Corrupted Humours

I loved this book. It was intriguing, funny and compulsively readable. The characters were also vivid and fresh. A fantastic literary mystery.

4 stars This is very hard to categorize or even describe. Different tangents...interesting, yet appearOMG to wander...marital/romantic, sexuality, medical, psychological...all coalesce for a satisfying ending. Definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Those who appreciate more subtle/darker humor, insight into human behavior (even that which we don’t care to examine in ourselves), and intelligent writing should enjoy this. It is unique and well-crafted.

Corrupted Humours is an intriguing combination of romance, mystery, and late-life midlife crisis. Reporter and novelist Berk is assigned to investigate a bizarre death on the operating table. Albert Snaedeker exploded in mid-operation for a polyp. The explanation was that he failed to fully clear his system so he still had a lot of gas in his system, gas that ignited under the heat of the cauterizing surgical tool. Yikes!

Beck begins the investigation, aided and prodded by his young lover, a college student whose love he cannot believe will last. He might be right, he’s in his sixties. He is also writing the story of The Chatelaine who we quickly realize is the wife of the surgeon in the Snaedeker explosion.

We also learn that more than one person may have had a motive to kill Snaedeker, but how could it have been done?

I liked Corrupted Humours though I am not sure that I like that I liked it. The people are all so awful, even Beck. He is kind, he is generous, he loses love because he isn’t into degrading women. I will confess I think his affair with the college student is gross and while it is not an abuse of power or coercive in any way, it still is gross. His boss is gross, Theresa is gross, the surgeon is gross, Snaedeker is gross, the imagined story of the chatelaine (if it is imagined) is gross, and yet it all comes together into a compelling narrative and an intriguing and interesting story.

Corrupted Humours will be released on August 29th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

Corrupted Humours at Bottom Turtle Press

Donald Friedman author site

3.75 stars / This review will be posted at BookwormishMe.com on 25 August 2020.


Owen Berk is called upon to investigate the untimely death of his boss’s cousin, one psychologist named Albert Snaedeker. Albert was in for a routine colonoscopy/polypectomy when he met his end by exploding on the operating table. The hospital maintains that Albert simply neglected to properly prepare for the procedure, but Albert’s family isn’t so sure.

Berk sets off on a path of questions that lead him to find questionable behaviors and some soul searching of his own. Along the way, he decides that he’s going to turn this investigation into a novel. Corrupted Humours is a book within a book - Berk’s path through his own life and relationships while he tries to find an answer for Snaedeker’s death, and the fictionalized accounting of his death which he writes.

Be prepared, this isn’t your average novel. Berk is a 70-something who still runs daily, writes for a literary magazine, and does a tad bit of investigation on the side. There is definitely some sex, drugs and a little bit of romance. Berk isn’t quite sure what to make of his own life, let alone the ones he’s exploring. If Berk weren’t in his 70s, I would almost call this a “coming of age” novel.

I wanted to love this, based on the crazy concept of a human exploding in an OR, but I didn’t love it. I enjoyed it. I liked it. I got a little lost with the book within a book because the two stories overlap quite a bit. If you can keep track of the separate but similar storylines, you’ll be okay.

Description

A literary mystery – antic and amusing, refreshingly profane, elaborately staged, compulsively  readable

Corrupted Humours opens with the explosion of Albert Snaedeker on the operating table during  routine surgery. The deceased’s cousin, an oil heir and publisher of Angle magazine, assigns his reporter and sometime novelist, Owen Berk, to investigate.  

Berk not only pursues the whodunnit,/howdunnit questions but, intrigued by the bizarre death and the people surrounding it, transforms them into characters in a novel. In the story, Snaedeker's surgeon's depressed wife is indoctrinated into the world of S/M and has an imagined flowering. Berk's novel is woven into the framing narrative until the plots converge as Berk falls in love with the woman, wondering how much of his passion is for her, how much for the fantasy figure he has turned her into.

Firstly I want to thank netgalley for the eARC of Corrupted Humors it was a wonderful read. My thoughts are my own.

This is very hard to categorize or even describe. Different tangents.

Those who appreciate more subtle/darker humor, insight into human behavior (even that which we don’t care to examine in ourselves), and intelligent writing should enjoy this. It is unique and well-crafted.

This is an unusual(!) book and it helped for me to read background and other reader/reviewer feedback to get some context prior to diving in. It's very cerebral (I learned new words and medical 'stuff') and found the author's style very 'literary' - perhaps like Richard Russo? It was a book within a book - the main character (Owen Berk) works for a literary magazine and his boss asks him investigate the death of a prominent psychiatrist (related to the boss) who exploded on the table during a routine medical procedure. Owen decides to write a novel about the situation (hence book within a book) and the story alternates between the two. It covers a lot of ground - spirituality, mystery, medicine, humor, life's purpose, art, writing, dreams, skiing, etc. (what a range of topics!). It's going to appeal to a special type of reader. Thanks to #NetGalley for an advanced copy.

Readers will want to strap themselves in for this fast-paced weirdly wonderful tale of an exploding body and the investigation (and related novel) behind it.