Fri 11 Feb 2022
An Archived Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: JACK O’CONNELL – The Skin Palace.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[16] Comments
JACK O’CONNELL – The Skin Palace. Quisigamond #3, Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1996. No paperback edition.
O’Connell has written two of the strangest pieces of crime fiction I’ve come across in the last few years, Box 9 and Wireless. Both set in the decaying Massachusetts town of Quinsigamond, each featured a cast of characters that could charitably be described as “strange”, and were written in a tone that approached the apocalyptic at times. I mostly liked them, but there’s been little discussion of them in the mystery press that I’ve seen.
Here there is Sylvia, a strange young woman obsessed with celluloid images who has drifted from one phase of her life to another. Then, there’s Jakob, the son of a Polish immigrant gangster equally obsessed with film-making, who has trouble seeing the world through anything but a lens. There’s Schick, a porno film-maker with visions of cinematic grandeur. And there’s Propp, a mythical (?) photographer and cult figure. Like gas molecules in a pressure chamber, they heat and move and ricochet off each other until critical pressure is reached, and then . . .
He’s written three strange ones now. This really isn’t a book to try to review in a paragraph or so; either you just say “it’s strange,” or you should spend a page or two on it. It’s full of impossibilities, improbabilities. and off-center characters, and though you may wonder what it was all about as much at the end as all the way through, it’s at least partially about taking pictures and making pictures, and ways of looking at life.
It’s totally non-genre in its approach, and in the storytelling, and how much you like it will depend on how deeply you can immerse yourself in O’Connell’s flickering, out-of-focus world. Easy read? No. Worthwhile for you? You won’t know until you’re done.
February 11th, 2022 at 8:09 pm
Very interesting and intriguing, thanks. Sounds a bit like Jonathan Moore, one of my absolute favourite contemporay authors.
February 11th, 2022 at 8:29 pm
I’ve not read this one, nor in all likelihood, will I. After reviewing mysteries for as long as I have, I know how hard it is to talk about books as tough as this one, and make some sort of sense of it. It isn’t easy. I think Barry did a great job.
February 11th, 2022 at 9:41 pm
I recall BOX 9 fondly, but would have found it difficult to review adequately at that length.
February 11th, 2022 at 10:29 pm
O’Connell was only published in paperback in the UK. I think the way he fell between SF and noir worked against him, which was unfortunate, to say the least. Did he publish anything but the Quisigamond books?
February 11th, 2022 at 10:55 pm
It doesn’t appear so. Here’s what I found on the Fantastic Fiction website:
Series
Quinsigamond
1. Box Nine (1992)
2. Wireless (1993)
3. The Skin Palace (1996)
4. Word Made Flesh (1998)
5. The Resurrectionist (2008)
Anthologies edited
Dark Alleys of Noir (2002)
February 11th, 2022 at 11:44 pm
Does he write in present tense?
February 12th, 2022 at 4:04 pm
Yes, unfortunately. Based on a free Kindle download of BOX NINE. It may of course not be true of his other work.
February 12th, 2022 at 4:44 pm
If I remember rightly, yes, David Anderson. As a devotee of Damon Runyon, I don’t mind people writing in the present tense. It’s probably the only thing O’Connell and Runyon have in common.
February 12th, 2022 at 4:50 pm
John O’Hara wrote in the first person if not the present tense. Any problem with that?
February 12th, 2022 at 5:53 pm
I won’t speak for David A., but I don’t have a problem at all with stories told in the first person. But he and I both seem to have the same affliction. I don’t know the technical term for it, but it’s the simple inability to read anything told in present tense, no matter who the author is. It’s like fingernails on a chalk board. Keeps us from reading a lot of good stories, I’m sure, and we are to be pitied for that.
February 13th, 2022 at 12:45 am
Wait ’til you come across a story told in the second person plural and future perfect continuous, Steve!
February 13th, 2022 at 11:22 am
Roger, that!
February 13th, 2022 at 5:28 pm
You got it exactly right, Steve. That’s my problem exactly, same as you.
February 13th, 2022 at 9:52 pm
We had better put another comment on this thread. Ah, ce sa.
February 13th, 2022 at 9:57 pm
Who would have thought there’d be so much to say about such an obscure and well-forgotten book? Not I.
PS. Thanks, Barry!
February 14th, 2022 at 11:51 pm
Not well-forgotten, Steve. The books show a strange and surrealist world – noir SF/fantasy – in a style which reflects the world they’re in. I could imagine them being seen as minor classics in the future.