What determines your identity? Is it the clothes you wear?
The way other people treat you? The stories, anecdotes and experiences you
have stored in your memory? When Nick Petrov wakes up in a hospital room,
his clothes are two sizes too big. Everyone treats him like a victim. And he
can't remember how he got there in the first place.
Nick Petrov is a
brilliant private investigator with a reputation for bringing missing
children safely home. Launched to tabloid stardom when he apprehended a
brutal serial killer named Gerald Reasoner, Petrov has become something of a
celebrity. When a woman approaches him, begging him to use his unique gifts
to find her missing daughter, Petrov's instincts sound an alarm. He senses
that she's concealing something. But is she lying to get Petrov's help or to
set him up? Three days later, just as he has amassed all the answers he
needs to close the case, they are swept away into oblivion.
Petrov awakes in a hospital bed, his memory of the past two weeks a
complete blank, his personality altered. He is tempted to just put the
trauma behind him and move on with his life, but there are too many things
holding him back. When he returns home, he discovers a photograph full of
strangers. In his office is a greeting card with a cryptic message inside,
both the receiver and the sender completely unknown. His bank account has
been augmented by a $450 check from a woman he can't remember. All of it
points to a case he cannot recall.
Digging for answers when he doesn't even know the questions, Petrov
begins to fear he is searching for the most elusive quarry he has ever
hunted: himself. Uncomfortable truths about his past rise up from this
haunting investigation, truths that force him to reinterpret the events of
the notorious Reasoner case from years before. But the closer Petrov comes
to solving the mystery, the more likely it seems that the monster he's
looking for is staring back at him in the mirror.
As Joyce Carol Oates so eloquently puts it, "Oblivion immerses us in Petrov's assailed consciousness as he navigates his way through a Dali landscape of baffling clues, memory lapses, and visual hallucinations.." (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
The New York Times Oblivion is so circuitously plotted that the reader's memory gets as much of a workout as Nick's does.
The New Yorker
Unforgetable...Oblivion is composed in spare yet often poetic prose...a new thriller from an unheralded master of suspense.
The Chicago Tribune - Dick Adler
...Could it be because Abrahams makes it seem so natural and easy that not enough people recognize the effort and the talent at work in his books? His 14th novel, the stunning thriller Oblivion, should--in a perfect world--put an end to that.
Entertainment Weekly - Jennifer Reese
Fantastic Grade A Review! - You know you're holding a first-rate thriller when you take it with you in the car to read at stoplights. Peter Abrahams' marvelous Oblivion tweaks the conventions of the Michael Connelly-style whodunit to create a novel that is at once classically suspenseful and completely fresh.
Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. Abrahams creates palpable empathy for the bruised Nick and his pitch-perfect prose is a joy.
Joyce Carol Oates
Neurological impairment is something we're all too likely to know firsthand, and Peter Abrahams's suspense novel Oblivion makes of this condition something rich and strange: an investigation into "lost time, like some dark forest in a fairy tale."
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by gofish not very good I just finished this as an audio book which is probably the only way I was able to get through it. I agree with another reviewer in so far as I also had trouble keeping up with clues and characters including the new, the lost and the found again. A... Read More
Rated of 5
by Philadelphia reader Hackneyed writing I expected to enjoy this book, based on the many positive reviews, but it was a huge disappointment. The characters were one-dimensional and trite and the writing was unimaginative. I didn't finish it, despite a noble try.
Rated of 5
by Melissa What book? Not sure if it was me or the book, but I found myself as forgetful as the protagonist and his amnesia! He would run into people, places etc. and not remember them and nor could I!! My mom and other friends have read the book and enjoyed it... Read More
Abraham's first book, The Fury of Rachel Monette, was published in 1980;
since then he has published a further 15 adult novels and, last year, his first
novel for teens,
Down The Rabbit Hole, the first in the Echo Falls Mystery series.
Although all his books fall broadly into the thriller category, to pigeonhole
him as simply a writer of thrillers is too simplistic. For a bibliography of his books see
BookBrowse. His latest novel for adults, End of Story, was
published in hardcover earlier this month, and the second in his Echo Falls
Mystery, Behind The Curtain, series will be published next week.
When asked which authors have most influences him he cites Vladimir Nabokov,
Graham Greene andDostoevsky, in particular Pale Fire, The
Comedians and Crime and Punishment.
He lives in Falmouth, Massachusetts, with his wife and four...
Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Welcome to Christine's life.
This is one of 3 readalike suggestions for Oblivion. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today's globalized world.
The story of an American family, middle class in middle America, ordinary in every way but one. But that exception is the beating heart of this extraordinary novel.
The best book I've read in a very long time and the first ever Bo Caldwell novel for me. I'd never before read anything about missionaries to China,...
read more
With a poetic voice, Ratner plunges us into this personal trial of a royal family wrenched from their home in Phnon Penh, Cambodia, during the late...
read more
First time novelist Vaddey Ratner captured my heart and senses in this novel based on her childhood in Cambodia. Her story transcends any news story...
read more
Amazon cuts off 5200 affiliates in Minnesota(Jun 19 2013) With Minnesota's online sales tax law due to take effect July 1, Amazon has played a familiar card by cutting ties with 5,200 members of its Associates...
Full Story
(302 words).
The Chicago Tribune - Dick Adler
Joyce Carol Oates
of 5
by gofish
of 5
by Melissa
Write your own review!
