Review: "Threats" by Amelia Gray

While far from being as frustratingly offbeat as some books that would fit into this category, Threats by Amelia Gray is still an exercise in post-modernism that is more than slightly confusing, but written with more feeling than you would expect from something like this. It is an easy to read yet hard to follow journey into the mind of a man who world is warped by the grief over his wife Franny’s death, and it does not play around with those very real emotions, even at the times when this novel veers off into describing the minute details of what David’s life is like after his wife is dead. David is an out of work dentist, who lost his practice after he fought off several malpractice lawsuits, and his only solace was his wife, who was way to attractive for his plain looks. After she dies in a mysterious way, he starts finding weird threats in strange places around his house and whenever he goes out. He has equally strange encounters with a detective who asks questions he does not know the answer too, and people who knew Franny who may not have had her best interests at heart. Things get weirder and weirder, and that is not always a good thing. Like Ben Marcus and The Flame Alphabet, an interesting premise in the hands of writer like Gray, who is more interested in syntax than story, creating a story that is interesting, but not much else. But I will say this is one of the better postmodern novels you can read today. It has a lot of heart and real emotion, and doesn’t read like a desert dry manual for some gadget you do not know how to work. It is a quick, easy read that might keep your interest more than it did mine.

Rating: 4/5