The ExtremesChristopher Priest
Simon & Schuster hardback, 393 pages, £16.99
Review by David Kendall (1998)
Loss and horror are the entrances to Priest’s new novel. Teresa Simon, FBI agent, returns to Britain after the violent death of her colleague and husband, Andy. He was killed in Kingwood City, Texas, by a lone gunman on a spree. At the same time Bulverton on the English south coast also experiences the rage of an armed killer. What is the connection? And would knowing aid Teresa to come to terms with her loss?
The Extremes concerns itself with the uses and abuses of virtual reality; the Extreme Experiences, used in training American law enforcement officers, and eventually sold to the public for vicarious thrills. The culmination of ideas gets you through. Somewhere memory, both meat and silicon, run out – The Extremes – and in that borderland anything is possible.
The Extremes is discussed in one of our Christopher Priest interviews.