What do you think?
Rate this book
Captives
Daniel Bloom will either fix our broken world in his imagination or destroy his real life trying.
A sniper is taking down suits and politicians—in Daniel Bloom’s head.
Bloom is the kind of guy who ends most social gatherings with an alternately raging and despairing conversation about The State of the World. And recently things have taken a turn for the worse. His marriage is on the rocks, his teenage son is becoming increasingly unknowable, and his sense of hopeless impotence has reached a stage of spiritual crisis that's no longer a matter of vapid dinner-party conversation.
So he decamps to his home office to work on his fifteenth screenplay, this time about a federal agent and a nameless assassin. The assassin is a sniper who targets the power corporate chiefs who defraud their employees of billions of dollars in pensions, and political flacks who've rigged the system in their own favor. Only the federal agent isn't sure he wants to capture the sniper.
Soon Bloom realizes that his screenplay hits too close to He really does want these people dead, so much so that this revenge fantasy takes over his life, sending him in search of salvation in an outrageous mentor, a possibly dangerous foreign country, and, finally, his very own backyard.
A sniper is taking down suits and politicians—in Daniel Bloom’s head.
Bloom is the kind of guy who ends most social gatherings with an alternately raging and despairing conversation about The State of the World. And recently things have taken a turn for the worse. His marriage is on the rocks, his teenage son is becoming increasingly unknowable, and his sense of hopeless impotence has reached a stage of spiritual crisis that's no longer a matter of vapid dinner-party conversation.
So he decamps to his home office to work on his fifteenth screenplay, this time about a federal agent and a nameless assassin. The assassin is a sniper who targets the power corporate chiefs who defraud their employees of billions of dollars in pensions, and political flacks who've rigged the system in their own favor. Only the federal agent isn't sure he wants to capture the sniper.
Soon Bloom realizes that his screenplay hits too close to He really does want these people dead, so much so that this revenge fantasy takes over his life, sending him in search of salvation in an outrageous mentor, a possibly dangerous foreign country, and, finally, his very own backyard.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
46 people want to read
About the author
Todd Hasak-Lowy
26 books45 followersVERY SHORT BIO:
My name is Todd, and I’ve been writing books for about fifteen years. I started writing books for adults, but now I write books for kids and teenagers, too. My most recent book is a middle-grade novel called 33 MINUTES. I’ve also published a short story collection THE TASK OF THIS TRANSLATOR and the novel CAPTIVES. In addition to writing fiction, I teach creative writing. I live in Evanston, Illinois (just outside Chicago), with my wife, two daughters, a dog, and two cats.
MUCH LONGER AND NOT NECESSARILY INTERESTING BIO:
I was born in Detroit and raised in its suburbs. I’m the second of three brothers. All of us were born in May. Other than my immediate family, the most important part of my childhood was going to Camp Tavor in Three Rivers, Michigan. Tavor is part of a Labor-Zionist youth movement called Habonim-Dror. After high school I spent a year in Israel living on a kibbutz (sort of a collective farm). I worked in irrigation.
I attended the University of Michigan as an undergrad. I majored in Near Eastern and North African Studies. I knew by around age 20 that I wanted to become a professor, and I knew that I wanted to study Israel and the Middle East. But it took me a while to decide which field or discipline I wanted to pursue.
I wound up settling on Comparative Literature. I attended the University of California, Berkeley for graduate school, where I started in 1994. There I studied Hebrew and Arabic literature, though by the time I was writing my dissertation I was only working on Hebrew literature. The weird thing about being at Berkeley, especially at first, was that I really had no idea how to study literature. My major at Michigan had been interdisciplinary, with an emphasis on history. I had always loved reading novels, but had never done so with much systematic instruction. Suddenly I was attending arguably the top school for studying literature in the world, and I was lost. My first few semesters at Berkeley, were, needless to say, difficult.
But when I started making sense of fiction (and narrative in general), the payoff was huge. I still remember, sitting in my younger brother’s apartment (both my brothers moved to San Francisco around the time I moved to Berkeley), reading some comic or graphic novel that was clearly in the tradition of R. Crumb or Harvey Pekar. I was amazed how the author was able to represent an entire imagined world, and that this world was utterly specific and alive, and that the author was creating all this through some remarkable combination of decisions, techniques, ideas, etc.
I guess that may have been an epiphany of sorts. It was definitely, for me, a before and after moment. I suddenly realized in some way, Oh, this [this=writing stories] is really interesting, and somehow no longer 100% mysterious, and so maybe I could do it. I had always had a creative impulse (one that largely manifested itself from a young age with my behaving like a clown), but I never had a form or a medium to work in. Now I sensed I may have found one. I started writing a few months later, with the help of two novels (Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine and Yaakov Shabtai’s Past Continuous). These two works, each in its own way, offered me very particular models for forging my own prose. My voice as a writer, such as it is, came out almost fully formed right away. Sometimes you get lucky.
During the second half of graduate school (graduate school lasted a LONG time, eight years), I worked on my dissertation and—when I had both time and inspiration—wrote short stories on the side. In other words, most of the time I wasn’t writing fiction. I was fortunate to be put in touch with Simon Lipskar, who agreed to become my agent after seeing a few of my early stories. He helped me slowly put together a collection.
In 2002, I relocated with my wife and daughter to Gainesville, Florida, because I got a job teaching Hebrew language and literature
My name is Todd, and I’ve been writing books for about fifteen years. I started writing books for adults, but now I write books for kids and teenagers, too. My most recent book is a middle-grade novel called 33 MINUTES. I’ve also published a short story collection THE TASK OF THIS TRANSLATOR and the novel CAPTIVES. In addition to writing fiction, I teach creative writing. I live in Evanston, Illinois (just outside Chicago), with my wife, two daughters, a dog, and two cats.
MUCH LONGER AND NOT NECESSARILY INTERESTING BIO:
I was born in Detroit and raised in its suburbs. I’m the second of three brothers. All of us were born in May. Other than my immediate family, the most important part of my childhood was going to Camp Tavor in Three Rivers, Michigan. Tavor is part of a Labor-Zionist youth movement called Habonim-Dror. After high school I spent a year in Israel living on a kibbutz (sort of a collective farm). I worked in irrigation.
I attended the University of Michigan as an undergrad. I majored in Near Eastern and North African Studies. I knew by around age 20 that I wanted to become a professor, and I knew that I wanted to study Israel and the Middle East. But it took me a while to decide which field or discipline I wanted to pursue.
I wound up settling on Comparative Literature. I attended the University of California, Berkeley for graduate school, where I started in 1994. There I studied Hebrew and Arabic literature, though by the time I was writing my dissertation I was only working on Hebrew literature. The weird thing about being at Berkeley, especially at first, was that I really had no idea how to study literature. My major at Michigan had been interdisciplinary, with an emphasis on history. I had always loved reading novels, but had never done so with much systematic instruction. Suddenly I was attending arguably the top school for studying literature in the world, and I was lost. My first few semesters at Berkeley, were, needless to say, difficult.
But when I started making sense of fiction (and narrative in general), the payoff was huge. I still remember, sitting in my younger brother’s apartment (both my brothers moved to San Francisco around the time I moved to Berkeley), reading some comic or graphic novel that was clearly in the tradition of R. Crumb or Harvey Pekar. I was amazed how the author was able to represent an entire imagined world, and that this world was utterly specific and alive, and that the author was creating all this through some remarkable combination of decisions, techniques, ideas, etc.
I guess that may have been an epiphany of sorts. It was definitely, for me, a before and after moment. I suddenly realized in some way, Oh, this [this=writing stories] is really interesting, and somehow no longer 100% mysterious, and so maybe I could do it. I had always had a creative impulse (one that largely manifested itself from a young age with my behaving like a clown), but I never had a form or a medium to work in. Now I sensed I may have found one. I started writing a few months later, with the help of two novels (Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine and Yaakov Shabtai’s Past Continuous). These two works, each in its own way, offered me very particular models for forging my own prose. My voice as a writer, such as it is, came out almost fully formed right away. Sometimes you get lucky.
During the second half of graduate school (graduate school lasted a LONG time, eight years), I worked on my dissertation and—when I had both time and inspiration—wrote short stories on the side. In other words, most of the time I wasn’t writing fiction. I was fortunate to be put in touch with Simon Lipskar, who agreed to become my agent after seeing a few of my early stories. He helped me slowly put together a collection.
In 2002, I relocated with my wife and daughter to Gainesville, Florida, because I got a job teaching Hebrew language and literature
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 25, 2020
i am not a lapsed jew.
i am not in a struggling marriage.
i do not have a child in that awkward tadpole-to-frog stage of new independence.
i do not live in l.a.
so, really, what does this book have to say to me?? who knows? there is a lot of fine story in here, but i think i liked his short stories better. this seemed to need a little more time to ripen or solidify or whatever image of completion works best for you. there is a lot of potential here, but it ultimately feels unresolved - too many balls in the air. there are so many themes he wants to explore, but they are too massive for a novel of this size: violence(cinematic, political, cultural, personal), hollywood, the jewish diaspora and the tradition of judaism vs. the faith of judaism, israel as a reality vs. as a symbolic entity, plus all these smaller concerns of the family (including pets) and relationships and personal midlife crises.
the great irony here is that daniel (weak,underdefined experiencer of said crises) discusses at great length the problem of screenplays getting taken over by directors or the studio or actors' interpretations and tampered with to make successful (i.e. "commercial") films, but that this would, with a little tightening and padding, make for a very interesting and probably successful movie.
there were three things in this book that were also in "retard ranch", but i can only remember 2 of them right now: steven spielberg and a loving/awed reaction to a c-section scar. not bad, not bad at all...
come to my blog!
i am not in a struggling marriage.
i do not have a child in that awkward tadpole-to-frog stage of new independence.
i do not live in l.a.
so, really, what does this book have to say to me?? who knows? there is a lot of fine story in here, but i think i liked his short stories better. this seemed to need a little more time to ripen or solidify or whatever image of completion works best for you. there is a lot of potential here, but it ultimately feels unresolved - too many balls in the air. there are so many themes he wants to explore, but they are too massive for a novel of this size: violence(cinematic, political, cultural, personal), hollywood, the jewish diaspora and the tradition of judaism vs. the faith of judaism, israel as a reality vs. as a symbolic entity, plus all these smaller concerns of the family (including pets) and relationships and personal midlife crises.
the great irony here is that daniel (weak,underdefined experiencer of said crises) discusses at great length the problem of screenplays getting taken over by directors or the studio or actors' interpretations and tampered with to make successful (i.e. "commercial") films, but that this would, with a little tightening and padding, make for a very interesting and probably successful movie.
there were three things in this book that were also in "retard ranch", but i can only remember 2 of them right now: steven spielberg and a loving/awed reaction to a c-section scar. not bad, not bad at all...
come to my blog!
January 5, 2009
Halfway through this book I was debating: four or five stars. When I finished it, it was between two and three. That's not good. It was an ambitious project but falls short ... all the way to disappointing and shallow. I think Hasak-Lowy wrote it to soon, meaning--before he knew what he was speaking of. Maybe when he's fifty or sixty years old, he'll have a better idea. Good writing is not something, I think, that can be taught in school. The author is a professor of literature which seems to be very much in vogue--the teaching of creating writing and subsequently, the teacher then must publish a novel(s). They tend to get cute with style, and Hasak-Lowy does that. [eg. He takes seventy-one (71) words to say:"Each ... moment ... feels like a month."] But, that was bearable, as were the dropped dialogue tags. It was the disintegration of promising scenes and story that was so disappointing. There is so much potential here--the current state of affairs in the world--the intersection of writing with the "here now" real world. I'd like to tell the author to go back to school, but formal education is not what he lacks--what he lacks is insight and introspection. That said, there are some good descriptive scenes and SOME good dialogue.
January 26, 2009
Todd Hasak-Lowy tries hard with Captives.
Very, very hard.
400+-word, two-page sentence hard.
And in places, it works. Daniel is a successful screenwriter going through a midlife crisis, as his son's bar mitzvah, complacent marriage and complicated script bring to fore.
He starts to debate the future of the world through fiction: He can't figure out where he stands on his latest script, in which an assassin is taking out the family and friends of powerful (read: corrupt in his mind) people. Is the assassin right? Should these people actually die? Would it make a difference? (It's an interesting scenario. How should this make us feel?)
En route, he befriends a drug-dropping rabbi and takes a trip to Israel while his family falls apart.
It's hard to like (or honestly, care about) Daniel or any of the other characters, though. Though the entire book takes place over a few weeks, it feels jumpy and disjointed. And the meta world commentary (state of Israel, gun control, Hollywood, etc.) often overwhelms the weak story.
Very, very hard.
400+-word, two-page sentence hard.
And in places, it works. Daniel is a successful screenwriter going through a midlife crisis, as his son's bar mitzvah, complacent marriage and complicated script bring to fore.
He starts to debate the future of the world through fiction: He can't figure out where he stands on his latest script, in which an assassin is taking out the family and friends of powerful (read: corrupt in his mind) people. Is the assassin right? Should these people actually die? Would it make a difference? (It's an interesting scenario. How should this make us feel?)
En route, he befriends a drug-dropping rabbi and takes a trip to Israel while his family falls apart.
It's hard to like (or honestly, care about) Daniel or any of the other characters, though. Though the entire book takes place over a few weeks, it feels jumpy and disjointed. And the meta world commentary (state of Israel, gun control, Hollywood, etc.) often overwhelms the weak story.
November 15, 2010
This was an odd book. The story starts with a Hollywood screenwriter with a disturbing idea for a movie, & there's a rabbi who is, to say the least, unusual. The author captures character very cleverly, using an unusual way to show conversations. I felt the story got bogged down in the middle, but the ending did work. It's not a mystery/thriller in the usual sense. I'm glad I read it but don't feel tempted to seek other books by the same author.
January 1, 2009
way different from his first book. at first, i did not enjoy the play/script-style set up and dialogue, and was disappointed, but i got into it starting around his arrival in israel. still seems a little self-conscious or message-laden, but ah well, it has some funny scenes, and some real discomforts.
an action movie + midlife crisis book.
an action movie + midlife crisis book.
Read
April 1, 2013Sono arrivata a pag. 55 e mi sono detta: ma con tutti i libri che ho voglia di leggere perchè devo star a perdere tempo con questo? Non ho trovato interessante la storia, e la narrazione in terza persona mi irrita come non mai.. Quindi adios!
May 20, 2013
un famoso sceneggiatore in crisi- lavorativa e non solo, un rabbino cazzuto, los angeles e israele, una crisi inevitabile che sboccerà improvvisa. inizia come un fuoco d'artificio, si smonta verso la metà, riprende quota alla fine.
discontinuo.
discontinuo.
Read
June 12, 2024Bello. Mi è piaciuto. Benché in certi tratti sia un pochino lento, le ultime pagine le ho trovate proprio belle, divertenti, ironiche, anche intense, e questo nonostante l'"happy ending" un po' forzato.
"[...] Forse razionalmente non se ne rendevano conto, ma all'uscita dal cinema non potevi fare a meno di pensare, o credere, o semplicemente sentire, che tutte le cose brutte che ti erano successe, le cose che ti avevano lasciato un segno, erano delle opportunità, erano formative nel senso più positivo della parola, ti avevano cambiato, quelle cose hanno fatto di te quello che sei, quello che sei diventato".
"Ok, va bene. E allora?"
"Daniel, credo che dovresti spararti a una gamba".
"[...] Forse razionalmente non se ne rendevano conto, ma all'uscita dal cinema non potevi fare a meno di pensare, o credere, o semplicemente sentire, che tutte le cose brutte che ti erano successe, le cose che ti avevano lasciato un segno, erano delle opportunità, erano formative nel senso più positivo della parola, ti avevano cambiato, quelle cose hanno fatto di te quello che sei, quello che sei diventato".
"Ok, va bene. E allora?"
"Daniel, credo che dovresti spararti a una gamba".
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews