Review by Elizabeth C. Bunce
To be honest, when I picked up the weighty tome that is H. F. Saint’s 1987 novel Memoirs of an Invisible Man, I was not expecting to find something literary. That’s just not the first box you tick off when you think of most late 20th century sci-fi (and I say that as a lifelong science fiction fan). The fun 1992 John Carpenter film adaptation starring Chevy Chase and Daryl Hannah didn’t prepare me, either. Action? Sure. Menacing technology gone spectacularly awry? You bet. A tense cat-and-mouse adventure? Definitely. And maybe a little humor and romance. (Also, judging simply from the length, possibly something a little self-indulgent…) But Saint’s thoughtful and well-crafted prose came as an impressive and pleasant surprise, and turned this lengthy read into a thoroughly enjoyable one, too.
If you’re familiar with the movie version, almost nothing about the book feels like the same entity. The bones of the tale are there—the set-up, anyway–but it’s otherwise scarcely recognizable. The story follows the misadventures of an average New York securities analyst (the author’s real life profession) after getting caught in an industrial disaster and finding himself completely and permanently invisible. The government is quick to catch on that there was a survivor, and agents spend the rest of the story on Nick’s trail. That much is the same. But the book is far less an action comedy and more a meandering journey of Nick adjusting to life as an invisible man, experiencing the isolation and challenges inherent in his condition. Although I loved the movie, after reading the book I simply cannot imagine cocky, insouciant Chevy Chase in the role of narrator Nicholas Halloway. Saint’s protagonist, while not particularly heroic, is reflective and sympathetic, with a keen eye for detail and observation and a real gift for description.
In the hands of another author, this story could easily have been a novella or short story; the actual action plot is fairly simple, with only a couple major beats. It’s the exceptional detail Saint has Halloway go into, about the minutiae of every incident, that takes so many words—but the language is so artful and elegant you’re here for every one of them. Sure, it takes a full 100 pages to extricate Nick from the site of the initial disaster, and he spends the next 100 or so just getting used to being invisible. It doesn’t matter. Saint’s rich descriptions are still gripping enough to keep you reading.
That said, you do at some points start to question Nick’s (or perhaps the author’s) decisions. He confides in no one, chooses to remain in New York despite having a hand-picked hideout available, and in his many close-shave escapes from the Feds, displays some truly super-human athletic abilities that are in no way explained by the radiation that turned him invisible. Yet Saint makes it completely believable, in a way even a movie stuntman would struggle to convince you. If ever the action lags, Saint is right there on the next page giving a delightful depiction of Nick’s attempts to learn to sew with invisible thread, needle, fabric, and fingers; or the surprisingly entertaining account of how he creates a whole new identity and paper trail for his new invisible life—this sequence hits like a mini-heist story in the midst of the rest of the tale.
Along the way, Saint’s tale becomes a fascinating work of period literature, an observant portrayal of late 20th-century culture that casts a light on life just before the interconnectedness of the Internet age would make such a story entirely different. Nuanced allusions like his main character’s name (did it inspire the creators of Hollow Man a few years later?) elevate Memoirs of an Invisible Man above average sci-fi pulp fiction and make it a classic of the genre. Interestingly, this was Saint’s one and only literary endeavor; the book evidently made so much money that he himself was able to disappear from the scene—and that’s a shame. It would have been fascinating to read a whole catalogue of works of his exceptional prose. Saint’s novel is still available in hardcover and paperback here at Amazon.
