Award-winning British novelist Graham Joyce offers this, his fourth fiction effort to be published stateside. Touted as the author's "first suspense novel," Indigo's enticing plot and fast pace may finally win Joyce the huge fan base he so completely deserves.
Londoner Jack Chambers has been summoned to Chicago for the reading of his estranged father's will. Chagrined to learn he hasn't been provided for, Jack does, however, agree to execute the will in order to receive a handsome fee. The story shuttles back and forth from Chicago to Rome, where Jack, aided by his sister Louise (not-at-all-concealed incestuous overtones abound) sells his father's properties and tries to locate a young woman who will eventually receive the bulk of the elder Chambers' estate. The detailed exploration of familial relationships, the ability to influence others even after death and the corrupting effects of power are intriguing, but it's the universal search for transcendence that keeps Indigo churning even during its slow moments.
Among Jack's other executor duties, he must publish 100,000 copies of what at first seems to be his father's lunatic rantings, but turns out to be Mr. Chamber's contribution to the world's search for a higher level of reality hidden behind the everyday world. While the father maintains the key to transcendence is the color indigo, not normally seen by the human eye, the author gives evidence that transformation comes in many, sometimes surprising forms, from a strip club connoisseur searching for the perfect female body to a woman who finds "a promise of revelation" within her epileptic seizures.
A bit underwhelming at the end, Indigo is nevertheless an intelligent and wholly original novel in the spirit of the author's fantasy works. Joyce's great talent and singular vision is well worth any fiction lover's time.
—Kelli K
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2001.