The Resurrectionist ~ Jack O’Connell

The Resurrectionist by Jack O’Connell is an unsettling story of consciousness and coma – of limbo, the place between life and death. Or the gap between our conscious world and another alternate consciousness of which we can only speculate but never visit. O’Connell has us visit.

Sweeney’s son Danny has fallen into a coma, and after futile results from the original diagnosis, he moves him to the renowned Peck clinic, operated by the mysterious Peck’s- father and daughter. O’Connell tells his story on two parallel levels: One in the ‘real’ world and one in a comic book world. But really, the story lies in that edgy intersection of the two.

Sweeney is determined to bring his son back to consciousness, and is torn between his suspicions of the intent of the Peck’s and of a nomadic biker gang that has other ideas for Danny and his father. Danny had been enamored of a gothic comic book titled Limbo. O’Connell interweaves Danny’s story with that of the comic book, the story of another nomadic group – sideshow circus freaks who are on their own quest as imagined by their visionary leader, Chicken Boy who falls into trace like states and receives messages from his father.

The hook is that Danny is literally “lost in Limbo“, having fallen into a deep coma following his reading of the climax of the Limbo comic series. The road leading t what hsi father hopes is Danny’s recovery and his own redemption is the subject of O’Connell’s dark fantasy.

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