Life Expectancy - A Novel

Zusatztext “Delightful . . . funny! scary and entertaining.”— The Washington Post Book World   “Koontz is a master storyteller and a daring writer! and in his novels he gives readers bright hope in a dark world. [ Life Expectancy ]! an exemplar of his extraordinary work [and] one of his most unusual yet! will leave readers aglow.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review)   “Brilliant . . . [Koontz] writes of hope and love in the midst of evil in profoundly inspiring and moving ways.”— Chicago Sun-Times   “A roller-coaster ride . . . remarkable . . . Prepare to be enchanted.”— The Sunday Oregonian Informationen zum Autor Dean Koontz Klappentext NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Before he died on a storm-wracked night, Jimmy Tock's grandfather predicted that there would be five dark days in his grandson's life-five dates whose terrible events Jimmy must prepare himself to face. The first is to occur in his twentieth year, the last in his thirtieth. What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five critical days? What challenges must he survive? The path he follows will defy every expectation and will take all the love, humor, and courage he possesses. For who Jimmy Tock is and what he must accomplish on the five days his world turns is a mystery both dangerous and wondrous. Leseprobe Chapter One On the night that I was born, my paternal grand-father, Josef Tock, made ten predictions that shaped my life. Then he died in the very minute that my mother gave birth to me. Josef had never previously engaged in fortune-telling. He was a pastry chef. He made éclairs and lemon tarts, not predictions. Some lives, conducted with grace, are beautiful arcs bridging this world to eternity. I am thirty years old and can't for certain see the course of my life, but rather than a graceful arc, my passage seems to be a herky-jerky line from one crisis to another. I am a lummox, by which I do not mean stupid , only that I am biggish for my size and not always aware of where my feet are going. This truth is not offered in a spirit of self-deprecation or even humility. Apparently, being a lummox is part of my charm, an almost winsome trait, as you will see. No doubt I have now raised in your mind the question of what I intend to imply by "biggish for my size." Autobiography is proving to be a trickier task than I first imagined. I am not as tall as people seem to think I am, in fact not tall at all by the standards of professional—or even of high school—basketball. I am neither plump nor as buff as an iron-pumping fitness fanatic. At most I am somewhat husky. Yet men taller and heavier than I am often call me "big guy." My nickname in school was Moose. From childhood, I have heard people joke about how astronomical our grocery bills must be. The disconnect between my true size and many people's perception of my dimensions has always mystified me. My wife, who is the linchpin of my life, claims that I have a presence much bigger than my physique. She says that people measure me by the impression I make on them. I find this notion ludicrous. It is bullshit born of love. If sometimes I make an outsized impression on people, it's as likely as not because I fell on them. Or stepped on their feet. In Arizona, there is a place where a dropped ball appears to roll uphill in defiance of gravity. In truth, this effect is a trick of perspective in which elements of a highly unusual landscape conspire to deceive the eye. I suspect I am a similar freak of nature. Perhaps light reflects oddly from me or bends around me in a singular fashion, so I appear to be more of a hulk than I am. On the night I was born in Snow County Hospital, in the community of Snow Village, Colorado, my g...

Product details

• Authors: Dean Koontz, Dean R. Koontz
• Publisher: Bantam Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.05.2012
• EAN: 9780345533388
• ISBN: 978-0-345-53338-8
• No. of pages: 496
• Dimensions: 107 mm x 188 mm x 25 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense