Hyde (Levine) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The novel is a pleasure ­nonetheless, a worthy companion to its predecessor. It’s rich in gloomy, moody atmosphere (Levine’s London has a brutal steampunk quality), and its narrator’s plight is genuinely poignant. The best parts are those in which Hyde peers out at Jekyll as though he were a stranger, straining to understand him, to know his thoughts. Hyde yearns, above all, for intimacy with his host, for relief from his own isolation, but it eludes him. He’s the unconscious mind personified, submerged, ignored and desperate to be heard.
Walter Kirn - New York Times Book Review


Riveting Hyde renders evil in shades of gray…in his spellbinding first novel [Levine] offers many surprises and rich, often intoxicating prose. It’s a fascinating read.
Washington Post


Levine's account is a masterpiece of hallucination; his narrator is feverish, righteous, intense. The author knows what to invent and what to leave to the master. And about that confession: Hyde doesn't open it, and neither does Levine. He leaves it to Stevenson, to whom he is faithful with his prose. The shockers may be born of this century, but this chilling new version is a remarkably good fit with the original horror classic.
Miami Herald


Daniel Levine’s intelligent and brutal first novel, Hyde, puts a fresh spin on the well-worn material…It goes beyond a companion piece to an independent novel worth reading in its own right.
Columbus Dispatch


(Starred review.) [T]his ambitious first novel provides an alternate perspective on Jekyll’s chemical experiments on the split personality.... Levine’s...skill at grounding his narrative in arresting descriptive images is masterful.... If this exceptional variation on a classic has any drawback, it’s that it particularizes to a single character a malaise that Stevenson originally presented belonging universally to the human condition.
Publishers Weekly


Levine's debut novel is deviously plotted but relies a great deal on readers having a close familiarity with the parent text, while the anachronistically graphic descriptions of sex and violence may be off-putting for some. On the other hand, readers who enjoy the grittier crime fiction of Dennis Lehane, James Ellroy, and John Connolly might give it a try. —Liv Hanson, Chicago
Library Journal


Daniel Levine’s ambitious and imaginative literary debut...Taking the parameters of Stevenson’s story, but deepening and extending the details, Levine allows us to view Hyde not merely as the venal incarnation of Jekyll’s soul, but as a fully fledged character in his own right...Levine answers many questions that Stevenson left unexplored....a visually dark and viscerally brooding tale that avails itself of a cinematic style of storytelling that, of course, Stevenson could never have imagined....an entertaining and intriguing work, as much a meditation on and extrapolation of Stevenson’s original intentions as a freestanding work of popular fiction. With compelling intensity, Levine makes a noteworthy literary debut.
BookPage


Levine debuts with a dark literary-fiction re-imagining of the macabre tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde. Dr. Jekyll's an "alienist," precursor of the psychiatrist, but it's Hyde who seizes control and rips the narrative open.... Cleverly imagined and sophisticated in execution, this book may appeal to those who like magical realism and vampire stories, but the latter should know that the book is more intellectual than thriller.
Kirkus Reviews