Publishers Weekly
At once intriguing and preposterous, Kureishi's slender new novel starts off promisingly. Adam, the narrator, a famous writer in his 60s, is approached at a party by an attractive and mysterious young man named Ralph. Ralph claims to be an old man whose brain has been transplanted into a new, younger body. The bodies come from dead young people, whose deaths seem eerily convenient for those who want to become "Newbodies." At first Adam does not believe the story. But Ralph's entreaties are so convincing-and appealing-that Adam agrees to temporarily transplant his brain into the body of a man of 25. After all, "Who hasn't asked: Why can't I be someone else? Who, really, wouldn't want to live again, given the chance?" The science behind the idea is vague and silly, but Kureishi probably never meant it to be convincing. Instead, he sends Adam on various soul-searching journeys in his new body, which was "stocky and as classically handsome as any sculpture in the British Museum." Adam waxes on his life in a new body, has loads of hot sex and eventually settles at a spiritual retreat on a Greek island. But soon he yearns to return to his old body-warts and all-and to his wife and former life in London. But menacing forces conspire against him, and he soon realizes the grave consequences of his decision. The novel is too short and sketchy to fully explore the ramifications of its premise. Kureishi, through Adam, has many things to say about life in an alien body, but these musings never really cohere. And the creepiness of the setup, which could have made for spine-tingling reading, never amounts to much. Still, the writing, as in Kureishi's other novels (Intimacy; The Buddha of Suburbia), is crisp and precise, and the book should satisfy his fans until something more substantial comes along. (Feb. 24) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Part Faust, part Twilight Zone, this novel seems like a new direction for the English author of The Buddha of Suburbia and the screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette. An aging writer in London hears of a new surgical procedure that implants one's brain, soul, and memory inside a different and younger body. Compelled by the promise of a new life, he chooses one that looks like that of a former male model. He quickly finds that both women and men are passionately attracted to the new Leo Raphael Adams, who soon leaves London, travels through Europe in high style, and ends up on a remote Greek isle. His troubles begin there when he runs into a ruthless tycoon who also turns out to be a "newbody" and who decides that Leo should donate his body, immediately, to the rich man's sick brother. Barely escaping with his life, Leo returns to London to try and resume his old identity before his new one is terminated prematurely, but there's nowhere to turn. The aging and melancholic writer's philosophical takes on life as a libertine give substance to this brief, swiftly paced story of life in the fast lane veering dangerously out of control. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.-Jim Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The ever-interesting Kureishi (Intimacy, 1999, etc.) conjures up a thought-provoker about an aging man who gets a young new body-and lives to regret it. When the well-known London author and screenwriter Adam is in his mid-60s and in degenerating health, he meets a man far too young to have seen some of Adam's earliest productions-yet who swears that he did see, and admire, them. In a nutshell? The man, named Ralph, is actually older than Adam: he's had "surgery" to transplant his own brain-still perfectly good-into the hale and handsome body of a man who died young. Why not do the same, he urges Adam: have another fling at all the richness of life, another chance to push on in an already distinguished career? Adam tells his understanding wife that he'll be away for six months-and, lo, Adam goes for the operation, picks out a good-looking new body from the many on display, then jaunts off to Europe for a half year of travel, food, sex, exploration, and adventure. But being suddenly a sought-after object of desire, fun enough at first, has its drawbacks-and dangers. Eluding one lover after another, Adam ends up on a Greek island doing menial work at a "spiritual center" for women run by the imperious and no-longer-young Patricia. Not only does Patricia thaw in a trice and fall hopelessly in lust with Adam, but she inadvertently acquaints him with the indescribably rich and yacht-owning playboy Matte, who reveals himself not only oh-most-evil, not only himself a "Newbody," like Adam, but, for reasons never quite convincing to the reader, quite ready to track Adam down wherever he may flee in order to "kill" Adam and snatch his great body for his own uses. The outcome will be whollydifferent indeed from anything Adam could ever have wanted. Readable, intriguing, sometimes even touching, but really just a riff on a "what if" medical question.