SILVERBACK

A young professional in New York City struggles with the purposelessness of corporate life and the tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Czak Hudson Franklin is immediately attracted to Elle, his co-worker. In fact, he doesn’t invite his girlfriend, Julia, to the office Christmas party, anticipating a romantic adventure with Elle. They go home together that night, but their “dalliance” quickly sours, and they become locked in a vacillation between mutual affection and acrimony. Meanwhile, Czak wrestles with the desultory nature of his life. As he sees it, the fundamental “choice the world now faces is a choice between meaningless life and spectacular annihilation.” He’s stuck in a relationship he loathes—he is disgusted by Julia’s “tedious predictability.” Also, he’s unfulfilled by the clerical work he does. He can’t bear the idolatry of the “almighty dollar,” a familiar, trite complaint that unfortunately typifies Kingston’s overwritten fictional memoir. He’s yanked out of his ennui by catastrophe—the World Trade Center is attacked and left in ruins, and Elle is listed among the missing. The emotional turmoil that roils Czak compels him to reassess his shiftless existence, an experience recounted in inflated, philosophical language: “Tested to the pit, I stand tall before the ultimate reality of an all-encompassing emptiness. The abyss looks into me and I look back unblinking. I do not quaver. Despite the tedious will-breaking of this soft and sickly society, despite the castration of all of our worldly strength in the mill of our own cannibal technic, there still remains impossibly—a man.” Kingston poignantly captures the city after the attack. However, the novel as a whole offers little original insight.

An overwrought novel peppered with familiar philosophical observations.