| Product: |
The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart |
| Date: |
18/09/05 (441 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: well written, great descriptions of characters and scenes
Disadvantages: repetitive "porn - dice - ophy"
I have to admit, I am at a stage of my life where I am starting to question the conventional rules of society. Question, why we work these insanely long hours. Question, why we are so constrained by what others think. Question, why we do not do the things we would like to do more often. It is for this reason that I was quite intrigued when I heard about a book he had heard about in a magazine that dealt with a man who decided to abandon these rules of society and make all his decisions on the basis of a dice roll.
Luke Rhinehart is a psychatrist, married with two children, who after years of engaging in the same routine becomes rather bored with his daily life. Bored of doing the same thing every day, bored of arguing with his wife, bored of being predictable and restrained. One evening, tempted to do something that the conventional rules of society would frown upon, he decides that he should try something else. He picks up a dice and says to himself, "If I roll a one, I will follow my temptation. If I role any other number, I will do what is expected from me." The unlikely thing happens, and he rolls a one.
From this day forward, he becomes the "Dice Man". The rules are simple - all decisions are to be based on dice rolls, the options are controlled by him. The catch? There always has to be a slightly uncomfortable option. This little game takes Luke down dangerous paths, into a new and risky world that soon leads to his own personal freedom from daily constraints. But his own personal freedoms, as dictated by the dice, slowly start to impact people around him: his family, his neighbours, his patients and colleagues. Life becomes unpredictable.
It is interesting to note that Luke Rhinehart is the name of both the author and the main character. Most of the book is written in first person, although it occassionally drops into third person. Rhinehart, the author, forwarns the reader early of this fact - his writing is to be as unpredictable as decisions being made by dice.
When I first started reading this book, I was rather intrigued and found it quite enjoyable. Rhinehart's writing style starts of being superb, drawing you in and making you want to carry on with reading. The pure honesty about society and people's thoughts causes the reader to chuckle from time to time. And in the beginning the reader is keen to know how far this little dice game will go.
But then Rhinehart starts to fail. The problem with the storyline is its repetitiveness. Around page 200, the reader starts to realise that most of Rhinehart's dice decisions are sexual in nature: who he should experience intimacy with, what positions he should use, what kind of roles he should slip into. Very few decisions are of a different nature. This quickly becomes very boring to any reader who bought the book for non-pornographic pleasures. Those readers who get excited about pornographic descriptions will not be disappointed: Rhinehart goes into graphic detail of sexual positions and experiences that convential lovemakers would never have known existed. While one has to applaud Rhinehart for his ability to describe the scenes so vividly, the writing is truly obscene. I felt almost embarrassed reading it and found myself holding the book right under my nose when reading it in public. Unlike in the situation of being faced with an obscene movie, the reader is stuck with reading through hundreds of pages of this erotic dribble, in the hope that the story line might change at some stage.
The storyline does change about two hundred pages later. Rhinehart does make decisions other than sexual ones on the basis of the dice - and interesting ones at that. However, when the reader finally reaches page 541, he is left with the feeling that it all could have been shortened to about 250 or 300 pages and would have been a better, less obscene piece of writing.
Like his erotic scenes, Rhinehart also manages to capture the characters into their minutest details, describing both their personalities and their looks to the reader in such a way that they spring to life. Rhinehart himself comes across as an evil person, an unlikeable character who thinks of himself only and will follow the dice at whim, even if it hurts other people. The reader feels sorry for every single person who has become victim of the "dice decisions".
My opinion? Interestingly, this book has a sequel called "The search for the Dice Man". An extract is contained in the paperback copy that I obtained. The extract sounds intriguing as well - and based on it alone, I probably would have bought the book. I am afraid to say, however, that I am too worried that I will have to wade through another few hundred pages of the same type of pornographic writings as I had to with the prequel. It is with a heavy heart and a roll of a dice that I have to tell my readers that I will not be reading the sequel. Equally, despite having to give Rhinehart credit for being an extremely talented writer, I simply cannot recommend this piece of "porn-dice-ophy" to the general public.
And I shall certainly not be basing my decisions on the roll of dice.
***Further info***
Harper Collins
ISBN 0 00 651390 5
Price: £7.99 (new paperback)
Summary: A well-written book with interesting characters that becomes repetitive with its overly sexual theme
|
|
