Dark matter

Title:

Dark matter

Author:

Crouch, Blake, author.

ISBN:

9781101904220

Personal Author:

Crouch, Blake, author.

Edition:

First edition.

Publication Information:

New York : Crown Publishers, [2016]

Physical Description:

342 pages ; 25 cm

Abstract:

One night after an evening out, Jason Dessen, forty-year-old physics professor living with his wife and son in Chicago, is kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man, driven to an abandoned industrial site and injected with a powerful drug. As he wakes, a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend." But this life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife; his son was never born; and he's not an ordinary college professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something impossible. Is it this world or the other that's the dream? How can he possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could have imagined--one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe. -- adapted from Fantastic Fiction website.

Subject Term:

Physics teachers -- Fiction.

Reality -- Fiction.

Kidnapping victims -- Fiction.

Kidnapping victims. (OCoLC)fst00987328

Physics teachers. (OCoLC)fst01063148

Reality. (OCoLC)fst01091244

Genre:

Science fiction.

Thrillers (Fiction)

Psychological fiction.

Fiction.

Thrillers (Fiction.

Document ID:

SD_ILS:2239252

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Library	Collection	Collection	Call Number	Status
Searching... Atwater Branch Library (Merced Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction	FIC CRO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Chowchilla Branch (Madera Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Fiction Shelves	CROUCH	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Clovis Branch Library (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction Area	CROUCH BL Dark	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Clovis Branch Library (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction Area	CROUCH BL Dark	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Clovis Branch Library (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction Area	CROUCH BL Dark	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Coalinga District Library (Coalinga-Huron)	Searching... Unknown	Fiction Area	F CRO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Farmersville Branch Library (Tulare Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Fiction Area	FIC CROUCH BLAKE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Fig Garden Branch (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction Area	CROUCH BL Dark	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Gustine Branch Library (Merced Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction	FIC CRO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... LeGrand Branch Library (Merced Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction	FIC CRO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Madera County Library (Madera Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Fiction Shelves	CROUCH	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Oakhurst Branch (Madera Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Fiction Shelves	CROUCH	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Reedley Branch Library (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction Area	CROUCH BL Dark	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Tulare Public Library	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction	Crouch Blake	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Visalia Library (Tulare Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Fiction Area	FIC CROUCH BLAKE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Woodward Park Library (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction Area	CROUCH BL Dark	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * COMING SOON TO APPLE TV+ * A "mind-blowing" ( Entertainment Weekly ) speculative thriller about an ordinary man who awakens in a world inexplicably different from the reality he thought he knew--from the author of Upgrade, Recursion, and the Wayward Pines trilogy

"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the kidnapper knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man he's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college professor but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this life or the other that's the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how will Jason make it back to the family he loves?

From the bestselling author Blake Crouch, Dark Matter is a mind-bending thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.

Author Notes

Blake Crouch is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of the novel, Dark Matter, for which he is writing the screenplay for Sony Pictures. His bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy was adapted into a television series for FOX in 2015. With Chad Hodge, Crouch also created Good Behavior, the TNT television show starring Michelle Dockery based on his Letty Dobesh novellas. He has written more than a dozen novels that have been translated into over thirty languages and his short fiction has appeared in several publications including Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Jon Lindstrom delivers an excellent reading of Crouch's mind-bending novel. Jason Dessen is a physics professor at a small Chicago college, whose more ambitious career aspirations in quantum physics were set aside for the tranquil normalcy of homelife with a wife and teenage son. He is content with his life, until one day when he's abducted and drugged and wakes up into a world in which his particular quantum many-worlds theory has become a fully realized technology for interdimensional transfer. In this world, Jason didn't marry his girlfriend and never had a son. Lindstrom's strong, well-modulated voice relays Dessen's travels through a multitude of alternate worlds and realities with a solid conviction that keeps the story moving forward at a steady pace. He pulls the listener fully into the story with an earnestness that perfectly captures Jason's bewilderment, despair, and desperate desire for home. There's plenty of action and unexpected, even shocking, turns in the story, which Lindstrom handles with expert skill. A Crown hardcover. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Brilliant scientist Jason Dessen was on the verge of a major breakthrough when his life took a different turn instead of completing his work on quantum superposition, he married his pregnant girlfriend and now lives a relatively happy life as husband to the gorgeous Daniela, father to teenage Charlie, and professor of undergrad physics at a small Chicago-area college. All is well if not very exciting until the night he is abducted and bludgeoned, and wakes up in a different time and place . . . or, perhaps, it's a different plane. Turns out there's another world, one where Jason didn't marry Daniela but went on to create a box that can transport someone into a parallel universe don't worry, all that's needed is a basic understanding of Schrödinger's cat. It's very strange and a little thrilling to him, but all Jason really wants is to get home to his wife and son. This proves quite daunting, as every trip through the box takes him to yet another plane, mostly with disastrous results (think butterfly effect). Crouch keeps the pace swift and the twists exciting. Readers who liked his Wayward Pines trilogy will probably devour this speculative thriller in one sitting; also offer this one to those who enjoy roller-coaster reads in the vein of Harlan Coban and can appreciate the need to suspend their disbelief. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: If buzz at the recent Public Library Association conference is any indication, Crouch has something very big here.--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2016 Booklist

New York Review of Books Review

NOBODY: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, From Ferguson to Flint and Beyond, by Marc Lamont Hill. (Atria, $16.) Hill analyzes such high-profile deaths as Michael Brown's, Sandra Bland's and Trayvon Martin's to explore a system of negligence and indifference. The state has effectively abandoned those whom Hill calls "Nobodies": people marked as black, brown, immigrant, queer. LOSING IT, by Emma Rathbone. (Riverhead, $16.) Julia, the heroine of Rathbone's novel, is 26, professionally adrift and - most vexing of all - still a virgin. During previous opportunities, she always demurred, certain that a better one would come along, but now, "my virginity composed about 99 percent of my thought traffic." When she goes to live with her aunt, her quest to finally have a sexual encounter is complicated by a family member's revelation. THE WICKED BOY: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London, by Kate Summerscale. (Penguin, $17.) In 1895,13-year-old Robert Coombes and his younger brother were traipsing alone around East London. Days later, their mother was found dead, and Robert was sent to one of England's most infamous prisons. Summerscale reconstructs the case and its aftermath with forensic care. DARK MATTER, by Blake Crouch. (Broadway, $16.) After he is violently kidnapped, Jason, a married professor in Chicago, awakes as a different man entirely: His wife is not his wife, his child has not been born and he is working on a brilliant project. As Jason's various selves confront one another and he embarks on multiple paths, he must grapple with the question of which of his lives is real. Crouch draws on disparate influences in his thriller, which our reviewer, Andrew O'Hehir, called "alternate-universe science fiction bolstered by a smidgen of theoretical physics." UNFORBIDDEN PLEASURES, by Adam Phillips. (Picador, $16.) In a series of essays, Phillips, a British psychoanalyst, explores the meaning and the role of everyday indulgences in contemporary life. While others focus on the taboo, Phillips writes, "the seekers of unforbidden pleasures may know something about pleasure that has never occurred to the transgressive." SWEET LAMB OF HEAVEN, by Lydia Millet. (Norton, $15.95.) After her daughter, Lena, is born, Anna begins hearing streams of voices - both foreign and English, and not violent - a hallucination that resists diagnosis. When her marriage dissolves, she and Lena escape from Alaska, where they were living, to a hotel in Maine; but when her husband considers a political run, they must constantly evade his reach.

Kirkus Review

A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller. Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago's Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers "a sucker punch" as he heads home that leaves him "standing on the precipice." From behind Jason, a man with a "ghost white" face, "red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes" points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignantprovided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

With a beautiful wife, a great son, and a job teaching college physics, Jason -Dessen is content with his life. Sure, he has a twinge of envy when he meets an old friend who has just won a prestigious science prize, but on the whole, he wouldn't trade his situation. Which makes it all the more horrible when someone takes that existence from him, and worse when it turns out to be an alternate version of himself. This exciting technothriller hinges on the idea of multiple realities. Jason's desperation to return home to his family and the struggles he goes through to figure out how to navigate the multiverse make this an irresistible read. Despite a few small missteps, including the introduction of a sidekick for Jason that peters out in a vaguely unsatisfying way, it is not hard to see why this title was preempted by Sony in a big bid for the movie rights. VERDICT While stories of the multiverse are not new, Crouch ("Wayward Pines" trilogy) brings a welcome intensity to the trope.-MM © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpts

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof*** Copyright © 2016 Blake Crouch I love Thursday nights. They have a feel to them that's outside of time. It's our tradition, just the three of us--family night. My son, Charlie, is sitting at the table, drawing on a sketch pad. He's almost fifteen. The kid grew two inches over the summer, and he's as tall as I am now. I turn away from the onion I'm julienning, ask, "Can I see?" He holds up the pad, shows me a mountain range that looks like something on another planet. I say, "Love that. Just for fun?" "Class project. Due tomorrow." "Then get back to it, Mr. Last Minute." Standing happy and slightly drunk in my kitchen, I'm unaware that tonight is the end of all of this. The end of everything I know, everything I love. No one tells you it's all about to change, to be taken away. There's no proximity alert, no indication that you're standing on the precipice. And maybe that's what makes tragedy so tragic. Not just what happens, but how it happens: a sucker punch that comes at you out of nowhere, when you're least expecting. No time to flinch or brace. The track lights shine on the surface of my wine, and the onion is beginning to sting my eyes. Thelonius Monk spins on the old turntable in the den. There's a richness to the analog recording I can never get enough of, especially the crackle of static between tracks. The den is filled with stacks and stacks of rare vinyl that I keep telling myself I'll get around to organizing one of these days. My wife, Daniela, sits on the kitchen island, swirling her almost empty wineglass in one hand and holding her phone in the other. She feels my stare and grins without looking up from the screen. "I know," she says. "I'm violating the cardinal rule of family night." "What's so important?" I ask. She levels her dark, Spanish eyes on mine. "Nothing." I walk over to her, take the phone gently out of her hand, and set it on the countertop. "You could start the pasta," I say. "I prefer to watch you cook." "Yeah?" Quieter: "Turns you on, huh?" "No, it's just more fun to drink and do nothing." Her breath is wine-sweet, and she has one of those smiles that seem architecturally impossible. It still slays me. I polish off my glass. "We should open more wine, right?" "It would be stupid not to." As I liberate the cork from a new bottle, she picks her phone back up and shows me the screen. "I was reading Chicago Magazine's re view of Marsha Altman's show." "Were they kind?" "Yeah, it's basically a love letter." "Good for her." "I always thought ..." She lets the sentence die, but I know where it was headed. Fifteen years ago, before we met, Daniela was a comer to Chicago's art scene. She had a studio in Bucktown, showed her work in a half dozen galleries, and had just lined up her first solo exhibition in New York. Then came life. Me. Charlie. A bout of crippling post partum depression. Derailment. Now she teaches private art lessons to middle-grade students. "It's not that I'm not happy for her. I mean, she's brilliant, she deserves it all." I say, "If it makes you feel any better, Ryan Holder just won the Pavia Prize." "What's that?" ''A multidisciplinary award given for achievements in the life and physical sciences. Ryan won for his work in neuroscience." "Is it a big deal?" "Million dollars. Accolades. Opens the floodgates to grant money." "Hotter TA's?" "Obviously, that's the real prize. He invited me to a little informal celebration tonight, but I passed." "Why?" "Because ifs our night." "You should go." "I'd really rather not." Daniela lifts her empty glass. "So what you're saying is, we both have good reason to drink a lot of wine tonight." I kiss her, and then pour generously from the newly opened bottle. "You could've won that prize," Daniela says. "You could've owned this city's art scene." "But we did this." She gestures at the high-ceilinged expanse of our brownstone. I bought it pre-Daniela with an inheritance. ''And we did that," she says, pointing to Charlie as he sketches with a beau tiful intensity that reminds me of Daniela when she's absorbed in a painting. It's a strange thing being the parent of a teenager. One thing to raise a little boy, another entirely when a person on the brink of adult hood looks to you for wisdom. I feel like I have little to give. I know there are fathers who see the world a certain way, with clarity and confidence, who know just what to say to their sons and daughters. But I'm not one of them. The older I get, the less I understand. I love my son. He means everything to me. And yet, I can't escape the feeling that I'm failing him. Sending him off to the wolves with nothing but the crumbs of my uncertain perspective. I move to the cabinet beside the sink, open it, and start hunting for a box of fettuccine. Daniela turns to Charlie, says, "Your father could have won the Nobel." I laugh. "That's possibly an exaggeration." "Charlie, don't be fooled. He's a genius." "You're sweet," I say. "And a little drunk." "It's true, and you know it. Science is less advanced because you love your family." I can only smile. When Daniela drinks, three things happen: her native accent begins to bleed through, she becomes belligerently kind, and she tends toward hyperbole. "Your father said to me one night-never forget it-that pure re search is life-consuming. He said ... " For a moment, and to my surprise, emotion overtakes her. Her eyes mist, and she shakes her head like she always does when she's about to cry. At the last second, she rallies, pushes through. "He said, 'Daniela, on my deathbed I would rather have memories of you than of a cold, sterile lab.'" I look at Charlie, catch him rolling his eyes as he sketches. Probably embarrassed by our display of parental melodrama. I stare into the cabinet and wait for the ache in my throat to go away. When it does, I grab the pasta and close the door. Daniela drinks her wine. Charlie draws. The moment passes. "Where's Ryan's party?" Daniela asks. "Village Tap." "That's your bar, Jason." "So?" She comes over, takes the box of pasta out of my hand. "Go have a drink with your old college buddy. Tell him you're proud of him. Head held high. Tell him I said congrats." "I will not tell him you said congrats." "Why?" "He has a thing for you." "Stop it." "It's true. From way back. From our roommate days. Remember the last Christmas party? He kept trying to trick you into standing under the mistletoe with him?" She just laughs, says, "Dinner will be on the table by the time you get home." "Which means I should be back here in ..." "Forty-five minutes." "What would I be without you?" She kisses me. "Let's not even think about it." I grab my keys and wallet from the ceramic dish beside the micro wave and move into the dining room, my gaze alighting on the tesseract chandelier above the dinner table. Daniela gave it to me for our tenth wedding anniversary. Best gift ever. As I reach the front door, Daniela shouts, "Return bearing ice cream!" "Mint chocolate chip!" Charlie says. I lift my arm, raise my thumb. I don't look back. I don't say goodbye. And this moment slips past unnoticed. The end of everything I know, everything I love. Excerpted from Dark Matter by Blake Crouch All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.