The Contortionist's Handbook
by Craig Clevenger
HarperCollins, $120
For once, the blurbs on the cover can be taken seriously. 'This is the best book I have read in years,' says Chuck Palahniuk. 'Dazzling and highly original,' says Irvine Welsh. 'This book deserves to be massive.' Having been optioned for film, Craig Clevenger's The Contortionist's Handbook might just live up to expectations when it gains readers who reach the book via the movie - giving the first-time novelist a second chance for fame. His story centres on talented forger Daniel Fletcher, the pseudonym the protagonist assumes on his latest visit to the hospital as a possible suicide case. Fletcher, aka John Dolan Vincent, suffers debilitating migraines that push him to down painkillers to the point of near-fatal overdoses. Each episode involving the authorities needs an identity change, and this time is no different except for a complication: he's involved with thugs for whom he has done a job. As Fletcher attempts to bluff his way out of the grip of psychological evaluators, a separate narrative of his life emerges. Revealing more would spoil the fun, although Time Out promises a 'pitch-perfect shock ending'.
