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The Exquisite
Henry, a New Yorker left destitute by circumstance and obsession, is plucked from vagrancy by a shadowy outfit whose primary business is arranging for staged murders of anxiety-ridden clients unhinged by the “events downtown” and seeking to -experience—and live through—their own carefully executed assassinations. When Henry joins this nefarious crew, which includes a beautiful blonde tattooist named Tulip, contortionist twins, and a woman referred to only as “the knockout,” he becomes inextricably linked to its ringleader, the mysterious herring connoisseur Mr. Kindt, whose identity can be traced through twists and turns all the way back to the corpse depicted in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson.
Mirrored by a concurrently running story set in a hospital where Henry and Mr. Kindt are patients attended to by a certain Dr. Tulp, the mysteries surrounding Mr. Kindt’s past, Henry’s fate, and murders both staged and real begin to unravel in the most extraordinary ways. Substantive, stylish, and darkly comic, The Exquisite is a skillful dissection of reality, human connection, and the very nature of existence.
Mirrored by a concurrently running story set in a hospital where Henry and Mr. Kindt are patients attended to by a certain Dr. Tulp, the mysteries surrounding Mr. Kindt’s past, Henry’s fate, and murders both staged and real begin to unravel in the most extraordinary ways. Substantive, stylish, and darkly comic, The Exquisite is a skillful dissection of reality, human connection, and the very nature of existence.
246 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Laird Hunt
33 books488 followersLaird Hunt is an American writer, translator and academic.
Hunt grew up in Singapore, San Francisco, The Hague, and London before moving to his grandmother's farm in rural Indiana, where he attended Clinton Central High School. He earned a B.A. from Indiana University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He also studied French literature at the Sorbonne. Hunt worked in the press office at the United Nations while writing his first novel. He is currently a professor in the Creative Writing program at University of Denver. Hunt lives with his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, in Boulder, Colorado.
Hunt grew up in Singapore, San Francisco, The Hague, and London before moving to his grandmother's farm in rural Indiana, where he attended Clinton Central High School. He earned a B.A. from Indiana University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He also studied French literature at the Sorbonne. Hunt worked in the press office at the United Nations while writing his first novel. He is currently a professor in the Creative Writing program at University of Denver. Hunt lives with his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, in Boulder, Colorado.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 20, 2022
Do you ever start reading a book and immediately picture one of the characters as an actor? I pegged Aris Kindt as Anthony Hopkins...and the rest of the book played out as a movie in my head the whole time I was reading it. (This is a good thing. I love movies.) I also saw some mentions of it having a David Lynchian quality and I cannot disagree.
In the afterword, author Laird Hunt mentions W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn as an inspiration. (Having never read The Rings of Saturn, I read the first few pages online and could quickly see the tip of the hat to Sebald's book.)
An homage to Sebald's book.
Plus the aftermath of 9/11 & NYC.
A bit of Kafka thrown in.
And a heavy debt owed to Rembrant's painting "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp".
It equals a great base for a murky world of crime & deception.
Or deception & crime.
There's a bit of a dream-like feel as the story unravels in alternating chapters, differing versions of reality that travel criss-crossing paths, eventually intersecting & colliding.
Exquisite in both the beautiful & the ugly, the before & the after, the mundane & the extraordinary.
Recommended.
In the afterword, author Laird Hunt mentions W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn as an inspiration. (Having never read The Rings of Saturn, I read the first few pages online and could quickly see the tip of the hat to Sebald's book.)
An homage to Sebald's book.
Plus the aftermath of 9/11 & NYC.
A bit of Kafka thrown in.
And a heavy debt owed to Rembrant's painting "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp".
It equals a great base for a murky world of crime & deception.
Or deception & crime.
There's a bit of a dream-like feel as the story unravels in alternating chapters, differing versions of reality that travel criss-crossing paths, eventually intersecting & colliding.
Exquisite in both the beautiful & the ugly, the before & the after, the mundane & the extraordinary.
Recommended.
June 26, 2007
The Exquisite belongs to a rare class of literary fiction that puts a premium on mood while delivering a surprisingly compelling read. The novel's back cover declares it "an East Village Noir," which vastly overstates the case: The Exquisite lacks the terse dialogue, spastic gunplay, and intricate plotting that are the hallmarks of the genre. Instead, we're presented with an unusual friendship between a hapless thief named Henry and Mr. Kindt, an older gentleman with a passion for herring who may be a crime boss, a descendant of the subject of Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson, or both.
While The Exquisite doesn't have a plot per se, its narrative thrust is stronger than Paul Auster's noir-ish New York Trilogy or André Breton's ode to the nocturnal, Nadja. And it possesses a cast of characters right out of a David Lynch film. Perhaps Hunt's greatest accomplishment here is that a book populated with contortionist twins and a tattoo artist named Tulip comes off as spooky rather than silly. Hunt's novel has atmosphere, and plenty of it. Indeed, the moody short movie on the author's website (lairdhunt.net) suggests that a competent director could craft a credible film noir out of Henry's nighttime rambles, which take him "[d]own dark, windswept hallways, across empty public spaces, past vanished water-tasting stations and stopped-up springs, along oily waterways littered with rusting barges and sleeping gulls, down abandoned subway tunnels and the sparking guts of disused power stations."
Henry tells us he used to be someone, "then that stopped," but his meaning isn't altogether clear. The Exquisite's secondary story line—set in a hospital—suggests Henry might literally be the shadow of his former self. While it never becomes clear whether these scenes precede, follow, or coincide with the main story, it's a hell of a lot of fun to puzzle through.
(Excerpted from review previously published in Village Voice:
http://www.villagevoice.com/books/064...])
While The Exquisite doesn't have a plot per se, its narrative thrust is stronger than Paul Auster's noir-ish New York Trilogy or André Breton's ode to the nocturnal, Nadja. And it possesses a cast of characters right out of a David Lynch film. Perhaps Hunt's greatest accomplishment here is that a book populated with contortionist twins and a tattoo artist named Tulip comes off as spooky rather than silly. Hunt's novel has atmosphere, and plenty of it. Indeed, the moody short movie on the author's website (lairdhunt.net) suggests that a competent director could craft a credible film noir out of Henry's nighttime rambles, which take him "[d]own dark, windswept hallways, across empty public spaces, past vanished water-tasting stations and stopped-up springs, along oily waterways littered with rusting barges and sleeping gulls, down abandoned subway tunnels and the sparking guts of disused power stations."
Henry tells us he used to be someone, "then that stopped," but his meaning isn't altogether clear. The Exquisite's secondary story line—set in a hospital—suggests Henry might literally be the shadow of his former self. While it never becomes clear whether these scenes precede, follow, or coincide with the main story, it's a hell of a lot of fun to puzzle through.
(Excerpted from review previously published in Village Voice:
http://www.villagevoice.com/books/064...])
January 9, 2008
Reminded me a bit of David Lynch except for the fact that it wasn't bad and was meant to be understood.
August 3, 2010
I was leaning 3 stars, but it had a fantastic ending, and I finally understood it all. This is a very strange book, surreal, and not firmly grounded in reality, but then, at times, it is. A wild ride, with moments of brilliance. As for the "bizarro" aspect I'd say it leans more towards surreal than bizarre.
July 7, 2009
The terms noir and mystery are likely to be affixed to this book, and its mood belongs to the genre. It is foremost a work of literary fiction, meaning a type of storytelling where the emphasis is placed more on the way of telling - the language, imagery, verbal stunts, metaphors, and various linguistic tropes - then on the story itself and its delivery.
The narrative, in fact, is strictly non-linear, abstract, and confusing...deliberately so, which adds to the overall stylistic effect of Mr. Hunt's dark mystery. There is humor, head-scratching, and moments of subtle persuasion within the two main, crisscrossing story lines involving the narrator Henry, a kind of existential thief, and Mr. Kindt, an eccentric old man, a kind of crime boss with charming interests, personal magnitude, and ambiguous purposes.
To borrow a line from the book the story performs: "...instances of exaggeration for the purposes of provoking artifice..." Hunt's fiction owes a debt to Kafka, which is a fine thing, and he permeates the book with a dream like quality where absurdities make sense and the reader is transported to a deeper, metaphorical meaning beneath the events.
The narrative, in fact, is strictly non-linear, abstract, and confusing...deliberately so, which adds to the overall stylistic effect of Mr. Hunt's dark mystery. There is humor, head-scratching, and moments of subtle persuasion within the two main, crisscrossing story lines involving the narrator Henry, a kind of existential thief, and Mr. Kindt, an eccentric old man, a kind of crime boss with charming interests, personal magnitude, and ambiguous purposes.
To borrow a line from the book the story performs: "...instances of exaggeration for the purposes of provoking artifice..." Hunt's fiction owes a debt to Kafka, which is a fine thing, and he permeates the book with a dream like quality where absurdities make sense and the reader is transported to a deeper, metaphorical meaning beneath the events.
January 15, 2020
Uno dei migliori libri sull’11 settembre, sebbene l’11 settembre non venga mai nominato esplicitamente, e forse proprio per questo, pur parlando dei traumi post-9/11 è un libro che riesce a mantenere una sua freschezza al di là degli eventi storici e a affrontare invece diverse dinamiche e reazioni a un crollo della realtà. È un thriller che in quarta di copertina si paragona, per qualche imperscrutabile motivo, a Chandler, anche se di Chandler non ha proprio nulla. Siamo più a un crocevia tra il primo Auster che profuma di DeLillo e un il Lethem degli esordi però in versione più decisamente più tetra. Qui ci sono due linee narrative intrecciate, in una il protagonista Henry, finisce in una strana accolita di personaggi guidata da un eccentrico e inquietante Mr. Kindt che mette in scena dei finti omicidi, commissionati da persone che cercano di inscenare e superare la propria morte per poter poi affrontare la realtà dopo gli “events downtown." Nell’altra linea narrativa parallela invece Henry e Mr. Kindt sono ricoverati nella stessa stanza di un ospedale. New York viene fin da subito definita come “una città di sottili simulacri, di superfici ingannevoli” e il riferimento a Baudrillard è più che chiaro (ma dietro c’è anche Blanchot, citato in esergo), tanto più che per tutto il libro Laird Hunt continua a mettere in scena simulacri surrogati di realtà, a partire dal dipinto di Rembrandt che raffigura una scena di un’anatomia, un po’ come gli omicidi che mettono in scena i protagonisti del libro sono simulacri surrogati di una morte reale.
February 24, 2021
Fairly entertaining and creepy novel about a confused young man named Henry who becomes involved with an old sinister man named Aris Kindt--modeled I thought somehow on a Sidney Greenstreet character. The book is narrated in the first person and done so through an unreliable confessor, which doesn't improve the reader's sense of the character's worth, interest, or ultimately his fate. The writing is well done though the character (who has mental problems, evidently) seems a bit willowy, a bit of a bender with the slightest breeze, to rate more than a curious interest. Another book that suggests the sicker underbelly of New York City.
January 22, 2021
Halfway through the book I had an idea of how the book was going to end, and when it happened I had to eye-roll. I didn’t like any of the characters aside from Mel- “The Hat”.
February 25, 2013
This was an interesting book. It is a book about Henry and seems to be about his slide in and out of reality post 9/11 and how he coped after that in a sense. Or it just happened to be set post 9/11, which Henry describes as "the events downtown."
Henry meets up with a Mr. Kindt, who hires him to do fake murders for hire. The book parallels this along with Henry's stay in what seems to be some sort of institution and the choice for the reader is which is the reality.
It's all told from Henry's point of view and some of the writing is lucid and the other is more train of thought (medication induced?). Overall an interesting book to read and I think it is more about the writing style than the actual story that makes it good.
Henry meets up with a Mr. Kindt, who hires him to do fake murders for hire. The book parallels this along with Henry's stay in what seems to be some sort of institution and the choice for the reader is which is the reality.
It's all told from Henry's point of view and some of the writing is lucid and the other is more train of thought (medication induced?). Overall an interesting book to read and I think it is more about the writing style than the actual story that makes it good.
October 18, 2007
Throughout my reading of this novel, I felt envy and chagrin that I had not written it myself. Many was the time I thought Laird Hunt had stolen my magic-lantern dreams somehow and through some authorial alchemy distilled them into the words that made up this book. (By dreams I mean not the nighttime Punch and Judy shows but the daytime cloud-bubbles of grandeur.) If there is a reason I did not rate this book five stars it is because I am still not sure that he didn't.
July 18, 2007
If David Lynch impregnated Paul Auster, or vise versa, and the no-doubt prodigiously coifed offspring, inspired by W.G. Sebald's THE RINGS OF SATURN, were to write a novel set in New York's East Village, this would be it. Funny, atmospheric and just kind a cool.
April 11, 2010
An interesting, literary noir with an unreliable narrator who takes you on a wild mind ride. It's post 9-11 and Henry is involved in an interesting enterprise, staging false murders for those who want the thrill of being targets. But what's real and what's part of Henry's imagination.
April 10, 2011
Similar in ways to 'The Impossibly', also by Laird Hunt, and one of the most interesting and strage books I've ever read. This one is less opaque, although there is still ambiguity as to what truly happened and what is truly going on.
May 7, 2024
2.75 cause sometimes i would get into it and other times it just felt so ……? like it was going no where and didn’t mean ANYTHING. the story line that faded in and out was interesting but I think the author was doing other things that I just don’t get.
October 30, 2007
i really liked this book, especially as i lived in the same neighborhood where the action takes place. It's like a contemporary Chandler in the east village.
December 15, 2007
A- Real quality work from Laird; I am VERY impressed. A bit of a wacky plot but totally engaging and I really, really enjoyed it! :)
Currently reading
November 18, 2008Really like the noir style of the book so far. There is a clever shifting between chapters that keeps the reader interested and yet isn't gimicy at all. Look forward to reading more.
July 30, 2012
I'm sure Laird Hunt can do wrong, but I've yet to be witness to it.
May 30, 2015
A curious dreamlike book about a man who may or may not be a killer, who may or may not be sane. He is taken in by an odd assortment of New Yorkers and one thing gradually leads to other things.
December 12, 2015
An interesting and entertaining novel from one of my new favorite authors.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews