When I started reading Robin Cook’s novel Host, I thought that anyone going to the
hospital soon for any major or minor procedure should not read it. Once I got a little further in I decided that,
considering how ridiculous the novel is, perhaps it would be a good reading
choice as it is unlikely your visit could go any worse than that of Carl’s, one
of the characters in Host. He goes
into South Carolina’s Mason-Dixon Medical Center for routine surgery and never
wakes up. He ends up in a coma and is soon transferred from the Medical Center
to the Shapiro Institute, a nearby location that specializes in caring for
those in long term comas.
Carl’s botched procedure sets off a series of events that
involve Lynn, Carl’s medical school student girlfriend, Lynn’s friend and
fellow medical student Michael, Sandra Wykoff, the anesthesiologist for Carl’s
procedure, and, best of all, some Russian thugs with memories of the Chechen
Wars still dancing in their heads. While the plot of Host quickly becomes ridiculous, it is a very entertaining kind of
ridiculous. I don’t know if I would enjoy a realistic medical thriller, but
Cook’s novel really worked for. He keeps the plot twists coming, populates the
book with likeable but not overly complex characters, and ups the weirdness
just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder.
No comments:
Post a Comment