On A Beam Of Light (K-Pax - Gene Brewer)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	K-Pax - Gene Brewer
Date:	20/03/02 (200 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: interesting read with unusual characters

Disadvantages: slightly odd at times

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 perfect world – there are no wars, no schools and no governments. With no religion and no crime, it’s a world where a range of fully evolved life forms can coexist in perfect harmony. Sounds nice, huh? With no jobs and no formal educations, K-PAXIANS are free to do whatever they want, whenever the mood takes them. With a vested interest in the universe as a whole, prot travels all over the place just as he pleases, and for this reason, has ended up on Earth.

The story mainly takes the form of a report produced by Dr Brewer. There are transcripts of conversations, observations of port’s behaviour and descriptions of other patients in the hospital. Set over maybe 6 months, the book charts prot’s story, treatment and progression there. Dr Brewer believes he is severely deranged but not beyond help. Needless to say, he does not believe that his newest patient is the extra terrestrial he claims to be.

Through the novel there is the date – 17th August of that year – the day on which prot claims he will return to K-PAX, and when this day arrives there is a surprise in store for staff and patients alike. The epilogue is set almost 5 years later, nearing the date on which prot claims he will return to our world. Whether or not he ever does is unclear, al
though the fact that this is only book one in the trilogy suggests something to me at least.

I don’t usually read sci-fi, but this book was sent to me free from some website or other and I needed a new read, so I read it. It was pretty compelling when I got into it and at times I couldn’t I put it down – in deed, I ever forgoed (forwent?) the tempting copies of Metro one morning on the bus, favouring the chance to read this instead. All the way through, Dr Brewer is attempting to rationalise port’s behaviour, and all the way through, the reader has a hunch that a health care professional has got it wrong once more. The explanations sounds good in theory, but that doesn’t make them right.

Throughout the book there are strong psychological as well as psychiatric overtones – what Freud would say about how Brewer treats prot since he sees him to be like his father is something we might have discussed at A Level has this book been real news at the time. Told mainly in the first person with only slight variations to this, the book reads like fiction most of the time, and is not as jilted and bitty as one might expect from a scientific report. It’s a good read – so simple in many ways, and yet intriguing enough in places to get the reader really thinking.


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K-Pax by Gene Brewer

RRP £6.99

231 pages (paperback ’96 edition)

Published by Bloomsbury

ISBN 0747525471

Film of the book, staring Kevin Spacey, soon to be released here in the UK. More info at www.k-pax.com

Final interesting fact – a search for K-Pax on Yahoo brings up a link to dooyoo.

Summary: