LIFE EXPECTANCY（ISBN=） 英文原版

Critics found Life Expectancy somewhat, well, unexpected. From
the master of horror, suspense, and SF comes a novel about love,
family, and good versus evil, all wrapped up in a warm, fuzzy
package. Sure, Koontz’s newest novel contains variations of the
horror elements that define his previous works (The Taking, The
Face), but his characters are so endearing that it’s hard to see
how anything bad could happen to them. In fact, despite his
grandfather’s prediction, Tommy’s five bad days turn out to be both
a curse and a blessing. Reviewers found Koontz a great storyteller,
despite a few overwritten parts, false cliffhangers, and hackneyed
humor. Kudos to Koontz for taking risks in this bizarre, clever
story.

With his bestselling blend of nail-biting intensity, daring
artistry, and storytelling magic, Dean Koontz returns with an
emotional roller coaster of a tale filled with enough twists,
turns, shocks, and surprises for ten ordinary novels. Here is the
story of five days in the life of an ordinary man born to an
extraordinary legacy—a story that will challenge the way you look
at good and evil, life and death, and everything in between.

Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather
leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock
spends long hours walking the corridors between the expectant
fathers’ waiting room and his dying father’s bedside. It’s a
strange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of the
storm’s fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks
coherently for the frist and last time since his stroke.

What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark days in
the life of his grandson—five dates whose terrible events Jimmy
will have to prepare himself to face. The first is to occur in his
twentieth year; the second in his twent-third year; the third in
his twenty-eighth; the fourth in his twenty-ninth; the fifth in his
thirtieth.

Rudy is all too ready to discount his father’s last words as a
dying man’s delusional rambling. But then he discovers that Josef
also predicted the time of his grandson’s birth to the minute, as
well as his exact height and weight, and the fact that Jimmy would
be born with syndactyly—the unexplained anomal of fused digits—on
his left foot. Suddenly the old man’s predictions take on a
chilling significance.

What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five dark days? What
nightmares will he face? What challenges must he survive? As the
novel unfolds, picking up Jimmy’s story at each of these crisis
points, the path he must follow will defy every expectation. And
with each crisis he faces, he will move closer to a fate he could
never have imagined. For who Jimmy Tock is and what he must
accomplish on the five days when his world turns is a mystery as
dangerous as it is wondrous—a struggle against an evil so dark and
pervasive, only the most extraordinary of human spirits can shine
through.

He was born and raised in Pennsylvania where he graduated from
Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University). When he
was a senior in college, he won an Atlantic Monthly fiction
competition and have been writing ever since. His first job after
graduation was with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where he was
expected to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a
one-to-one basis. During his first day on the job, he discovered
that the previous occupier of his position had been beaten up by
the very kids he had been trying to help and had landed in the
hospital for several weeks. The following year was filled with
challenge but also tension, and he was more highly motivated than
ever to build a career as a writer. he wrote nights and weekends,
which he continued to do after leaving the poverty program and
going to work as an English teacher in a suburban school district
outside Harrisburg. After a year and a half in that position, his
wife, Gerda, made me an offer he couldn’t refuse: “he’ll support
you for five years,” she said, “and if you can’t make it as a
writer in that time, you’ll never make it.” By the end of those
five years, Gerda had quit her job to run the business end of his
writing career. Gerda and he, along with our dog, Trixie, live in
southern California.

Starred Review. Of all bestselling authors, Koontz may be the
most underestimated by the literary establishment. Book after book,
year after year, this author climbs to the top of the charts. Why?
His readers know: because he is a master storyteller and a daring
writer, and because, in his novels, he gives readers bright hope in
a dark world. His new book is an examplar of his extraordinary
work. Suspense is difficult to sustain; suspense that’s buoyed
steadily by humor, even as it deals with the most desperate of
circumstances, is nearly impossible—yet Koontz manages it here. As
in last year’s brilliant Odd Thomas, Koontz writes again in the
first person, employing a cleaner, more instantly accessible line
than in some of his other work (e.g., this year’s The Taking). His
narrator is Jimmy Tock, a pastry chef in a Colorado resort town. On
the day he was born, Jimmy’s dying grandfather predicted five
future dates that would be terrible for Jimmy; he might have
mentioned, but didn’t, the birth day itself, which sees a mass
slaying by a bitter, deranged circus clown in the hospital where
Jimmy is born. The bulk of the narrative concerns the first
terrible day, about 20 years later, when the vengeful son of that
clown takes Jimmy and a lovely young woman, Lorrie Hicks, hostage
in the local library, with an eye toward destroying the town; Jimmy
and the woman live to marry, but will they and their family survive
the four subsequent terrible days? Like most of Koontz’s novels,
this one pits good versus evil and carries a persuasive spiritual
message, about the power of love and family and the miracle of
existence. As such it deals with serious, perennial themes, yet
with its steady drizzle of jokes and witty repartee, it does so
with a lightness of touch that few other authors can match. Koontz
is a true original and this novel, one of his most unusual yet,
will leave readers aglow and be a major bestseller. If the literary
establishment would only catch on to him, it might be an
award-winner too.