Here is the beginning of the review for this book on my blog:


Apart from the fact that it is a challenging, pleasing, provocative, wise-cracking read, there are at least three more reasons Declan Burke's most recent novel, Absolute Zero Cool, should be made obligatory reading for every innocent young student wishing to dedicate his or her life to any form of art, and who takes on the loan necessary to enroll in an institute of higher education, whether it be for acting, painting, sculpting or "creative writing". I will come back to the three reasons, towards the end of this review.

Below are a few paragraphs describing what the novel is about, from the main character's point of view.

You are the half-finished, perhaps never-to-be-finished, creation of a struggling crime writer. Even he has put you to one side, and forgotten you, and the only people who may still be aware of your existence are his former literary agent and an employee of the Irish Arts Council. Apart from the fact that he has left you in Limbo, you don't like the way the author, a man with a strong resemblance to Declan Burke, has created you. In fact, many, many elements of his discarded manuscript displease you.

He has given you a name, sometimes abbreviated to its first initial, that would be more at home in a novel written in German, in Prague, at the beginning of the 20th century, or in a normal, classical Swedish crime novel by somebody like Henning Mankell. In the Irish crime writer's hands you have become a hospital porter, selling candy bars to your elderly charges, cleaning their vomit up after them, and committing the occasional act of euthanasia. If you could have your own way, you'd probably ask the writer's agent to propose the manuscript to somebody like Mankell, or Arnaldur Indridason, to polish up your character in a conventional, Scandinavian crime, while giving you an Irish first name, and making you more of a hero than has this author, in whose judgement you have no confidence, and from whose jaded hands you have fallen into oblivion. However, you are destined to be the creature of this Burke-like writer, and the only hope you have of getting some self-respect is by preying on him until you can get him to bend his will to your own idea of a satisfactory plot. To achieve your objective, you are willing to push him to that level of psychological distress at which he will betray his own family's security in order to satisfy your ego.

The author, who may not really be who he thinks he is, finally gets the long awaited retreat, financed by the Irish Arts Council, that will give him the peace and quiet to finish a novel that may, at long last, encounter some financial success. His wife, who has made incredible self-sacrifice so that her man can practise his craft, sends him away content in the knowledge that he now has the space in which to come up with the goods. You, however, Bill, wait for the right moment, at the retreat, and then you appear to him, screwing up any possibility of his finishing the new novel before he has come to terms with you. You make threats, you ask him to rename you, you tell him you are worthy of a more noble crime than topping old people in distresss. He tells you he doesn't have the time to take care of you.

You work out a deal with the crime writer. You propose to rewrite a large part of the manuscript yourself, saying that this will ease the burden he has to carry. He knows better...

If you are interested, you can check out the rest of the review here:
http://johnjgaynard.blogspot.com/2011/11/review-of-declan-burkes-absolute-zero.h... ( )

While at an artists’ retreat, our unnamed narrator, an author (is he or isn’t he Declan himself?), is visited by a man calling himself Billy Karlsson, which just happens to be the name of a character in one of the manuscripts the author has long since set aside. And while it’s all well and good that the author has moved on to a successful career writing comedic crime novels, Billy complains that he’s been stuck in limbo the past five years and would like very much to move the show along toward being published.

Not only that, Billy is no longer satisfied with his original incarnation and has some suggestions on which way his story should go. Bemused by this person who has taken on the persona of one of his characters, the author patiently explains that as a new father and somewhat successful author he’s in a much happier state of mind than he was when he initially drafted Billy’s dark tale of a hospital porter performing euthanasia on elderly patients, and as such isn’t really sure he can recapture that vibe… or that he wants to.

Billy’s persistent, however, and oddly charming, eventually convincing the author to get on board with the revisions. In fact, Billy offers to help things along by contributing more than just ideas, he’ll take over the rewrites of the ‘novel within the novel’ that his character was writing in the initial draft. And with that, Absolute Zero Cool starts a slow burn that ultimately builds to a literally explosive conclusion.

On the surface, the book offers the relatively straightforward, if unconventionally presented, stories of two men struggling to make sense of the women in their lives and to sort out whether the role of being a father – and the emotional and financial responsibility that comes with it – hinders unfettered creativity. Beneath the surface, however, Absolute Zero Cool represents a sneak peek inside the head of an artist fighting with his muse, struggling with the inherently conflicting impulses of humans to be both creative and destructive, and provides a devastating look at the stress and psychological demons which can result from such struggles.

If you’re looking for a book to casually read while waiting at the doctor’s office or to provide you an offhand chapter or two to page through before bed, well, stay the hell away from this book. It’s not a passive experience. Quite the contrary, Absolute Zero Cool is a novel that gives the reader no quarter, demanding that you keep up with the increasingly complex philosophical debates and psychological chess game occurring between the author and Billy, whose respective revisions to the text – and outlook on life – are clearly on a collision course. And when that collision occurs, it will leave you shaking your head (after you’ve cleaned up and reassembled the exploded bits) at Declan Burke’s mastery of language and storytelling skills.

Wickedly sharp, darkly humorous, uncommonly creative and brilliantly executed, Absolute Zero Cool is unquestionably absolutely cool. ( )