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Liked It “This is the result of blog-hopping. I discovered Tod Goldberg's blog via SmartBitches, and got hooked on his writing there. It was much later that I decided I enjoyed his writing enough to take a chance on buying his books. |
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“This is the result of blog-hopping. I discovered Tod Goldberg's blog via SmartBitches, and got hooked on his writing there. It was much later that I decided I enjoyed his writing enough to take a chance on buying his books.
DKayeS wrote this review Saturday, November 22 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Paul Luden is a brilliant 32-year-old anthropologist. When he hears that his ex-wife Molly is missing, he and his 19-year-old girlfriend Ginny travel to her house to look for her.
Paul is also prone to depression, as was his ex-wife. They'd split up after the death of their daughter under some suspicious circumstances, but remained connected to each other. As it becomes more and more apparent that Molly didn't just walk away, it also becomes less and less clear that Paul had nothing to do with her disappearance.
Living Dead Girl is a mystery, and a fascinating one--I didn't really know until the end what happened and whodunit.
It's also the story of obsessive love, and a very compelling tale of a man who lives too much inside his own head--so much so that he doesn't always know what's real and what's not. His thoughts and emotions are so clear, so believable and understandable, that it was a little frightening--how easy it would be to let go of reality.
Either part of the story on its own would have been a wonderful, readable tale. Combined, it's exceptional.
”
“This is a deep profound mystery of returning to the root of the crime of this man's missing wife and dead daughter, of old memories coming back to the surface, for a quick read of 2 days. Very moving. ”
Kristen H wrote this review Friday, October 31 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“In the beginning of “Living Dead Girl,” Tod Goldberg’s anthropology professor protagonist, Paul Luden, is driving his gregarious cutie-pie girlfriend up from L.A.in a rental car towards an isolated lake deep in the woods of Washington state. She is taking in the changing autumn colors and the smoky taste of damp wood, formulating her ideas out loud for an original screenplay she’s been thinking about for a long time, like something out of “Delieverance,” or a David Lynch movie, she says, and from the little we know about these two characters, we might expect signs of some horrific, sadistic, homosexual nightmare to come, but that would be too predictable. As for Paul, who has gotten word that his estranged ex-wife has gone missing from the cabin the couple once lived in (three years to the day following the mysterious death of their daughter), he’s balancing his grief for mistakes gone by with a hard, unyielding erection for his young, half-his-age companion. We watch for his guilt-driven nervous breakdown, but that would be too Jewish.
Jam Maestro Jay wrote this review Sunday, August 31 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
What the author does for us instead is lead us through a series of medicated flashbacks, cutbacks and blackouts to the dark edge of a Pacific Northwestern lake to take a prolonged look deep below the suface. We see fairly soon in the novel that there will be nothing more frightening in the woods or in the water than what is already deeply embedded in Paul’s soul. He is a sick, tortured man who talks to his own shadow, draws true-to-scaled models of his daughters organs, and every now and then tries to rip his heart right out of his chest with his bare hands. Let’s not forget: He’s still an anthropolgist and a scholar. He analyzes his troubled condition coldly and scientifically that he is “part of the small percentage of men who must hurt themselves to control his anxiety.”
“Living Dead Girl,” is a psychological thriller that details Paul’s nightmarish struggle with the death of his daughter who apparently died of natural causes at a very early age
We think. Or did she? We also learn that Paul loved his wife more than anyone could possibly believe. Or did he? The Goldberg plot that evolves from the missing ex-wife is as fragmented as Paul’s personality. Since his earliest childhood memories, Paul has believed that he was genetically predisposed to hold his emotions in. His doctor told him worse: “You depersonilze yourself until things seem distorted and unreal. That’s dangerous..”
That’s dangerous, of course, when it is this same deep seated psycho that happens to be the narrator of Living Dead Girl.
In a sense, we rely on Paul’s twisted vision for leading us to the dead bodies. Goldberg has created us a point of view right out of Dosteyefski, a Jim Thompson pulp fiction novel and/or a broken kaliedescope. As Pauls tells his story we learn that he is deep into a Zoloff program to reduce fits of stress-induced hyperventilation, but that is now.
When he was younger, he was the kind of cold blooded killing machine that had spent his time inventing experiments in eighth grade science lab that involved peeling the skin of pigs eyes and running water through the hearts of dead cats. Obviously he is a man of deep and severe contradictions – after all, he is the one that bravely initiates the search for Molly, and appears willing to withstand all scrutiny and overcome all obstacles. Molly is his one love. His angel. On the other hand, this same guy is the one who is plagued throughout the novel by recurring images that darken his consciousness like a blood stains that won’t completely wash out- this is the guy that from one moment to the next sees himself running barefoot through a forest with his own dead baby in his arms...
The problem for Goldberg, then, is to convince the reader to stick around to the end of the novel. How can you possibly sustain a mystery if there is no mystery? After reading the first ten pages of the novel, every one with half a brain has to know that there are no limits for what Paul could do. Everyone can surmise that he is exactly the type of asshole who could kill the one he loves.
Sherriff Drew, a wizened back country sherriff, knows it. He’s got his eye on him from the moment he arrives, and he arrests him nearly twenty four hours. There is Paul’s old reliable buddy from out of the past, Bruce Duper, who he trusts with the safety of his ex wife, possibly because she once said that “he was no smarter than the fish he caught.” But Bruce is more than a good neighbor, he has a secret knowledge to the ups and downs of Paul’s troubled marriage. He knows what Paul is capable of and treats him the same way you would treat a pet cobra. Well sure, there is Ginny, Miss Navel Ring, but we find out he doesn’t have any real feelings for her one way or the other. He just takes her along for good bang to steady his nerves when he needs it.
The only ones that don’t know Paul is sick are Molly and Katrina. They are dead.”
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