- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Fitzhenry & Whiteside (Mar 31 1993)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1568360037
- ISBN-13: 978-1568360034
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 13.7 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,628,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"A gorgeously entertaining, provocative book." --Chicago Tribune
"A disconcertingly funny book . . . both original and edgily entertaining." —The New York Times Book Review
"Reads much as if it were the collaborative effort of Hieronymus Bosch, Franz Kafka, and Mel Brooks." --Chicago Sun-Times
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
"A disconcertingly funny book . . . both original and edgily entertaining." —The New York Times Book Review
"Reads much as if it were the collaborative effort of Hieronymus Bosch, Franz Kafka, and Mel Brooks." --Chicago Sun-Times
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
A man's frantic search for his vanished wife leads him to a sinister underground hospital. He encounters a sex-obsessed mix of patients and staff in this erotic satire of modern medicine.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The labyrinth of a Hospital,
By "flava_flav_anilla" (in the CONCRETE basement) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Secret Rendezvous (Paperback)
The hospital is a labyrinth of human depravity. A man wanders through it searching for his wife, constantly assaulted by odd and insane sights, sounds, and people. Written with mind piercing clarity and description.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not one of Abe's best, but worth a read,
By A Customer
This review is from: Secret Rendezvous (Paperback)
Having read Abe's "Woman in the Dunes" (a masterpiece) already, I was expecting a strange story filled with odd characters and challenging situations. However, I felt that the book wasn't as tightly written as I expected. He changes perspective and has some characters that meld together which are confusing. There didn't seem to be a satisfactory explanation of the character's motivation or actions. There is also a bizarre sexual element that doesn't seem to pay-off. The book is an interesting read, but I would recommend that you read "Women in the Dunes" as it is a far better novel.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews) 6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sort of pseudo-Freudian sex nightmare...,
By Mark Nadja "Literary Outlaw, author *Hardcore... - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Secret Rendezvous (Paperback)
From the very start of this short, but densely labyrinthine and surreally intense novel, you know that you're in strange territory. An ambulance comes unbidden in the middle of the night, spirits away a man's perfectly healthy wife, and he's left to begin a Kafkaesque search to find out what's become of her in a hospital whose nightmarish bureaucracy is concealing a bizarre and ominous program of sex research.Abe has the rare talent of making even the most outlandish situations seem perfectly plausible and that's what lends *Secret Rendezvous* its riveting sense of psychological truth and subjective terror. Like a powerful myth, there's something more *real* than real about the protagonist's endlessly frustrating search, his alternating states of inexplicable omnipotence and paralyzing impotence, his longing to find his missing wife and his fear of doing so. Like Robbe-Grillet, Abe is a master of moody erotic dread and the hint of horrors forever just out of view. Unlike Robbe-Grillet, Abe's storyline, though fractured, is not obsessively repetitive; though detailed, it's not frozen in time--events move forward towards a conclusion that, although ambiguous, nevertheless seems eerily inevitable. Explicit, often shocking, never purely prurient, and, at times, even surprisingly funny, *Secret Rendezvous* is a disturbing and thought-provoking novel by a writer who strikes me as one of the most under-appreciated of the 20th century. His sexually-charged themes and dark insights into psychological dilemmas flatly without resolution make a point about the problematic nature of the human condition that is not easily assimilated to a culture that still believes in solutions...in fact, that still believes in the concept of `humanity' at all. Perhaps, that makes Abe more relevant now than ever. 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Japanese "Kafka" at His Best,
By literary bug - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Secret Rendezvous (Paperback)
Surrealism exemplified some of the most famous works by Kobo Abe (1924-1993), earning him comparisons to Franz Kafka. Surrealism as a 20th-century literary and artistic movement attempted to express the workings of the subconscious.His work Mikkai (Secret Rendezvous) is worth a read for its use of fantastic imagery and the incongruous juxtaposition of scientific data with bizarre nightmare-like scenarios. Secret Rendezvous is relevant in its description of the trappings of an increasingly technological society and its critique of a hospital system gone haywire. Each patient requires a secret agent to penetrate the bureaucratic system, and each person also appears to be under surveillance, mimicking the modern-day question, "Is Big Brother watching you?"
5.0 out of 5 stars
beautiful and grotesque,
By sharkbrains - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Secret Rendezvous (Paperback)
This book is a favorite- if you like Kafka's books and Cronenberg's (or Lynch's) movies, you'll love this book. If I had to pick a genre, I'd call this existential sci-fi horror; it reminds me of some of the underground/alt sci-fi/fantasy of the 70s, and the "eru-goro" (erotic-grotesque) comics of Mauro and others.There's a lot of powerful grotesque sexual imagery (especially "body horror") and existentialism; even as the main character gets more and more drawn into the story, he becomes more and more detached. It's not a pleasant read, but it's totally engrossing. |
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