I'm a long-time fan of Paul Griner's elegant wit; and, still,
Second Life comes as a swift and resonant surprise. It is a smart and darkly glimmering story, a hold-your-breath thriller written in finely wrought prose, and a book that will spark a hundred conversations about risk and love and the dignity inherent to our gorgeous, short-lived, all-too fleshly forms.” Lauren Groff,
New York Times bestselling author of
Arcadia"Mesmerizing! Griner yanks the sheet off our delicate notions about life and death, revealing a frank, unsettling underworld of corpse industries and body harvesting. As if that weren't enough, he does all this with an ever-keen eye and tremendous artistry. This book is an absolute feat.” Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn
"Paul Griner's Second Life confirms his remarkable ability to investigate, line by carefully etched line, that which is elemental, harrowing, and all-too-true. Read this unforgettable novel if you dare." Colin Harrison, author of Afterburn and The Havana Room
Praise for Paul Griner:
Paul Griner is a daredevil of a storyteller, fearless but always in control, equally adept at wild satire and sharp-edged domestic drama. Anyone who cares about the short storyor just loves good writingshould make a beeline for this remarkable collection.”Tom Perotta, author of Little Children and The Leftovers
"Paul Griner's HURRY PLEASE, I WANT TO KNOW takes the reader on a sweeping tour of Americafrom Iraqi soldiers to prison telemarketers, from famous cartoonists to bone procurers, from missing persons to the resurrected deadthe real, the surreal and everything in-between. Griner seems to know everybody's secrets, and this astonishing collection sets out to reveal them."
Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply and Stay Awake
"Paul Griner finds surprising and inventive ways to write about a wide range of sometimes uncomfortablebut always interestingsituations. The writing is careful, precise, shockingstylistically brilliant. The stories are sometimes surreal, but convincing all the same. They take your breath away!" Bobbi Ann Mason
Praise for COLLECTORS (Random House 1999/Picador 2001)
A familiar plot line doesnt harm Griners first novel (after the story collection Follow Me), which is a stunner. Griner contrasts the collectors bargaining with the daily transactions acquaintances, co-workers, and lovers make with each other. Despite the novels brevity, Griner doesnt rush the characterization, and he courageously presents Jean as complicit in her situation. He also skillfully fosters a disturbing sense of dread from beginning to end, and readers will enjoy piecing together characters motives and actions. This novel straddles the literary and thriller genres very well, and readers in both camps should devour it. Enthusiastically recommended for public and academic libraries." Library Journal * (starred review)
This spellbinding novel chronicles the menacing mating ritual between edgy ad-exec Jean and a man whose intentions are not always that clear.” People Magazine
Think of Damage and other novels that lace tension with frightening sexual overtones, then add the advantage of literary style and assurance, and you have this mysterious, mesmerizing story of psychological suspense. ..As readers ponder echoes of John Fowles' The Collector, and events move toward the feared denouement, Griners meticulous care in setting each scene accelerates the suspense
Still he never resorts to the staged faux-frissons of conventional psychological thrillers, and his spare prose convincingly portrays the process by which an intelligent, independent woman becomes the victim of an obsessed predator -- or perhaps of her own bent towards self-destruction.” Publishers Weekly
Collectors is a stylish thriller putting a contemporary spin on a plot that has done yeoman service in the Victorian 'sensation novels' of Wilkie Collins and movies such as Gaslight (with Ingrid Bergman) or Suspicion (with Cary Grant) ... Paul Griner, however, is more interested in the psychology of obsession than in the conventions of the whodunit, and the result is eerily sinister ... Violence when it erupts is swift, shocking, and unpredictable, for this is a story that emphasizes suspense... pacing that won't let go.” The Boston Globe
This suspenseful novel is at once delicate and bizarre in its portrait of obsession; Griners spare prose never reveals why Steven and Jean behave as they do, but his story, like any true curio, is surprisingly haunting.” The New Yorker
Griner's story collection, Follow Me (1996), broke the ice for his highly polished and erotically sinister first novel..As the twisted nature of Jean and Claudia's violent girlhood relationship slowly emerges, Jean's involvement with Steven begins to assume truly ominous dimensions, and the Hitchcockian dimension of Griner's chilling tale is revealed.” Booklist
Despite the carefully controlled aura of mystery that dominates here, Griner is tauntingly open about his designs, making this slim novel not unlike one of Jeans beloved pens: an irresistibly handsome object whose meaning remains tantalizingly out of reach.” Los Angeles Times
Engrossing .. Griners prose is the opposite of the flowery, over-the-top narrative which dots the bestseller lists. His phrasings are infused with a crisp economy, a style which approaches minimalist at times. Take any given paragraph from the book and its easy to imagine how countless writers might say the same thing, but in the space of pages. Sometimes less really is more. The ending of Collectors is truly shocking .. a real stomach-cramp shock .. The kind of shock rarely found in suspense literature.” Trio Magazine (NPR)
Paul Griner has written a small dark gem of a book. I cannot think of another novel this trim, this emotionally taut, since Francoise Sagans Bonjour Tristesse or perhaps Ian McEwans The Cement Garden
what distinguishes Collectors as literature is not simply the suspenseful qualities of its plot but the subtle machinations of its style. Griners skillful handling of the detail (it only looks effortless) draws the reader ever deeper into the narrative
If only Hitchcock were alive to translate this novel on to film. Readers of the short story collection Follow Me will be rapt (though not in surprise) at the elaboration of his talents here.” Louisville Courier
Echoes of Muriel Spark (The Drivers Seat) and John Fowles (The Collector) sound throughout Collectors (Random House) Paul Griners nevertheless distinctive literary thriller...Collectors builds tension swiftly and skillfully, layering in ominous foreshadowings (a wrong-number phone call by someone seeking a funeral parlor, a smell of burning coal detected while at sea) as it teases us with conflicting explanations of its central mystery
a first novel whose deftly sketched characters and frissons of surprise and menace elevate it beyond simple imitation.” New York Times Book Review
Novels about predatory human attractions are nothing new; one could even include Wuthering Heights in the list. However, when a book of this sort is as superb as Paul Griners new novel, credit must be given where credit is due
Psychologically erudite, stylistically cool and impeccable, Griners little book provides a genuinely frightening and suspenseful brief journey into the mesmerizing territory between obsession, desire and the wish to be loved.” Seattle Times
Paul Griner is getting hot; movie rights have already been purchased for Follow Me, which isnt even a novel but a story collection. This new work tracks the pathological relationship between Jean, already crazy enough as a child to have joined cousin Claudia in burning down Claudias house, and Stephen, who puts strangers under surveillance and seems to cause accidents wherever he goes. Nice and creepy.” Library Journal
"Paul Griner .., has scored a triumph with Collectors, a darkly beautiful first novel
The author himself becomes a skilled negotiator, giving readers just enough that they cannot help but desire more. It is an ambitious undertaking, masterfully achieved
For literary collectors, those whose passion is the written word, Griner's novel is indeed a lucky find, a rare treasure.” The Lexington Herald-Leader
Collectors, is spare, elegant, and disturbing indeed, so spare, so full of lacunae, that its very emptiness creates a chill psychological breeze.” Austin Chronicle
You have to read this novel as you would watch an Alfred Hitchcock thriller alert to detail and statement. Griner's first novel is a gem, masterful.” The Buffalo News
Collectors is a satisfying, well-paced first novel that makes an excellent choice for fans of literary fiction and thrillers alike. For all its strangeness, it's an undeniably suspenseful story that will leave you breathless by novel's end.” Book Reporter
Dark, mysterious, complex, and subtle, Collectors is the kind of novel that keeps writing itself on your brain long after the last page has been turned.” bn.com Review
Praise for THE GERMAN WOMAN (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009)
From the bloody aftermath of World War I to the somber streets of London under Nazi attack, this intelligent epic fuses romance, disaster, historical analysis, and poetic observation
Complex, authentic, and compelling.” Kirkus
Griner's second novel (after Collectors) is a gritty, unsentimental story of love and loyalty played out across Europe during the two World Wars
Griner knits together a multifarious plot that calls into question collaboration versus loyalty: to homeland, to humanity, to family and to lovers. Griner is unflinching in his depictions of battlefield atrocity (a conscious soldier with an exposed-brain injury appears on the first page), offering a sober grounding for the cerebral exploration of collaboration and betrayal. Fans of Graham Greene or Alan Furst will want to take a look.” Publishers Weekly
It seems inevitable that a novel called The German Woman, set in Europe at the end of both world wars, a book, moreover, that involves espionage, traitors, bombings and love affairs, is going to be compared to Graham Greene, John Le Carré, Alan Furst, Sebastian Faulks, Michael Ondaatje, Pat Barker and, if the blurber really knows his literary spy stuff, perhaps even Eric Ambler. Three of the above do in fact appear on the dust jacket of Paul Griner's The German Woman. To find out which three, you'll have to buy the book, and it will be well worth the price to do so. But in truth, Griner's writing stakes out its own territory..His technique has always been one of pared-down incisiveness, his characters acutely observed, his subject matter gritty and graphic. In The German Woman he takes these talents to new playing fields
If there's anyone whose work Griner's here resembles it is William Boyd a novelist who can take you absolutely anywhere, never wastes a sentence, and, most impressive of all, understands the beating heart of a woman.” The Courier-Journal
Datelines, specific to both time and place, usher readers through sections of this fine novel, with its grim wealth of indelible images and plot built around unanswered questions and dissemblances.” The Boston Globe
This is a breathtaking work both heart-rending and beautiful that plays out across both world wars. Its protagonists, Kate Zweig and Claus Murphy, have complicated backgrounds that bring their national loyalty into question
Living like strangers in their own land, they find in each other some brief respite from the storm.” The Courier Press
"[T]his is one hell of a dark a relentlessly dark story. Deliciously so, if you like that sort of thing. If you like a bit of crime-thriller mixed in with your Mary Roach-level exploration of an unsettling area of human industry. If the gruesome reality of what happens to us after were reduced to meat is something youve wondered about and would like to see a troubled protagonist fight her way through it toward some sense of redemption, if possible, before death."
Austin Chronicle"Hes starting us on a claustrophobic thrill ride that will regularly pick at our queasiness.... A chase-through-the-long-night hits all the required marks, with writing a cut above due to Griners handling of dialogue and poetic descriptive passages" Leo Weekly
"Griner pens an exciting thriller that illustrates the worst-case scenario of what might happen to a body after death.
Griner's novel will rev up the reader's pulse as it pulls back the surgical curtain to reveal a hidden world of literal flesh peddling." Publishers Weekly
I'm a long-time fan of Paul Griner's elegant wit; and, still, Second Life comes as a swift and resonant surprise. It is a smart and darkly glimmering story, a hold-your-breath thriller written in finely wrought prose, and a book that will spark a hundred conversations about risk and love and the dignity inherent to our gorgeous, short-lived, all-too fleshly forms.” Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author of Arcadia
"Griners terse, bruising prose amplifies the noir plot, as Elena gumshoes after a missing girl who just happens to be a corpse. Dark, twisty, and ultimately mournful." Booklist
"
bone-chilling
" Vanity Fair
"Mesmerizing! Griner yanks the sheet off our delicate notions about life and death, revealing a frank, unsettling underworld of corpse industries and body harvesting. As if that weren't enough, he does all this with an ever-keen eye and tremendous artistry. This book is an absolute feat.” Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn
"Paul Griner's Second Life confirms his remarkable ability to investigate, line by carefully etched line, that which is elemental, harrowing, and all-too-true. Read this unforgettable novel if you dare." Colin Harrison, author of Afterburn and The Havana Room