- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Headline
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0747268762
- ISBN-13: 978-0747268765
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.2 x 2.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 422 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,103,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From the Back Cover
Cross a road, take a train or get on an aeroplane and you put your life in the hands of a stranger - as screwed up, as fallible, as human as you are. Then they turn out not to be a stranger at all, and suddenly it's much worse.
So, meet an apparently disparate group of people - a comedian whose sole gag consists of committing suicide, an airline pilot terrified of flying, a psychiatrist more in need of therapy than his patients and an air hostess trying to do the right thing - all of whom are connected to the tragic death of a stowaway on a flight into Birmingham in 1978.
Twenty three years later, and despite their attempts to build new lives, the connections begin to emerge and, along with them, the truth about what happened. It's a truth held on stolen black box recordings, answer machine tapes, sitcom out-takes and court transcripts.
Blackbox is the story of an attempt to erase a life on tape.
About the Author
Writer and actor Nick Walker lives in Coventry. He hates flying.
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.3 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely Terrific!, Jan 24 2004
By Moe Darbandi - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blackbox: A Novel in 840 Chapters (Paperback)
The fact that this book has been barely reviewed was shocking. Blackbox will take you on a mind journey you have to read to believe. Not only is this book clever, funny, witty, and insightful, but extremely well written and amazingly creative. This is one novel that you'll be thinking about long after you read it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Under the Radar, Oct 8 2004
By Robby Nichols - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blackbox: A Novel in 840 Chapters (Paperback)
Now this is craftsmanship. Nick Walker has written a debut novel that reminds me a bit of the device from which it takes its title. A piece of work primed to slip unnoticed into a plethora of similar machinery yet able to survive in the wake of critical disaster (for which BLACKBOX proves quite an easy target). All Palahniuk comparisons aside (Survivor), BLACKBOX withstands its own endless cliches, thin plotlines, and high concept writing. The result is a welcome vacation from an otherwise monotonous literary year. Despite its faults, Walker's creation proves extremely difficult to put down. Conversely, the reader discovers no deeply profound life lessons or tragic true stories of triumph against all odds inside this book. What one WILL find is 840 chapters, 20 different narrators (none of which can truly be labeled a protagonist), 2 suicides (depending on your perspective), at least 10 instances of public vomiting, and ultimately one of the most darkly hilarious novels in recent memory. At the center of it all lies the story of a doomed long distance love affair and the people caught in-between. Walker has spun a wicked web that catches you from the beginning and doesn't let up until the final word. It is a tale of what could have been but (realistically) never is. I wouldn't have it any other way.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
six degrees...., Sep 21 2003
By garbo_the_cat - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blackbox: A Novel in 840 Chapters (Paperback)
Wow! I've never written a review before but this quirky, odd, meandering novel just begged me to write about it.
Any fan of po-mo fiction (Foster Wallace, DeLillo) will dig this novel.
The book really does have 840 chapters (signifying the 840 previous flights leading up to flight SA841). Each chapter is told in a different narrator's voice and each chapter connects and bisects the other chapters....a six degrees of separation of chapters.
Nick Walker is a very original writer with a great ear for dialogue.
"Blackbox" is a chilling, funny (at times laugh out loud funny) and very disturbing story... a fun read that begs you to ask "is life really just a series of random instances"?
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