Subtitles in a book are often, at best, unhelpful, and at worst, misleading. But the subtitle of Douglas Thompson's Vouchsafe Carnadine, "A Metaphysical Thriller" hits the nail on the head. Leaving the genre identity aside, I will vouch for Thompson's ability to craft believable dialogue that leads the reader to understand the depths of his well-defined characters. The three-headed protagonist of the story, Raymond Tierny, a brilliant scientist recently deceased, Maria, his lover who receives his letters in spite of his death, as if beyond the grave, and Helen Tierny, Raymond's jilted, but beautiful and brilliant wife, is . . . are . . . a sort of organism of complex connections, as one can imagine from a bizarre love triangle.
Thompson's writing is "clean". There's no purple prose, no alliteration, no fanciness. And, though I do normally prefer some poeticism in my prose, this works out just fine. The story itself is strange enough that the clarity of writing here helps things along, allowing the reader to focus on the action and, more importantly, the philosophical implications of of the ongoing epistolary exchanges between Maria and the dead Raymond.
At it's heart, Vouchsafe Carnadine is a love story, but an incredibly strange love story wrapped on the bones of a thriller. The heard of the story, however, has to do with the metaphysical propositions of what is possible with quantum physics. So, as I hinted at earlier, this story is anything but straightforward. But it is, after all of its emotional and investigative twists and turns, rewarding.
Of course, the artwork is gorgeous. This is, after all, a Mount Abraxas book! Spendy? Yes. Worth it? Also yes.
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