THE FOLLOWER

by Henry Bromell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 3, 1983

Notwithstanding the spare gracefulness of some of the prose here, it's hard to believe that this Henry Bromell is the veteran writer responsible for the gentle, thoughtful, nostalgic family fiction in The Slightest Distance and I Know Your Heart, Marco Polo: his new novel reads like an adolescent fantasy, like the self-dramatizing, mawkish work of a novice. The young narrator-hero is alienated Gregory Hartz, a would-be actor and sometime walter in Manhattan, who spends much of his time tailing strangers out of curiosity: ""I wasn't attracted to anybody. I'd forgotten how. I'd drifted so far away from humankind that the closest I could get to people was following them."" Then, while on his ramblings one night, Gregory goes to the aid of a screaming Italian woman, who has just been robbed and mutilated; but the confused woman thinks that Gregory is her attacker. So he flees, leaving his fingerprints on the bloody assault-weapon--with the police soon identifying him, branding him ""The Finger Mugger"" (eight victims have, like the Italian woman, had their fingers severed), and searching N.Y.C. for him. What will Gregory do? Well, he'll try to find the real Finger Mugger, of course--who is (Gregory thinks) the albino ringleader of a nasty street-kid gang. Gregory starts searching for this gang, for a girl street-singer who seems to be linked to them; his pursuit leads him into the sewer system, where he's beaten unconscious--later awakening in an abandoned subway station where the albino exercises terror-rule over an assortment of bums, bag-ladies, street beggars, fake blind-men and Santa Clauses, etc. (""Got it assholes? Jolly. Ring your stupid fucking bells and act like you like everybody. Ho-ho-ho!"") And though occasionally succumbing to self-pity, Gregory--forced to be a blind beggar--vows to somehow expose this Evil to the police. . . which he eventually does, but only after more beatings and horrors (including the albino setting one of the bums aflame with a Bunsen burner). The point? Presumably that detached, uninvolved Gregory has at last gotten in touch with people: ""A follower is someone who can only take, never give. Had I ever, in my whole life, felt anything for another person, I mean, really felt it?"" But the slim potential of that overworked theme is completely drowned here--in the lurid, farfetched melodrama and the droning jerkiness of Bromell's under-characterized hero/victim.

Pub Date: Nov. 3, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983

Categories: FICTION