What would life really be like for an invisible man ?, | Memoirs of an Invisible Man

If you give your copy away you will end up buying another | Memoirs of an Invisible Man | H. F. Saint

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	• Memoirs of an Invisible Man H. F. Saint Atheneum, 1987 - 396 pages average customer review:based on 67 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

loved it then, love it now

Read it twice 20 years ago, bought it as a gift for others before even finishing it, bought it again as a gift last month and re-read it again. An absolute delight all three times. Thank you, Mr. Saint!

What would life really be like for an invisible man ?,

Edgy, nail-biting, darkly humorous, sexy, paranoid, and brilliant speculation about what life might be like for a man who is accidentally turned invisible.

This is light-years better than any of the many other recent attempts to build stories on this theme, from books and TV to films, and sadly including the distinctly average Chevy Chase comedy which was actually inspired by this book.

The narrator and central character is Nick Halliwell, a 34-year old, single, securities analyst working for a New York firm, who is completely ordinary except perhaps for an overactive sex drive. As part of his campaign to seduce a beautiful New York Times journalist called Anne Epstein, Nick invites her to a demonstration by a company called MicroMagnetics of their new type of magnetic fields.

Unfortunately Anne has cartoonishly stereotypical left-wing/liberal views. She decides that the magnetic fields must be intended for nuclear fusion containment, and tips off a buch of lunatics called "Students for a Fair society" about the event. These idiots decide to stage the other sort of demonstration, which includes cutting off power to the building.

As Nick puts it later, he should have paid more attention to what the students were about to do and what effect this might have on the process which the head of the company describes.

"I knew that someone was about to shut off power to the building ... And this man was telling me that he had some loopy subatomic process roaring away, which sustained itself but whose control system used outside power. It is important to listen to exactly what people are saying ..."

Shortly afterwards Nick is in the toilet when the building is evacuated as someone realises what the students are about to do: perversely ignoring a security guard who asks if anyone is there, he remains in the building and consequently is still inside when the control system has its power cut off, and the equipment blows up, turning everything else inside the building invisible.

Nick is knocked out by the effect. He comes to his senses a few hours later, and realises that he has been turned invisible, by which time government investigators are looking at the building. He calls out to the nearest investigator, expecting them to offer help, and is astonished when the man speaks into his radio and even as he promises medical help, Nick can see that an ambulance and some paramedics are being told to leave. Then the investigators come towards the building with a net. Nick realises that they see him more as an invaluable asset than as another human being, and falling into their hands might be a very bad idea ...

The main plot of the story is about the determined efforts which the investigators, led by the horrible Colonel Jenkins, make to capture Nick, and Nick's equally determined attempts to stay out of their custody. The sub-plot is that invisibility does not affect Nick's considerable libido, and he misses female companionship more than anything else about his situation. And as if it were not difficult enough for an invisible man to find love, any attempt Nick makes to do so is almost certain to offer new opportunities for Colonel Jenkins to catch him.

The dramatic tension in the book is sometimes unbearably strong, and there are some very exciting action sequences: there are also some moments of extreme pathos and some hysterically funny or embarrassing scenes.

Contains a lot of speculation, much of it highly plausible, about how other human beings might react to an invisible person. He is still solid, still needs food, water, sleep & shelter, and has to open doors to pass through them, so he cannot avoid leaving evidence that a person is around. Some people confronted with evidence of Nick's presence assume he's a ghost, or that a burglar has been and gone, but other people who become aware of him react in much more dangerous ways.

"Memoirs of an invisible man" is one of the best novels I have ever read. As I prepare to post this I see that the number of Amazon.com reader reviews is now up to 64 and 62 including mine are five-stars, which must be almost unprecedented. But the book really is that good.

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If you give your copy away you will end up buying another

I read this book twice when it was first published. It has stuck vividly in my mind ever since, I have even had it enter my dreams occasionally. That's another way of saying that it is memorable. Buy it. Read it. Don't give your copy away because you will be like me, years later you end up buying another copy since you have to read it again.

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The Fastastic Journey

Nick Halloway is your average man with average wants until he runs into a little problem...

Actually, it's a big problem and he copes with it in an exemplary manner.

From the first moment when he wakes up after the unfortunate incident and describes his first thoughts (apparently caught on a ledge, for example) or when he tries to close his eyes and there is no change in his vision, to the end of the story, H F Saint brings the reader along a fantastic ride.

This is different from the past "Invisible Man" stories as he brings up things that the average visable man wouldn't think of and draws you into his reality.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable read that some just don't get.

If you have the thought in your mind that being invisible just isn't a reasonable idea, don't bother wasting the book that you won't want. There are few enough of them around for those of us that have lost ours. I won't say, "Don't waste your time" because I don't care about your snobby existence if you're concerned about the concept of being invisible. You see, dear reader, when you read a book with a concept that goes outside the norm, you have to be able to accept that concept, not complain that the book is ok, but you have to suspend your belief in physics, or something along those lines.

Put more succinctly perhaps, I would say that if you have no imagination, don't bother reading this. Perhaps you would be better off reading a science journal or the dictionary.

Just don't complain about this book not being realistic. IT IS FICTION. If you don't understand that, you shouldn't even be considering reading it.

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I'm only giving this 4 stars because.......

it's been over a decade since I read this and can't justify giving it 5 when it's been so long. That said, I enjoyed this quite a bit as I recall. What makes this a good read is that it is about an ordinary guy finding himself in an unbelievable scenario and how he faces the challenges. Many authors would be tempted to turn Joe Schmo instantly into James Bond or any other fantasy hero with all the smarts and moves. Fortunately, Saint avoids this and presents us with a story that we can almost believe is fact, not fiction. This is actually more a review of the film than the book. If you've seen the abomination of a film citing this novel as the source material and thought it was good, you should probably pass on giving this a read. Much like Bonfire of the Vanities, this was horribly miscast and butchered. How this ever fell into the hands of John Carpenter and Chevy Chase, I'll never understand. Someone else mentioned that Harrison Ford would have been better cast as the central character and I think that's pretty much dead on but the screenplay would have to have been trashed and put in the hands of someone who wanted to create something that actually represented the original and also in the hands of a more capable director. John Carpenter may be good at what he does but he was way out of his depth with this and was probably incapable of controlling Chase. Bottom line, the books very good if not great and the movie is a huge disappointment that really sucks.

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