K-Pax - Gene Brewer

Book reviews are kind of like film reviews – hard to write. This review is possibly going to be even harder. I do not want to give away too much. I do not want to over analyse (you will soon see why) and, to make matters worse, it has been made into a film which comes to cinemas on 12 April! K-PAX is humorous sci-fi. Not really my cup of tea at all – usually. I was sent the book free as part of a promotion and in keeping with my reputation as a wordy I had to read it. I never let a book beat me and this was going to be no exception. Why did I worry? This is possibly one of the most compelling books I have read. It is almost ...  Read the complete review

K-PAX is a book that defies prediction while tempting it on every page. I think that is why the book is so impossible to put down and ultimately so satisfying to finish. When I first read K-PAX it had already been given two follow ups, I see that Gene Brewer has written a fourth though the first was always the best so I don't expect much fanfare for the new book. K-PAX presents the case notes of psychiatris, Dr. "Brewer" (named after the author) as he attempts to discover the secrets of a patient who believes himself to be an alien. Brewer is also compelled to work to a deadline as the alien, "prot" claims he will soon be leaving the ...  Read the complete review

Do you know who you are? How do you know that your persona is actually you? How do you know that this really is Earth that we are living on? The most probable answer is that none of us can be entirely sure - of course we are all told that this is Earth and we are informed what is sane and insane, but who is really to judge what is sane and what is insane? Who are we to tell certain harmless people that they are mad and we are sane? Well of course society is the judge of that, just as society says that you are strange if you do not conform in your dress sense or way of expression - the sanity stage is just a more extreme version of a group of people's idea of ...  Read the complete review

Because as we will all soon learn, that’s the *only* way to travel intergallactically…. Meet prot. Nope that’s not a typo, that’s just how he spells it. Recently admitted to the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute, prot (rhymes with tote) isn’t that different from a lot of Dr Brewer’s other patients. Like many of them, he has dillusions, but rather unusually, these beliefs are shown by hypnosis be incredibly deep-seated, stretching as far back as his early childhood. In his mind, at least, prot does not come from EARTH but from a rather different planet called several light years away. K-PAX, as it’s called, seems to be the ...  Read the complete review

K-Pax is, in all honesty, one of the worst books I have read. I don't just mean worst in terms of pulp-fiction, in this case it is simply the Gene Brewer's inability to write in a style that will engage with his audience. Sadly he has chosen to write a sequel to it which probably means another printer somewhere has to waste their precious ink in producing what will most likely be another 200 pages of egotistical, indoctrinating drivel. Amazingly, this book has made it as a high-profile film starring Kevin Spacey, in this case I hope the director murders the story line and comes up with something interesting. K-Pax is a novel based on a series of ...  Read the complete review