of Sutler, when the sister-in-law of a German diplomat becomes embroiled in the disappearance of Sutler.
What The Kills shows, time and again, is House’s ability to create vivid characters. These characters breathe on the page, and very quickly the reader is involved in their story. His style is pared down, direct, but never dull. He has also managed as well to do that rare thing, to create a digital edition that is worth reading over the print version.
abandoned
December 29, 2014The only book on this year's Booker longlist I didn't finish. The writing style too often made an exciting subject boring. I gave up about 3/4 of the way through The Massive. The characterisation in that second part was very flat. (Still wonder if it was deliberate, to represent the ordinariness of the people and the nature of the environments they were stuck in.)
Still, I am grateful to House and the judges for kickstarting my John Le Carre addiction. I didn't expect to find a thriller as tedious as I found The Kills (given that I like them as films and enjoyed reading a few when I was younger) so I checked out The Spy Who Came in From the Cold as reputedly the best British thriller. And liked it very much indeed. If only The Kills had been as good as reading four Smiley novels, it would have been an absolute treat.
Still, I am grateful to House and the judges for kickstarting my John Le Carre addiction. I didn't expect to find a thriller as tedious as I found The Kills (given that I like them as films and enjoyed reading a few when I was younger) so I checked out The Spy Who Came in From the Cold as reputedly the best British thriller. And liked it very much indeed. If only The Kills had been as good as reading four Smiley novels, it would have been an absolute treat.
August 21, 2013
A tour de force! Very complex, mesmerizing, dazzling and unpredictable. Kept me awake for quite some nights. Reminded me of Roberto Bolaño's 2666.
The novel itself consists of four loosely-related parts. It starts as a political thriller but turns out to be much more than that. It is quite fast-paced, although there are slower bits. Richard House takes you from the Iraqi desert to Turkey, Malta, Naples, the US and Cyprus (to name but a few) and there are new characters being introduced all the time. I found Mr. House's writing style to be quite enjoyable and he has managed to give his characters depth.
The interactive links in the book are interesting to look at but are not essential to the plot itself.
If you liked 2666, you would certainly like The Kills as well.
The novel itself consists of four loosely-related parts. It starts as a political thriller but turns out to be much more than that. It is quite fast-paced, although there are slower bits. Richard House takes you from the Iraqi desert to Turkey, Malta, Naples, the US and Cyprus (to name but a few) and there are new characters being introduced all the time. I found Mr. House's writing style to be quite enjoyable and he has managed to give his characters depth.
The interactive links in the book are interesting to look at but are not essential to the plot itself.
If you liked 2666, you would certainly like The Kills as well.
March 2, 2014
Well - this book was certainly an interesting experience. It took a while before I realised that the stories were inter-related but could be read as individual novels in any order, but when I thought about that after reading them as they are presented in The Kills, I think that they need to be read as one work.
For me The Kills was a brilliantly written, intriguing, shocking and masterful. Too late, I found that the interactive web clips and sound bites could be accessed as you go along - maybe the publisher could have put this info at the beginning of the book!
I love that Richard House has come up with a format to provoke the readers curiosity and enable us to relate to some of the characters by use of the video and sound clips which makes for a remarkable reading experience.
For me The Kills was a brilliantly written, intriguing, shocking and masterful. Too late, I found that the interactive web clips and sound bites could be accessed as you go along - maybe the publisher could have put this info at the beginning of the book!
I love that Richard House has come up with a format to provoke the readers curiosity and enable us to relate to some of the characters by use of the video and sound clips which makes for a remarkable reading experience.
May 29, 2015
So intense and purposeful at the beginning, so very full of potential. The first book set the puzzle, the second acted as a prequel to the first. Both were intriguing and enjoyable.
And then ...it just got lost. The third book was barely related, a sideways distraction at best, a whole book dedicated to explaining a very minor running theme. The fourth book felt confused in it's purpose - whether to add more links, or explanations, or just tell it's own story. It did a little of all 3, but not so well, and it's characters and story were lacking, and somewhat of a let down. The fourth book, rather than tie a potentially brilliant work together, added nothing. Regrettably, it felt more like an excuse to hit the 1000 page mark and hand the work in.
Frustration and disappointment.
And then ...it just got lost. The third book was barely related, a sideways distraction at best, a whole book dedicated to explaining a very minor running theme. The fourth book felt confused in it's purpose - whether to add more links, or explanations, or just tell it's own story. It did a little of all 3, but not so well, and it's characters and story were lacking, and somewhat of a let down. The fourth book, rather than tie a potentially brilliant work together, added nothing. Regrettably, it felt more like an excuse to hit the 1000 page mark and hand the work in.
Frustration and disappointment.
May 3, 2014
What could I possibly have left to write about Richard House’s Booker nominated conspiracy masterpiece that I haven’t written already?
This article exists less as a proper book review and more as a placeholder from which to link out to each of my previously published reviews of the four stand-alone novels - Sutler (book one), The Massive (book two), The Kill (book three), and The Hit (book four) – that combine to form The Kills.
The overall verdict: you should drop everything and read this novel. For more detailed explanations as to why, see each of the linked articles below.
READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/kills...
This article exists less as a proper book review and more as a placeholder from which to link out to each of my previously published reviews of the four stand-alone novels - Sutler (book one), The Massive (book two), The Kill (book three), and The Hit (book four) – that combine to form The Kills.
The overall verdict: you should drop everything and read this novel. For more detailed explanations as to why, see each of the linked articles below.
READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/kills...
January 11, 2014
What a long, strange ride. This strikes me as quite a considerable achievement in storytelling even if one is left somewhat befuddled by the end (though it's hard to know what "clues" one may have missed in a 1000+ page book read over a long'ish period). I think that reviews I've seen that stress the journey over the destination are right on here and I quite enjoyed the journey. Will likely tackle House's earlier stuff eventually (2 shorter novels). I also need to spend more time on the interactive web-only material that is sprinkled throughout the book--some reviewers raved about it, some left more cold. I didn't spend a lot of time with it but probably should have.
March 24, 2015
For the sheer audacity of the book/s, there is no other way to present the graft of the defense contractors in war zones. For the political storytelling that few writers tackle in such a timely manner ( except maybe Bob Shacochis). For writing about Naples, Italy, the most magnificent cesspool of a city that befits that part of he story and I love dearly. For being long enough to present the twisted political mess we live in and twist it back to the connections between far flung events and how they affect real people. For all of these reasons and many more, the book deserves to be read and discussed.
February 10, 2017
A huge and sprawling book (even more so as there are apparently various multimedia elements and add-ons). As a series of thrillers the writing is often very terse but simultaneously quite uneventful. Various interesting characters emerge and then are dropped. Similarly two of the key themes: the increasing influence of corporate firms in the reconstruction of Iraq and the various post-modern references to “The Kill” are never really satisfactorily followed and there is no resolution to the thriller. In the end therefore a very frustrating and ultimately unrewarding read and one which was very surprisingly longlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize.
December 14, 2016
I hate not being able to finish a book and I really tried with this one, because it seemed interesting in the beginning.
I managed about 400 pages but then I decided that the writer was makinfg it too complicated on purpose.
Mr House, I'm sorry but John LeCarre, Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy (just to name a few of the writers you try to emulate) did it without all this back and forth and kept us interested simply by giving us a good plot and fully drawn characters.
I might go back to it some time (just because I hate unfinished books) but I don't think I'll ever like it.
I managed about 400 pages but then I decided that the writer was makinfg it too complicated on purpose.
Mr House, I'm sorry but John LeCarre, Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy (just to name a few of the writers you try to emulate) did it without all this back and forth and kept us interested simply by giving us a good plot and fully drawn characters.
I might go back to it some time (just because I hate unfinished books) but I don't think I'll ever like it.
September 11, 2019
I was entranced by this book. It's languidly told through four connected short novels whose plots and characters overlap in occasionally obvious ways and more often in subtle ways. Those who read the book as a thriller or spy novel will be disappointed since those genres seem only to be what the book is shaped as. It contains high-level intrigue, a chase, death and dismemberment, and many other tropes of those genres, but the larger text of the book seems to be about the blurring of fiction and reality.
August 14, 2013
A elaborately plotted book that reminded me of Infinite Jest and The Corrections. There are also chimes of The Usual Suspects and The Hurt Locker from the film medium. The morphing nature of fictions and Urban Myth recycling are themes that are also in abundance. Can see plenty of scope for Sutler becoming the Booker equivalent of Slender Man and expect the Sutlers to start popping up in unlikely places - probably a band forming using the name even now!
February 19, 2023
I have rated this quartet of novels highly primarily because I am a bit of a masochist, I like meta-fiction, and I do not mind frustratingly ambiguous endings. However, unlike most novels I read—most of which also address the petty and tragic flaws of human beings—I think this gigantic, violent, and ultimately unsatisfying beast of fiction is not going to be valued by most readers—unlike, say, The Neapolitan Quartet, which I wish everyone would read.
September 21, 2013
Interesting and very post-modern, but at 1000 pages, I wouldn't really recommend it to any but the hardiest readers. Quote from the book that probably sums it up best:
"and then ... perhaps someone will write a book about making a film about a story that is taken from this book which is taken from a real-life story that was copied from a story in a book."
"and then ... perhaps someone will write a book about making a film about a story that is taken from this book which is taken from a real-life story that was copied from a story in a book."
September 3, 2015
It's quite an original reading experience. The four books aren't really novels, more like series of episodes that are linked by chance or by misinformation, with interesting, unique characters and situations that seem very representative of how we live now and yet not describing a specific political or social viewpoint.
August 29, 2014
I'm breakin' this one down with a review for each of the 4 books that make up THE KILLS, and I'll add each review as they post.
The Kills: Sutler (http://www.mybookishways.com/2014/08/...)
The Kills is a novel in four parts (originally published as four stand-alone books in the UK), and that’s how I’m going to cover it, as much for my sanity as yours. I don’t mean that in a bad way, at all, but at more than 1,000 pages, The Kills could be called…intimidating. It’s certainly heavy. But don’t let that scare you away. Seriously, don’t, because after Sutler, I’m more than ready to dive into the next three books (The Massive, The Kill, and The Hit.) Sutler mainly covers the exploits of one man, John Ford (aka Sutler), who works for US contracting company HOSCO. He’s been ostensibly hired to help oversee the construction of a brand new city in Iraq, nicknamed The Massive (it’s also the title of the 2nd book). Saddam is dead, and it’s time to rebuild. Sounds all well and good on the surface, but when a lot of money goes missing, and Sutler is set adrift (and his departure isn’t without tragedy), with the promise of a hefty $250,000 payday, he sets his mind on distancing himself from the project, and holding onto the account numbers that he’ll need to transfer his money when he’s given the official go-ahead. Ford certainly isn’t out to make friends, but inevitably he does have some significant human contact, including a couple of rather bumbling (of the not so funny kind) journalists and a group of filmmakers , one of which is young Eric Powell, who has a few secrets of his own, and is drawn to Ford. Cat and mouse ensues when a man named Parson is hired to find Sutler. As Parson follows Ford’s rather dim trail, he starts to wonder just who it is that really hired him, and begins to suspect games are being played, so he begins a dangerous game of his own.
I like House’s style a lot, and while Sutler certainly has the meat of a crackling spy story, it also heads into existential territory and explores anonymity and boundaries of the literal and personal kind. Ford is persistently at war with himself. We’re never really sure what his real name is (all we really know is that it’s definitely not Sutler), and he finds that he’ll do things as Sutler that he’d never do as Ford, and he grapples with his sudden untethering, dreaming still of the regimented time he spent with HOSCO. House’s narrative is unsettling, and he seems to be able to extract the underlying menace in just about any situation, even the most ordinary-seeming gesture or conversation. There are a lot of very cool touches, and among the peril and chase, it’s the little things that stand out. This is good stuff here, and I can’t wait to see how all four books tie together. He’s certainly done some setting up of The Kill in Sutler, with a book-within-a-book concept (murder and mayhem?), and before reading this, I really had no concept of what goes on behind the scenes with US contractors and the military projects they work on. It’s actually fascinating stuff, and although Sutler doesn’t leave off neatly, it left me melancholy, and intrigued, and more than ready for the next book. Next up: The Massive.
The Kills: The Massive (http://www.mybookishways.com/2014/08/...)
The US release of The Kills is actually four books in one, and after starting off with a bang with Sutler, it’s time to move onto Book 2: The Massive. The Massive is the “city” at Camp Liberty that all that money that disappeared in Sutler was supposed to fund. It’s Iraq, it’s hot, bullets are flying, IEDs are par for the course, and while the work pays well (if you can get it), it can also be backbreaking and emotionally difficult. House’s introduction to The Massive is grueling, detailing the lives, and deaths, of a group of men called Unit 7, operating under Rem Gunnersen (recruited by old Geezler himself.) It’s a grim opener, but a nonetheless fascinating rundown of lives ruined by HOSCO and their own bad decisions, and it goes far in setting up the main story itself.
Rem’s marriage is stagnating and his business is failing. He owes employees money and is reeling after one of them commits numerous thefts while on the job. Cue Paul Geezler. He’s got an offer that Rem finds hard to refuse, and although Rem has done contract work in Kuwait before, this is a different animal. But, the money is good and he wants to make things right with not only his employees, but also his wife, Cathy, who’s having issues of her own. Geezler, however, wants more than just to give Rem a job. He wants Rem to keep an eye on the operation and report back to him. Rem agrees. After completing a questionable bit of “training”, Rem is sent to Amrah City, more specifically, the Amrah City Section Base (ACSB) and spends quite a bit of time there before finally ending up, with the team that he hand picks, at Camp Liberty, aka Camp Crapper. This is where the burn pits are, and every manner of substance is burned there. The team is in a remote area of Iraq, with substandard equipment, no clear instructions as to what exactly they’re supposed to be doing, and among some of the most dangerous substances known to mankind.
Then Stephen Lawrence Sutler shows up with plans for The Massive…
Sutler, the first book, dealt with Sutler’s flight from Southern-CIPA during an explosion and subsequent frame job for the theft of millions of dollars. The Massive is the story that leads up to that flight, but we’re not in Sutler territory anymore. This is Rem’s story. I’m sure you probably think that the work of US contractors in the Middle East isn’t very interesting. You’ll think differently after reading this book. It’s fascinating. The narrative alternates between Rem and his men at Camp Liberty, and his wife, Cathy, back in Chicago. Cathy, to her dawning horror, does some digging of her own into the kinds of substances that her husband is burning in Iraq, and eventually begins corresponding with family members of Rem’s team.
Hieronymus Bosch has got nothing on these burn pits. This is not the stuff of fiction, and they’re just now starting to recognize the health horrors that might be a very real consequence of manning these open pits, that use jet fuel, and other thing, in the burning of toxic substances. Do a search online for Iraq burn pits and you can find some mind blowing photos. But, I digress…
Rem is a man who cares too much doing a job where one can’t really afford to care, and after Sutler arrives, he feels everything start to slowly slip through his fingers. To him, the idea of building a city out in the desert, from scratch, is a ridiculous notion and struggles to understand his team’s place in this seemingly outlandish scheme, while his wife does her best to understand what might be happening to Rem and his men, and as a gulf widens between them that’s more than just physical distance.
This is heady, intense, sometimes melancholy stuff, made even more so by its basis in reality. Big themes like the aftermath of war, government responsibility, and just generally things that can sometimes be so big, so awful, that our eyes just skim right over them, come together into one fantastic, very tense narrative, and he does all this without sacrificing a bit of his characters’ humanity, while never underestimating their capacity for greed. It was also quite interesting to see Sutler from a completely different point of view. Of course, House continues his sly references to events in the other three books. These books are very smart,very scary, and very cool. Richard House, frankly, should be a household name. Stay tuned for Book 3: The Kill.
The Kills: Sutler (http://www.mybookishways.com/2014/08/...)
The Kills is a novel in four parts (originally published as four stand-alone books in the UK), and that’s how I’m going to cover it, as much for my sanity as yours. I don’t mean that in a bad way, at all, but at more than 1,000 pages, The Kills could be called…intimidating. It’s certainly heavy. But don’t let that scare you away. Seriously, don’t, because after Sutler, I’m more than ready to dive into the next three books (The Massive, The Kill, and The Hit.) Sutler mainly covers the exploits of one man, John Ford (aka Sutler), who works for US contracting company HOSCO. He’s been ostensibly hired to help oversee the construction of a brand new city in Iraq, nicknamed The Massive (it’s also the title of the 2nd book). Saddam is dead, and it’s time to rebuild. Sounds all well and good on the surface, but when a lot of money goes missing, and Sutler is set adrift (and his departure isn’t without tragedy), with the promise of a hefty $250,000 payday, he sets his mind on distancing himself from the project, and holding onto the account numbers that he’ll need to transfer his money when he’s given the official go-ahead. Ford certainly isn’t out to make friends, but inevitably he does have some significant human contact, including a couple of rather bumbling (of the not so funny kind) journalists and a group of filmmakers , one of which is young Eric Powell, who has a few secrets of his own, and is drawn to Ford. Cat and mouse ensues when a man named Parson is hired to find Sutler. As Parson follows Ford’s rather dim trail, he starts to wonder just who it is that really hired him, and begins to suspect games are being played, so he begins a dangerous game of his own.
I like House’s style a lot, and while Sutler certainly has the meat of a crackling spy story, it also heads into existential territory and explores anonymity and boundaries of the literal and personal kind. Ford is persistently at war with himself. We’re never really sure what his real name is (all we really know is that it’s definitely not Sutler), and he finds that he’ll do things as Sutler that he’d never do as Ford, and he grapples with his sudden untethering, dreaming still of the regimented time he spent with HOSCO. House’s narrative is unsettling, and he seems to be able to extract the underlying menace in just about any situation, even the most ordinary-seeming gesture or conversation. There are a lot of very cool touches, and among the peril and chase, it’s the little things that stand out. This is good stuff here, and I can’t wait to see how all four books tie together. He’s certainly done some setting up of The Kill in Sutler, with a book-within-a-book concept (murder and mayhem?), and before reading this, I really had no concept of what goes on behind the scenes with US contractors and the military projects they work on. It’s actually fascinating stuff, and although Sutler doesn’t leave off neatly, it left me melancholy, and intrigued, and more than ready for the next book. Next up: The Massive.
The Kills: The Massive (http://www.mybookishways.com/2014/08/...)
The US release of The Kills is actually four books in one, and after starting off with a bang with Sutler, it’s time to move onto Book 2: The Massive. The Massive is the “city” at Camp Liberty that all that money that disappeared in Sutler was supposed to fund. It’s Iraq, it’s hot, bullets are flying, IEDs are par for the course, and while the work pays well (if you can get it), it can also be backbreaking and emotionally difficult. House’s introduction to The Massive is grueling, detailing the lives, and deaths, of a group of men called Unit 7, operating under Rem Gunnersen (recruited by old Geezler himself.) It’s a grim opener, but a nonetheless fascinating rundown of lives ruined by HOSCO and their own bad decisions, and it goes far in setting up the main story itself.
Rem’s marriage is stagnating and his business is failing. He owes employees money and is reeling after one of them commits numerous thefts while on the job. Cue Paul Geezler. He’s got an offer that Rem finds hard to refuse, and although Rem has done contract work in Kuwait before, this is a different animal. But, the money is good and he wants to make things right with not only his employees, but also his wife, Cathy, who’s having issues of her own. Geezler, however, wants more than just to give Rem a job. He wants Rem to keep an eye on the operation and report back to him. Rem agrees. After completing a questionable bit of “training”, Rem is sent to Amrah City, more specifically, the Amrah City Section Base (ACSB) and spends quite a bit of time there before finally ending up, with the team that he hand picks, at Camp Liberty, aka Camp Crapper. This is where the burn pits are, and every manner of substance is burned there. The team is in a remote area of Iraq, with substandard equipment, no clear instructions as to what exactly they’re supposed to be doing, and among some of the most dangerous substances known to mankind.
Then Stephen Lawrence Sutler shows up with plans for The Massive…
Sutler, the first book, dealt with Sutler’s flight from Southern-CIPA during an explosion and subsequent frame job for the theft of millions of dollars. The Massive is the story that leads up to that flight, but we’re not in Sutler territory anymore. This is Rem’s story. I’m sure you probably think that the work of US contractors in the Middle East isn’t very interesting. You’ll think differently after reading this book. It’s fascinating. The narrative alternates between Rem and his men at Camp Liberty, and his wife, Cathy, back in Chicago. Cathy, to her dawning horror, does some digging of her own into the kinds of substances that her husband is burning in Iraq, and eventually begins corresponding with family members of Rem’s team.
Hieronymus Bosch has got nothing on these burn pits. This is not the stuff of fiction, and they’re just now starting to recognize the health horrors that might be a very real consequence of manning these open pits, that use jet fuel, and other thing, in the burning of toxic substances. Do a search online for Iraq burn pits and you can find some mind blowing photos. But, I digress…
Rem is a man who cares too much doing a job where one can’t really afford to care, and after Sutler arrives, he feels everything start to slowly slip through his fingers. To him, the idea of building a city out in the desert, from scratch, is a ridiculous notion and struggles to understand his team’s place in this seemingly outlandish scheme, while his wife does her best to understand what might be happening to Rem and his men, and as a gulf widens between them that’s more than just physical distance.
This is heady, intense, sometimes melancholy stuff, made even more so by its basis in reality. Big themes like the aftermath of war, government responsibility, and just generally things that can sometimes be so big, so awful, that our eyes just skim right over them, come together into one fantastic, very tense narrative, and he does all this without sacrificing a bit of his characters’ humanity, while never underestimating their capacity for greed. It was also quite interesting to see Sutler from a completely different point of view. Of course, House continues his sly references to events in the other three books. These books are very smart,very scary, and very cool. Richard House, frankly, should be a household name. Stay tuned for Book 3: The Kill.
August 12, 2022
The Middle East. An explosion happens, killing one person. But this is not on the battlefield. Sutler, the man in charge of turning a burn pit facility into a planned city after the war, was told to come to headquarters to get the money to start his project. But then he was told something had gone awry and he needed to get away. Sutler goes on the run.
A shadowy American corporation works in the Middle East and other war-torn areas, fulfilling military contracts. With such work, cash often changes hands and cash often disappears. The word is out after Sutler disappears that he stole and has with him fifty-three million dollars in cash. Is this true? Why does no one know about the burn pit? Why are the workers assigned there unable to claim compensation for the diseases they are bringing back after their work?
As Sutler tries to make his way back home, he travels under the name of Ford. He has identification in this name. He falls in with a group of filmmakers and journalists who are in the country making a film about a murder described in a book that is a literary sensation. One of the group falls into infatuation with Ford and disappears after Ford rebuffs him. Ford is left without the account numbers where the money resides which he noted in the young man's notebook. Who will end up with the money?
This epic work was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2013. It is a challenge to read with over a thousand pages and many stories which eventually all come together to solve the various mysteries laid out in the book. Government and military corruption is explored and readers will be reminded of recent stories of corporations that make a fortune from government and military contracts with little or no regard for the workers that depend on them for their livelihood. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.
A shadowy American corporation works in the Middle East and other war-torn areas, fulfilling military contracts. With such work, cash often changes hands and cash often disappears. The word is out after Sutler disappears that he stole and has with him fifty-three million dollars in cash. Is this true? Why does no one know about the burn pit? Why are the workers assigned there unable to claim compensation for the diseases they are bringing back after their work?
As Sutler tries to make his way back home, he travels under the name of Ford. He has identification in this name. He falls in with a group of filmmakers and journalists who are in the country making a film about a murder described in a book that is a literary sensation. One of the group falls into infatuation with Ford and disappears after Ford rebuffs him. Ford is left without the account numbers where the money resides which he noted in the young man's notebook. Who will end up with the money?
This epic work was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2013. It is a challenge to read with over a thousand pages and many stories which eventually all come together to solve the various mysteries laid out in the book. Government and military corruption is explored and readers will be reminded of recent stories of corporations that make a fortune from government and military contracts with little or no regard for the workers that depend on them for their livelihood. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.
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