Headhunter: A novel

by Timothy Findley

Book Overview

When Lilah Kemp, a schizophrenic, unemployed librarian and sometime spiritualist, accidently frees the evil Kurtz from the pages of Heart of Darkness, she searches desperately for a Marlow to help her... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0002237458
• ISBN13: 9780002237451
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 440 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A gripping read

I don't usually like "mystery" or "suspense" novels, but this book took me by surprise and proved impossible to put down. The plot is not "overlong and overwrought". In fact, Findley builds the story meticulously. Right from the first page a sense of forboding and horror pervades the book, very much as in the model, Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (also used by Coppola in "Apocalypse Now"). Perhaps not a "successor" to Conrad's novel, but certainly a very worthwhile development from it and one which does not owe its genius to the original. Certainly the reader will get more out of this book having read Conrad. This book should please suspense readers as well as those after something a little more substantial. I am very surprised the book is not better known and am curious to read more by Timothy Findley.

Findley is a master...

Headhunter is a complex novel which combines images from Conrad's Heart of Darkness (the escape of Mr. Kurtz) and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Jay Gatz, the lady in white) into a superb psycological novel. Findley is a master of the screw-with-your-head type of novel, and he has proved it with Headhunter.The novel has countless dimensions that cannot be revealed through one reading. I look forward to reading it again (when I get it back from the last person I told "You HAVE to read this!").It's lengthy, but definitly worth the time. Enjoy the book!

Modern day Heart of Darkness

Findley updates the distrubing images and symbolism of Conrad's classic Heart of Darkness, in this riveting epic. The character development is incredibly precise and leaves the reader with a true sense of being invloved with the characters. It is much easier to comprehend if you have read and studied Conrad's book, but a must for anyone who enjoyed the classic. Headhunter is book that will stay with you for the ages.

Real fine.

The Headhunter was good. I laughed, I was amazed, I was scared, I was glad. What more could you ask for. Good job Timothy Findley. Keep up the good work.

The ultimate psychological novel!

Timothy Findley weaves the ultimate in psychological tales, and brings to life a collage of the most twisted and believable characters. A must for any Torontonian looking for a 21st century dark slant to the city. One of the best books of the decade. You can't put it down. Appleals to the darkness and the psychologist in us all