Baby Killer | Frank Cassese
Nine-Banded Books
5 x 8 | 364 pages
No Future.
After losing his parents in a tragic accident, a young man discovers that he is heir to a substantial fortune, and alone in the universe. Ensconced in the memory-haunted environs of his suburban youth, he shuns the outside world to dwell in guarded solitude, seeking comfort in the precious familiarity of privately cultivated tastes and rituals and vanities. He adheres – with occasional deviation – to a strict rubric of diet, hygiene, and exercise. He reads Faulkner. He watches Law & Order. He rotates the playlist on his iPod. He studies his reflection in the mirror. Adrift in his freedom, he traces the embers of thought toward a dire reckoning.
As days pass into years, the young man becomes resigned to his fate of contemplative inertia – until a chance encounter at the local park ignites a violent and indissoluble passion. Will “the world’s forgotten boy” be remembered after all? Perhaps by a different name?
Echoing the volatile first-person voices of Dostoyevsky, Hamsun, and Bret Easton Ellis, Frank Cassese’s tightrope narrative deftly illuminates the sequelae of personal loss while confronting the reader with scenes of explosive brutality. Propelled by pitch-black comedy and visceral horror, Baby Killer is, at its core, a repulsive yet riveting character study set against the inexorable sprawl of cosmic decay.
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“Hide your sons and daughters. This is a dangerous book.” — James Nulick, author of Haunted Girlfriend and Valencia
