At the Path's End

Well, what a denouement Neuropath has.

After the big twist that all of the book's blurbs promised we get a solid 60 pages of falling action that lead to an ending that isn't entirely what you'd expect. At least from a narrative standpoint. Sort of.

For, you see, in those pages upon pages of denouement we learn all about the intricacies of the creation of neuropaths and what is necessary for them to come about. And we get some of Bakker's more stripped down writing. His writing style is particularly on display in those parts where he attempts to describe things outside of normal experience.

Other writers might just not bother trying to describe these things in concrete ways, opting instead for the abstract and the absurd, but Bakker instead describes such things as the breakdown and alteration of perception in basic terms. This approach works, but it makes for a clinical explanation of something truly tremendous.

Though, that *is* the purpose of the book.

A phrase that keeps coming up in the book's end sequence is "the brain observing itself" and being able to get past the concept of the "mind." Although outside of regular experience it's possible that Bakker is suggesting that just that sort of a clinical perspective is the one that a brain aware of itself for what it truly is would take up. In that way his descriptions in this section of the book work, but otherwise concretizing the abstract is what I expect from Bakker, and he certainly delivers, but the ending as a whole left me wanting more.

When it comes down to it everything's too neatly tied up. It has the same impact as the ending of 1984 - hell, maybe that's just it. maybe they have the same kind of ending where the terror of the climax's trauma is so great that it taints the denouement's release of the reader's interests in the world of the book and leaves them with heavy things to think on.

So it works, but I wonder if it's maybe not a little out of place, I mean, all of the neurological stuff was neat, and the Chiropractor reveal was somewhat surprising too, but I think my biggest problem is that the book runs about 60 pages too long.

Aside from releasing Thomas, Nora, Ripley, and Frankie back into the world with a brand new perspective, the end of the book just doesn't accomplish much plot-wise. And when it comes to the endings of books that's generally what's focussed on.