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Shirker: A Novel
When Penrose, a part-time futures broker and full-time existentialist, makes a deadly discovery, he suddenly finds himself caught up in a dangerous and bizarre battle against an evil he does not understand, in a terrifying novel of obsession.
234 pages, Hardcover
First published March 7, 2000
22 people want to read
About the author
Chad Taylor
15 books8 followersChad Taylor is the author of the novels Blue Hotel, Departure Lounge, Electric, Shirker, Heaven, Pack of Lies and The Church of John Coltrane. He was awarded the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship and the Auckland University Literary Fellowship. Heaven was made as a feature film and his novels and stories are in translation. He wrote the movie Realiti which was selected for Fantastic Fest. Blue Hotel was a finalist for Best Novel in the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 19, 2025
This is another case where I picked up a book 20+ years ago, stuck it on the shelf, and am just getting around to reading it now. Back then I was much less discriminating about what I shelved, and I can only think that the Auckland, New Zealand setting caught my eye, along with the book's billing as a crime thriller. In a kind of trite nod to Sunset Boulevard, the book opens with protagonist Ellerslie Penrose dead on the pavement after a long fall from the top of a hotel, with him then narrating what led to his abrupt ending.
Penrose (a terrible character name, which is a combination of the names of two Auckland suburbs) lives out of his office, where he supposedly works as a futures trader (although there's nothing to suggest he would actually be good at this). Other than some occasional hookups with a waitress, and chit-chat with a bartender about old TV cop shows, he doesn't seem to have any human relationships. One day he comes across a crime scene and picks up the wallet of the victim, at which point he gets sucked into a very baroque plot involving a strange stolen Victorian diary, an antique dealer, a strange brothel, and what seems to be some kind of supernatural entity. It's not at all clear how reliable a narrator he is, and to what extent what is described as happening is real.
I could never really tell what this book was trying to be -- the prose is often overwrought, the character names are silly (another one is Detective Tangiers), and it's all just so metafictionaly self-aware and self-important. It ultimately felt like something that needed another year of work and two more rounds with a strong editor to pull it into something meaningful. Either that, or some heavy narcotics to accompany one's reading.
Penrose (a terrible character name, which is a combination of the names of two Auckland suburbs) lives out of his office, where he supposedly works as a futures trader (although there's nothing to suggest he would actually be good at this). Other than some occasional hookups with a waitress, and chit-chat with a bartender about old TV cop shows, he doesn't seem to have any human relationships. One day he comes across a crime scene and picks up the wallet of the victim, at which point he gets sucked into a very baroque plot involving a strange stolen Victorian diary, an antique dealer, a strange brothel, and what seems to be some kind of supernatural entity. It's not at all clear how reliable a narrator he is, and to what extent what is described as happening is real.
I could never really tell what this book was trying to be -- the prose is often overwrought, the character names are silly (another one is Detective Tangiers), and it's all just so metafictionaly self-aware and self-important. It ultimately felt like something that needed another year of work and two more rounds with a strong editor to pull it into something meaningful. Either that, or some heavy narcotics to accompany one's reading.
February 3, 2020
The writing style is engaging, but there is a definite tendency toward the Robert Jordan style of writing (an excess of details not necessary for the enjoyment of the story). As a result, it gets a bit bogged down at times, but all in all, a pretty decent book.
October 31, 2007
The storyline is pretty good, but the book is packed with WAY TOO MANY DETAILS!!! Just pick a page, any page, and read it and you'll see what I mean... the author never fails to overwhelm you with details and it gets pretty irritating, and makes what otherwise would have been a really fun and interesting book, really boring.
When he writes dialogue and the details take a back seat for a bit, the author really shows off his writing ability and the pages soar by... so even with the vast details it’s still “OK”.
When he writes dialogue and the details take a back seat for a bit, the author really shows off his writing ability and the pages soar by... so even with the vast details it’s still “OK”.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews