The Last Days of Jack Sparks is a darkly witty novel that that
can be scary, gross, funny and frustrating all the same time. It’s an book to categorize
for it has many elements of horror, science fiction, dark humor, and a poke at
social media celebrities.
“In 2014, Jack Sparks - the controversial pop culture
journalist - died in mysterious circumstances. To his fans, Jack was a fearless
rebel; to his detractors, he was a talentless hack. Either way, his death came
as a shock to everyone. It was no secret that Jack had been researching the
occult for his new book. He'd already triggered a furious Twitter storm by
mocking an exorcism he witnessed in rural Italy. Then there was that video:
thirty-six seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of
his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account. Nobody knew what
happened to Jack in the days that followed - until now. This book, compiled
from the files found after his death, reveals the chilling details of Jack's
final hours.”
The conceit of the book is that Jack writes his book as it
goes along, but it’s clear that author Jason Arnopp has created an unreliable narrator
here, as the reader is sort drawn into Jack’s world and you are never really sure
if any of this is happening (and by the end of the book, for me anyways, this
becomes somewhat clear). Also, Jack is a very unlikable character and fairly
dense. But like modern young adults, his life’s meaning revolves around his own
legend. It’s a world where he’s more obsessed with scoring as many hits as he
can on his multiple social media channels. You’ll either find him funny, one
who continues to cling to his atheism even when presented with some very
obvious supernatural occurrences, or a brilliant journalist who has discovered many
people across the globe are colluding together to say the Devil does exist.
A lot of other stuff happens, with Jack
not believing any of it and ends up in California, where he ends up engaging
with a group of people who believe they can create and then communicate with a
fictionalized ghost through expectations of human will (which the writer based
on something called The Philip Experiment that took place in
Ontario, Canada in 1972).
It’s very 1970/80s Doctor Who (which the writer does have an
association with) set against modern times. The book falters at the end, and I
felt cheated a bit, but a strong debut none the less.
No comments:
Post a Comment