Note: I just learned of a movie adaptation of Odd Thomas . Other news on the web explains that this
film may never be seen. Other sites say that it's scheduled to open in Finland in August. Dean Koontz is "whacked flat happy" about it. Here's a link to the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL94mkU1On8
Skipping from the latest book of Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas series backwards to the first one, I’m officially
hooked. Near midnight, I wasn’t willing
to sleep on the last gruesome image or anticipated danger, and I read straight
to the end. Is that a silly response to
a book about ghosts and demons and premonitions?
Odd World
A grown-up can pooh-pooh the paranormal and still leave room for it in the imagination. Early in this novel, Odd passes through an ordinary door into a dark and chilly world. It didn’t have to be a wardrobe for me to see that this series is like C. S. Lewis’s Narnia for a more contemporary, more grown-up audience, placing our ordinary planet at ground zero in a cosmic battle of good v. evil.
Through Odd, Koontz explicitly ties paranormal fantasy with
something compatible to orthodox Christian faith:
Most people desperately desire to
believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace
and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that
they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes
them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous... (Kindle edition: location
2179)
He’s got that right.
When I’m reading the Bible or a work of fiction, my mind inhabits
two worlds simultaneously. Why should it
be hard to accept that a spiritual world intersects ours? More to the point: I want to believe that there’s a larger world
framing this one.
Besides, reality itself is pretty hard to believe. Koontz grounds his novels in a fact that’s hard
to accept: While we can perceive beauty,
affection, humor, and courage around us, we must also confront the presence of
sordid, malignant humans among us, and dark feelings in ourselves.
Odd Pleasures
It’s not the supernatural element that makes me
want to read. I enjoy spending time with
this character named Odd.
The author presents these books as chapters in a memoir by a
20-ish-year-old young man whose gifts are frying foods and seeing spirits. The love of his life is a girl named Bronwen “Stormy”
Llewellyn, and their two characters are encapsulated in a brief argument. He, with a premonition of danger, warns her
to stay home. She says she will, if he’ll
stay with her. He replies…
“We’ve been
through this. I can’t let people die if
there’s a way to spare them.”
“And I’m not going
to live even one day in a cage just because there’s a loose tiger….”
Feeling obligated to help where he can, Odd opens doors to uncertain danger and rushes through the fleeing mob towards the gunman. Stormy’s attitude is another version of the
same courage: she won’t let caution
paralyze her. Their brands of courage are endearing and, I have to admit, motivational.
Odd’s gratitude for Stormy’s loving him is a sweet core for a
story haunted by Timothy McVeigh, Charles Manson, and Mohammed Atta. Unlike other mass murderers in the bad guy’s
files, none of these three killed alone.
They had “family” or “brotherhood.” Their evil communities contrast to the
surrogate family that grows up around Odd and envelops him in its arms at the
memorable end of the novel. Koontz has made Odd a virtual orphan, unloved
by parents each wrapped up in delusions.
The father devotes himself to maintaining his ideas of youth and
studliness. The mother is a couple
turns screwier than Blanche DuBois, cordial
to her son until he asks for help: she decrees that her home must be a
problem-free zone. But other characters
love Odd: the 400-pound writing mentor, the fatherly police chief, and the
motherly owner of the diner where Odd works.
Even the spirit of Elvis takes Odd’s hand in both of his own and
expresses heartfelt sympathy silently (for spooks don’t speak, we’re
told).
Odd’s background makes him sensitive to others who feel
unloved and unlovable. Past midnight, Odd
has traveled to a deserted brothel outside of town to dispose of a bad guy’s
body, when he encounters the spirit of a young prostitute murdered on that spot
some years before. In Odd’s world,
spirits hang around if they have unfinished business, or if they fear what
awaits them in the next world. He
intuits her whole life: unloved, homeless,
seeking any kind of affection, she is ashamed of herself, afraid of
punishment. He assures her that she will
find love in the next life. She listens
intently, and waits while he drives away, “coyotes resting on the ground at her
feet, as if she were the goddess Diana between one hunt and another, mistress
of the moon and all its creatures.”
It’s a scene of little consequence to the unfolding of the
story, a lovely image and one of many incidental pleasures I’ve found now at
both ends of Koontz’s series. It’s time
to dig into the volumes in the middle.
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