Klausner’s Bookshelf
Midwest Book Review
February 2012
Julia
Hernandez leaves her husband City College Professor Raymond before
murdering Peter Neads Fisherman and then vanishing. Since she left him,
Raymond rationalizes her dumping him without warning as a “penis panic”
attack on her part.
He spots Julia in public near where they
lived in Lower Manhattan. The first time was at a grocer she never
shopped in buying items she never ate when they were married. The second
encounter is in Times Square in which Raymond chose flight rather than
confront Julia with why. His running saves his life from an observer
ready to push him into traffic. A distraught Raymond will soon learn why
Julia committed murder and fled. He finds out about the insect eggs in
her arm and the Simulacrum where anarchist wasps and a super genius
spider hive that collectively is a “man” ready to shove the professor
into traffic. These two insecticide species battle to steer or crash
humanity.
Sensation is an entertaining modern day
parable that looks at the accumulative stress of minor annoyances in a
world in which the individual has no wiggle room alternative. Told by
the spiders, Nick Mamatas looks at the Butterfly Effect of chaos in an
absolute controlled environment that makes independent thought that
breaks away from one’s profile impossible.
Although the two intelligent insect species are underdeveloped leaving readers with a void; fans will enjoy this allegorical look at New York, in which Seinfeld is right that as Queen sings in Bohemian Rhapsody “Nothing really matters, anyone can see nothing really matters.”