Collectors: A Novel

By Paul Griner

Book Overview

From critically acclaimed author Paul Griner comes Collectors, a novel about one woman's risky fascination with a handsome, enigmatic man. Jean Duprez, an ad agency art director who specializes in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679448462
• ISBN13: 9780679448464
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Random House
• Length: 173 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A Sensuous Page-Turner

I loved this book. I couldn't put it down. This is a book about obsession. The two main characters are obsessive personalities and have found an outlet for their obsessive nature by collecting things. Jean collects pens. Stephen collects binoculars. When they meet, their obsessive natures find them drawn to one another. You sense impending disaster from the start and it keeps you enthralled until the end. I simply could not put the book down. Griner's writing is sparse yet rich... a brilliant combination. I can't get enough of this writer's work. If you want to read more of his work, you can read an excerpt from his latest novel in Southeast Review. Griner's writing is even richer than it was in Collectors. I hope this novel is published soon...

eerily rewarding

I found this book to be so haunting that I read it a second time. I enjoyed it even more as I picked up some strange feelings about Jeans childhood friend. I feel that the friend set her up by not warning her. She said that she invited Jean to come to her wedding after thinking about the games they used to play.Think this could be a very good movie if they can create the atmosphere the way the book has. I found myself fascinated by the bargaining sessions for pens and binoculars. Will continue to be on the lookout for more novels by this very interesting writer.

A THRILLER THAT UNFOLDS LIKE A ROMANCE

Paul Griner's heroine, Jean, is a fascinating character. Her motives are eccentric, her past is fuzzy (she had "episodes" after a mysterious fire she set with her cousin), she seems to be very beautiful and unapproachable, as if she is holding something back. She meets the even more eccentric Stephen Cain and falls for him, possibly because the games Stephen plays are as dangerous as the childhood games she played with her cousin. They get together on Stephen's sailboat, they have surprising sex, Stephen breaks her hand in her car door and doesn't seem to be sorry. What is intensely menacing about Griner's novel (his first after an also adroit story collection, FOLLOW ME) is that the reader knows something awful is going to happen. Jean learns that Steven is a widower. The distant widower is a popular character in thrillers, but Griner's pacing and the precision of his characters--the precision that is nicely foreshadowed in Jean's trips to the flea market and her conning of pen vendors ("it is all in the eyes")--allows him to slowly display horrific surprises about the motives of both characters. The last pages of the book were extremely well-done and mysterious and filled me with a palpable sense of dread because I cared for Jean. A fast, engaging, and tense read.