Waking the Dead (novel)
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| Author | Scott Spencer |
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| Country | United States of America |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Political romance novel |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
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Publication date
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April 12, 1986 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 385 pages |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 13003089 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3569.P455 W3 1986 |
Waking the Dead is a 1986 novel by Scott Spencer. The book, Spencer's fourth, was adapted into a 2000 film of the same name starring Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly.
The book is a love story about two passionate liberals with vastly different approaches to their ideologies: Fielding Pierce is a lawyer and aspiring politician, and Sarah Williams is a social activist who despises the political system. During a mission to assist Chilean refugees, Williams is killed by a terrorist car-bomb. Years later, Pierce is offered the Democratic candidacy for an Illinois congressional seat, but during the campaign Pierce becomes convinced he has seen and heard Williams on several occasions. As Pierce becomes obsessed with finding out if his lost lover is alive, he is pushed to the brink of insanity and begins to fear he has become fully absorbed and changed by the political system Williams so hated.
Waking the Dead was eagerly anticipated following Spencer's previous novel, the 1979 Endless Love.Michiko Kakutani, book reviewer for The New York Times compared Waking the Dead to the 1976 Brian De Palma film Obsession. Both feature male protagonists who lose their lover to a violent death, then later believe they have been brought back to life.
Although Kakutani said Spencer succeeded in fleshing out Pierce's world (including his upbringing and family life), in her view the author was less successful in convincing the readers of Pierce's love for Williams. Kakutani said, "his orchestration of Fielding's continuing obsession with Sarah becomes an increasingly empty display of narrative pyrotechnics". Kakutani also said the first-person narration Spencer mastered in Endless Love, was less successful in Waking the Dead and occasionally "tend[s] to come across as simple-minded or phony digressions". Paul Gray, of Time Magazine, said the Pierce character was too unlikeable, citing his "overweening self-pity (and) penchant for purple prose."
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