When I think about invisibility, I think of it as a cool superpower. I guess it would be if you could turn it off and on at will. This book makes it seem much less fun:t•tTrying to orient yourself in space can be very disconcerting, especially if you happen to be in an invisible building.t•tThe government will try to hunt you down. It wants you as a lab rat. It might be able to use you for intelligence. It doesn’t someone else to use you. It may need to eliminate you to avoid the embarrassment and chaos that would ensue from a leak about your condition.t•tWhat you eat and drink is not invisible. It turns you into a disgusting sack of fecal matter and vomit. It also kind of destroys any benefit of invisibility. It’s hard not to eat. t•tIt’s a bit difficult to go to a store and buy what you need. Even stealing it is tough – items floating through space attract attention. Creativity is key.t•tHope you have lots of money because holding a job becomes a problem.t•tNo human interaction becomes boring after a while.t•tYou see people you like(d) at their absolutely worst.t•tIf your invisible clothes were summer clothes, winter’s a bitch. t•tIf you happen to get hurt, trying to deal with a wound you can’t see is a bit difficult.Nick’s the only survivor of an explosion in a building where scientists were experimenting with a secret formula. He and the building end up invisible. The government tries to hunt him down, and he spends the whole book on the run, and trying to survive in his new condition.This books starts off with a sex-on-a-train scene that’s a bit of an attention grabber. But all the women in this book are little more than props. Nick’s got a lot of acquaintances, but apparently no real friends. He seems a bit shallow. But he’s good at working the angles, and that helps him out in dealing with his government nemesis. I’m not sure I liked him enough be overly worried about his fate, but I did admire his ingenuity. All in all, this was an interesting and creative, but slightly too wordy book. I feel like I need to read the H.G. Wells version now. I’m struggling between a 3 and 4 rating, but I’ll guess I’ll round up to go with popular consensus.
Intriguing, Hilarious, Satirical Sci-Fi Thriller“It was not really anywhere—or not anywhere this train should be stopping. This was not in itself particularly disturbing: if you have ever ridden on one of these trains you will know that, although they operate on the most important and most traveled rail route in the country, their movements are as random as the physical limitations of steel rails will permit. That is, they are always mysteriously speeding up, slowing down, or stopping altogether at unpredictable intervals bearing no relation to published schedules or the location of stations … the employees of the railroad, if they have any idea themselves what is happening or why, never ever communicate it to the passengers. Then, mysteriously, forward progress resumes.” I’m not sure what amazed me more about H.F. Saint’s debut (and only) novel—the fact that not a lot has changed since the 1980s or the metaphor of a securities analyst who disappears. Read “Memoirs of an Invisible Man,” and you will live as Nick Halloway, (not to be confused with Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway), trader and invisible man extraordinaire. Of course, the story wouldn’t be complete without a nuclear explosion, a Times reporter, intelligence agents, men’s clubs, lawyer’s offices, insider trading, sex, snoops, secretaries, bond traders, party girls, and cocaine. The memoir begins fast, on a train, as noted, with Nick and Times reporter Anne Epstein (who has beautiful breasts) getting it on in a train car, allowing an unlikely set of voyeurs in on their foul play. Then the explosion (and the cat!), then the invisibility, then the chase: and indeed, Chevy Chase was the star of the 1992 film edition of Memoirs.The bottom line: Memoir’s strength is the humanity sewed into Mr. Halloway’s character and the people he encounters during his travels; the weakness is that the plot, at times, feels contrived, as if events are happening suddenly simply to move the story along. But by the end, Nick Halloway won me over, as did Mr. Saint. The only question: why on earth didn’t he write another book?
Do You like book Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (1987)?
After rave reviews from an old friend, I sought this book out at the library. She must be more detail-minded than me, as that was 75% of the book. Well thought-out story, of a man who accidentally becomes invisible, and is chased by the same government agents who want to analyze him or stop him, at least. I was intrigued, sometimes, and laughing, sometimes, but not thru most of the analysis and his careful planning. It was apparent about on page 150 that he wasn't going to be caught, and why Alice didn't tell ANYBODY about him, I'll never know. He could have placed an ad in the paper for a blind woman, or moved away from New York . . .
—Sherrill Watson
Een boek over een onzichtbare man, geschreven door een heilige (Saint) moest bijna wel de moeite van het lezen waard zijn. Het is het onwaarschijnlijke verhaal van Nick Halloway, die bij een bezoek aan een 'onderzoeksinstituut', waar onderzoek naar magnetisme wordt gedaan, maar dat erg lijkt op een kerncentrale, na een ontploffing onzichtbaar wordt. Hij wordt gezocht door agenten van de geheime dienst en moet op de vlucht. De onzichtbaarheid heeft voordelen: hij is niet eenvoudig te vinden, maar ook nadelen: zo wordt alles wat hij eet of drinkt zichtbaar in zijn slokdarm en ingewanden. De schrijver heeft heel goed nagedacht over alle problemen, die een man kan tegenkomen als hij onzichtbaar is en gezocht wordt. Het maakt dit boek spannend om te lezen: je bent toch benieuwd, wat hem allemaal gaat overkomen en hoe hij dat oplost.Het is de debuut-thriller van deze schrijver en voor de filmrechten ontving hij 1,3 miljoen dollar.
—Weaverannie
One of my all-time favorite books. I bet I've read it at least 10 times. I was telling a friend about it, about how I kept buying copies of it and loaned to friends and never got it back. Well, he found it on Amazon and bought me a copy as well as one for himself. I recently re-read it and thought about how it worked in 1987, when it was written, but it would be a very different story if written today. Technology has advanced to the point that anyone could disappear and become "invisible" but could also be tracked down by that very same technology. I still found the story exciting; Nick so very resourceful, yet every time you think he's safe, the CIA breaks in and he manages to get away once again.
—Suka
