Publishers Weekly
12/04/2017
Early in South African author Winkler’s disturbing U.S. debut, 31-year-old Nathan Lucius, an ad salesman for a Cape Town newspaper, admits, “I don’t dislike women. I just don’t like what they can do to me.” He adds, “I liked the taste of the dead lady who may or may not have been properly dead.” Nathan’s pervasive creepiness will make it impossible for most readers to identify with him, and that challenge only becomes more pronounced when his friend Madge Cartwright, an antique store owner with terminal cancer, asks him to end her life. After taking steps to concoct an alibi and frame an innocent store customer of hers, he strangles Madge with her scarf. Nathan is so emotionally dead that it’s hard to accept that he was acting out of misguided empathy for Madge, and further violence only makes him more repulsive. If Winkler’s goal was to present an unsympathetic woman-hater, he succeeded, but the unpleasantness of the plot and lead are overpowering. Only those with a taste for the darkest of noir will be gratified. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
Praise for My Name Is Nathan Lucius
"Noir at its darkest, cunningly executed."
—Newsweek
“Without question one of the year's most ambitious, suspenseful, tightly controlled and expertly executed novels . . . Lucius is a Cape Town Raskolnikov . . . In a dizzyingly dazzling complication of before and after, Winkler implicates the reader as judge, jury and executioner in a wider set of criminal entanglements, both forging intense sympathy for the troubled Lucius, and forcing the reader to consider whether this disaffected man is capable of much greater, more disturbing acts of violence . . . Winkler's lean, lithe sentences ripple with allusive intensity and gritty detail.”
—LitNet, South Africa
“A meticulously crafted thriller-cum-trauma novel that explores broader themes of morality, responsibility, society and the human psyche . . . When the key revelations unfold, they are genuinely shocking . . . Winkler's novel is satisfying clever, his character and plot pithy, elusive, sharp and captivating.”
—Aerodrome, South Africa
"It is with steady confidence that Winkler builds out his protagonist's psyche in this exploration of memory, death, friendship, euthanasia, and psychological trauma."
—Mystery Scene Magazine
"The twists and turns that Winkler provides make the novel addicting from its unusual beginning to its final sentence, which is a revelation all by itself. Be prepared."
—The Book Reporter
"Winkler delivers a superb noir thriller. Readers of Chuck Palahniuk and Irvine Welsh will savor the psychological twists and turns, while aficionados of Dennis Lehane and Thomas Harris will enjoy Winkler’s exploration of the protagonist’s morality and responsibility."
—Library Journal, Starred Review
"Daring . . . If you do pick it up, clear the schedule, because you'll need to finish it before you'll be able to do anything else."
—Kingdom Books
"My Name Is Nathan Lucius is bleak, ambitious, and thought provoking, and it will find fans among lovers of both darkest noir and transgressive literary fiction."
—Booklist
"Those with a taste for the darkest of noir will be gratified."
—Publishers Weekly
Library Journal
09/15/2017
South African writer Winkler makes his North American debut with this second novel, which was long-listed for the 2016 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. The title character is a disillusioned, hard-drinking ad salesman at a Cape Town newspaper whose best (and maybe only) friend Madge makes a seemingly impossible request. She's dying of cancer and wants Nathan to end her pain fast.
Kirkus Reviews
2017-11-12
A loner's psychopathic tendencies gradually come to the fore in this South African novelist's U.S. debut.Nathan Lucius works selling advertising space for a Cape Town newspaper. His only friend appears to be the old woman who runs a ramshackle antiques shop near his apartment. His boss, Sonia, is an occasional drinking buddy, though Nathan seems more focused on the length of her nipples than anything having to do with her personality. Told in the first person, the novel spends a great deal of time detailing the aimlessness of Nathan's day-to-day routine, which also includes an affair with the middle-aged divorcée who lives in the apartment next to him. What drama there is begins with the elderly antiques dealer asking Nathan to assist her in a mercy killing to escape the pain of the cancer that's ravaging her body. The second half of the novel switches between the interior monologue of a now-institutionalized Nathan and his childhood memories that may or may not have been formative. What this all adds up to or why we are supposed to care about Nathan is anybody's guess. He's a squirrelly narrator without the cunning or depth or torment that might engage you in a borderline personality. He's also obsessed with bodily fluids and has a particularly off-putting penchant for disgusted descriptions of women's breasts and genitalia. It all seems intended to be dark and daring, but it's just tediously unpleasant.His name is Nathan Lucius. And that's nothing to brag about.
