The Sensationist

by Charles Palliser

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345369580
• ISBN13: 9780345369581
• Release Date: May 1991
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 153 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

A Thousand Pages Short

The novels of Mr. Palliser generally are closer to or well in excess of 500 hundred pages. Having been through, "The Quincunx" and "The Unburied", I found, "The Sensationist", and at a miniscule 153 pages and thought I had stumbled upon another Author of the same name. That this is certainly not the case is readily apparent when the reading begins.A male protagonist obsessed with encounters with women that are unknown to him until they become the object of his brief amusement, is not a new idea. Mr. Palliser puts his own mark on this theme with an easily unlikable predatory male named David. More interesting than David and his cliché lifestyle is the structure of the narrative as it presents the story in what would generally be considered sound bites if spoken. Not only is the information delivered sparingly, it's also vague on detail and delivered in a staccato blitz. This is primarily the case with everything outside of his physical encounters, but even they tend to be abbreviated once the conquest is at hand. The chase is all that matters, a woman he invites to spend the evening is someone he resents for being in his presence in the morning.David has another vice that is for readers to puzzle over which eventually will contribute to his slide down from a comfortable life just as the building in which he lives is literally settling at an angle, and threatens to eventually travel down hill like the rest of his world. Mr. Palliser eventually takes David down, however it is not as you might expect or have read in the past. His fall does arrive and it is brutal even beyond what he perhaps deserved. There is of course a victim but it is not the one that is expected.The book initially put me off, as I am a great admirer of his longer complex period pieces. The book quickly will change a reader's mind for it is clever, uniquely presented, and like all of this man's work, brilliantly executed.

Plangent...

Plangent, a new vocabulary word which I picked up from this book, and a good description of the story. Very Calvino-ish, yet different. Imagine short, descriptive vignettes of the unfolding of a relationship set in a uncaring city that is all about work, work, work. Selfishness and selflessness are examined in soundbites that, in the end, come together as a whole and in a completely satisfying way. Who loses in this kind of a world, our world? The adults seeking love for personal gratification or the children that live in the periphery? Or both? This short, one-night read, unlike any Victorian, plot-twisters which Palliser has written, goes deep.

a neglected masterpiece

It's hard to say where this novel comes from; Paliser's other works are overlong, mannered, deliberately artificial. The writing here is as natural as breathing, the narrative voice as quietly devastating as the voice of our own conscience. A young man in a cold, unnamed foreign city works feverishly at an unspecified technical job. As things fall apart for him at work he embarks on a doomed affair with a disturbed artist. It's all over in little more than a hundred pages; the impact lasts a lifetime. This is one of the few convincing love stories ever written as well as a chilling indictment of a frenetic, work-driven, utterly alienating society. The Sensationist is an unrepeatable masterpiece and one of the best novels I've ever read.