Review by Booklist Review
Ridley is by himself in his twentieth-floor apartment with a cherished view of the reservoir in Central Park. COVID-19 has isolated everyone to some extent, but Ridley's aloneness is turning toxic, given his divorce, early retirement from Wall Street, and cranky near-estrangement from his daughter and grandchildren. Smart, articulate, witty, sardonic, brooding, and steeped in the city's history, Ridley has been taking all-night time-lapse photographs of the scene outside his window in the hope of creating a provocative work of art. But after he sees flashing lights in an apartment across the way and becomes convinced that a mysterious and, of course, beautiful woman needs his help, things take a strange and dire turn. This swift and unnerving fever-dream of a novella, Duchovny's fifth work of fiction, is saturated with mythic and literary allusions and shaped by resonant riffs on Poe and Mann. At once philosophical and suspenseful, grandly imaginative and sharply funny, this mind-bending story of delusion and longing is a dark reflection of New York's countless crimes and tragedies and much-tested resilience, emblematic of the suffering and tenacity of all of humanity.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Actor Duchovny (Truly Like Lightning) effortlessly brings readers inside the mind of a retired Wall Streeter struggling to find purpose during the Covid-19 pandemic. Ridley, home in his apartment overlooking Central Park, takes inspiration from the view. He becomes obsessed doing a photography project involving time-lapsed photos of the park's reservoir, one for each night, believing his gesture amounts to "reaching out to the world, trying to say something with his eyes," and hopes his effort will live on in posterity. This project changes 250 days in, when he examines a picture snapped the previous night, which seems to reveal a pattern, described by Duchovny as "a flashing of lights all the way across the park high up in an apartment building on Fifth Avenue." Ridley reexamines the previous photos and notices what might be a secret message, possibly a cry for help in Morse code from a woman in distress. His curiosity leads him to leave his home sanctuary and venture outdoors, hoping to identify the building from which the flashes emanated and their mysterious sender. The unpredictable plot twists never overwhelm the depiction of a flawed, lonely guy trying to maintain sanity in the midst of a world on pause. This intelligent effort further burnishes Duchovny's status as a gifted novelist. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Duchovny has worn many hats--actor, director, songwriter--but writing was always his first love. This is his first novella, following four successful novels (including last year's Truly Like Lightning). Unremarkable Wall Street trader Ridley took a buyout in 2009, and 11 years later finds himself in isolation during the worst of the COVID pandemic. From his high-rise apartment overlooking New York's Central Park reservoir, he has plenty of time to reflect on his failed marriage and his troubled relationship with his daughter. As a distraction, he takes nighttime photos of the apartment building across the park. When he sees a series of flashing lights, he has a Rear Window moment, becoming obsessed with the idea that a woman is sending out distress signals, so he responds with his own flashing lights. When he gets no reply, his obsession takes him outside for the first time in months to follow the woman when she exits her building. These forays take Ridley deep into the Ramble, a perilous part of the park known after dark for anonymous hookups among gay people. As Ridley engages in ever more dangerous behavior, the distinction between fevered hallucinations and suicidal risk-taking becomes blurred. VERDICT Inspired by Duchovny's self-reflection while sequestered in his own aerie above Central Park at the height of the pandemic, this work is provocative, challenging, and not without its moments of dark humor.--Beth E. Andersen
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A wealthy New Yorker slips mentally off-kilter in this atmospheric yarn by the actor/writer. Duchovny's fifth work of fiction centers on Ridley, a former Wall Streeter who retired in middle age, giving him enough time to pursue banal art projects like a series of smartphone photos of the Central Park Reservoir taken from his high-rise window. Covid, which has recently arrived in the city, intensifies the divorced man's isolation, which is also exacerbated by his contentious relationship with his daughter. As if to make up for her absence, he trains his gaze on a nearby apartment that he's certain is occupied by a woman flashing distress signals. His ego swells: "He could star in his very own retrofitted-for-the-pandemic Rear Window. He could be her chivalrous knight, her Jimmy Stewart." His derangement expands as he begins to follow the source of the signals into the park. A study of how internal concerns curdle into outward, tragic compulsions--particularly during an epidemic--the novel is a clear tribute to Thomas Mann's classic Death in Venice; Duchovny cites it in the acknowledgments, quotes it in an epigraph, and introduces a homeless character wearing an army jacket labeled "Mann." But Duchovny isn't simply tracing over Mann's plotlines and themes. Concerns about the distancing of technology, the shortcomings of the modern male ego, the fear of being out of touch, and the awkward push and pull of parenthood are all his own, and though the story is straightforward, it neatly captures Ridley's slow decline in evocative, chilly prose that wouldn't be out of place in a late Don DeLillo novel. Like his previous novels Bucking F*cking Dent (2016) and Miss Subways (2018), it's a love letter to Duchovny's native New York. But it's also a smart story about obsession. A slim, compelling tale of a man on the brink. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
