In the Blind

By Eugene Marten

"Marten's powerful novel focuses on a man trying to put the shards of his life together...Fans of Chuck Palahniuk and Jim Thompson, in particular, should take note." -Roberta Johnson, Booklist (starred review)

Eugene Marten's In the Blind takes readers through a keyhole and shows it to be a tunnel, a cave -- a way through to a hard-earned light. The speaker in this astonishing novel has been released from the boiler room dark of prison, but he is not free. He must move on at an angle against all that has been subtracted from the world he returns to, and always against the bleak weight of memory. By accident he finds work in a locksmith's shop, and something in the dark inner spaces of the locks speaks to him of a universe of locks, and to the prospect of a concentration that will open the way to breathable air.

With the uncanny precision of observation found in Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, and the eerie mystery of Don Delillo's The Body Artist, Marten generates a narrative that enthralls. When released by the book's amazing close, readers will find themselves in the new light cast by this novel, and with a hunger for more of Eugene Marten's fine work.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1885586752
• ISBN13: 9781885586759
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Turtle Point Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Life Under the Radar

Eugene Marten's novel IN THE BLIND is the searing tale of a man's, at first tentative, struggle to exist; there are so many things he could succumb to, so many obstacles in the way of his maintaining even the starkest existence in the world he finds himself in after being released from prison. The fact that he learns to make keys, instead of guaranteeing him a future in locksmithing, only complicates things, and at the end we don't know what he will do with himself. He seems optimistic for the first time even though he has just been through something horrible. I highly recommend this book, as well as Marten's first novel, WASTE, which is even darker.

In the Blind is simply stunning

This novel is dark and gritty, certainly unblinking. The combination of Marten's superior craftsmanship and an industrial city's underbelly results in one rare jewel of a novel.This book would fit easily on a shelf next to _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_ or perhaps _Deliverence_. It surely belongs in every contemporary fiction reader's collection, and I dare say, on the nightstand of the aspiring writer.Now buy the book.