Waiting for the End of the World (Contemporary American Fiction) - Softcover

Bell, Madison Smartt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140093303 ISBN 13: 9780140093308

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1986

Synopsis

A photographer descends into New York City’s chaotic and brutal underground in this sweeping story of the Big Apple at its seediest It’s 1982, and Clarence Dmitri Larkin is working as a photographer at Bellevue hospital in Manhattan. The job offers a painfully clear perspective on a city sick with madness, fraught with crime, and coming apart at the seams. Larkin’s curiosity soon leads to a subterranean world of all the city’s secret dangers, including domestic terrorists with a nuclear device, a serial killer inspired by an occult past, and a disfigured arsonist who just might be the one to burn the whole city down. Waiting for the End of the World is a gritty portrait of 1980s New York, and an engrossing look at the battle of good versus evil in a city racked with violence and paranoia.

About this title

From Library Journal:

Bell is the author of one previous novel, The Washington Square Ensemble ( LJ 2/15/83). His new work is an odd compendium of the trendy and the obscure. A terrorist cell that has the bomb, spontaneous human combustion, street people in Times Square suffering from radiation poisoning, and human torture by devil worshippers are some of the ingredients in this awkward stew of a novel. Anti-hero Larkin, an epileptic who sees demons and hears apocalyptic voices, careens through the plot like a loose cannon on the deck of a sinking ship. Larkin is a barely appealing main character; other members of the motley crew are even worse. Motivations are muddy or nonexistent. There is some good writing and narrative drive, but too many philosophical concerns compete for space. For large fiction collections only. A.J. Wright, Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham Lib.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0140093303
• ISBN 13: 9780140093308
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336