Classic book review: "Memoirs of an invisible man" by H. F Saint

"Memoirs of an Invisible man" by H.F. Saint, published in 1987, is a worthy successor to H.G. Wells' classic "The Invisible Man." It paints a gripping and plausible a picture of what a modern society might do to a man who was accidentally rendered invisible by a nuclear accident, which is as unforgettable as Wells' iconic novel.

 

This is a really really good book, to an extent which was not remotely captured by the mildly entertaining comedy film it inspired starring Chevy Chase and Darryl Hannah and with the late Sam Neill doing a brilliant job of capturing some of the menace of the villain from the book, which is the character he plays, while fitting in with the light comedy of the film version.

The central character and first-person narrator, Nick Halliwell, is a New York securities analyst, who had never done anything terribly remarkable before the fateful day he accepts an invitation to a press conference at which a brilliant scientist is going to demonstrate a new and potentially ground-breaking nuclear energy technology.

To impress his girlfriend, a left-wing journalist, he invites her along. Unknown to him until too late, she shares the details of the event with some of her friends who are environmental activists of the most unhinged kind, who decide to upstage the press conference by staging a demonstration outside. The unhinged part is that their plan includes cutting off electricity to the building.

Nick finds out just too late that the demonstrators are going to cut off the electricity supply and that that the research institute who are hosting the press conference are about to demonstrate the capabilities of a nuclear process which generates energy and is self-sustaining but relies on control systems and containment fields which use external power.

Given the title of the book, it's not really much of a spoiler to say that one of the side-effects of the ensuing disaster is to turn Nick invisible. He recovers consciousness as a mysterious US Federal agency is investigating the site, and he nearly approaches them for help, but before he can do so, he overhears enough of their conversation to realise that this might be a very bad idea.

The rest of the book is an extraordinarily exciting, surprisingly believeable,  entertaining and sometimes darkly humorous account of Nick's attempts to stay out of the hands of the Federal government while obtaining food, shelter, earning money over the telephone using the unique sources of information available to him, and most difficult of all, finding human companionship.

The particular strength of the book is the way in which HF Saint imagines and very convincingly describes in great details some of the problems which might arise as a result of a human being becoming invisible, and how Nick gets round them. The Feds are not the only hazard he faces: at one point during a rainstorm he is spotted, injured and very nearly killed by a group of teenage boys who can see the water which has lodged in his hair and clothes.

It is also a pen portrait of a particular time in society, the late 20th century just before the internet age, when the book was written, published and set: if it had been written a few years later certain aspects o he book might have been quite different. 

Surprisingly, after writing this one great book, H.F. Saint has never published anything else. But far better to write and publish one fantastic book than ten bad ones.

You can buy "Memoirs of an invisible Man" from Amazon at:

Memoirs of an Invisible Man (Penguin fiction): Amazon.co.uk: Saint, H.F.: 9780140099980: Books

Very strongly recommended.

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