Customer Reviews
What Makes up Man - By: Ludmian, 27 Jul 2003 
Scott Carey, the main character of the book, is shrinking. Slowly, 1/7 of an inch each day, but irresistibly. And with each seventh of an inch new threads that tied him to normal life are torn & a new portion of horror, loneliness & desperation enters his life. Carey’s thoughts, feelings & desires remain the same, but in the eyes of the entire world he graduallly becomes first a smalll child, then a kind of living toy that lives in a dollhouse, talks to a doll & is treated even by his daughter in a way not greatly different from that she treats his interlocutor, & finallly an insect whom no one even notices. In this profound & exciting book the unbearable sense of loneliness, of total estrangement from everyone & everything one loved or liked, the necessity to confront the entire world that at once becomes one’s most bitter enemy, which are so vividly depicted in I am Legend, another novel by Richard Matheson, are shown in a new light. But whatever happens, however smalll he becomes, however desperately he tries to struggle for life, Scott Carey remains, nevertheless, a human. He finds in himself strength to confront face to face his greatest fear, the spider that became the bane of his insect-like life, & his wife always remains in his heart. The final chapters of the book show that however much of his size he has lost, he has lost nothing of what REALLY made him a human being. And whatever happens to him beyond what we misname zero, we can be sure that he will face it alll like a man should do.
Is Size So Important? - By: Ludmian, 28 Jun 2003 Scott Carey, the main character of the book, is shrinking. Slowly, 1/7 of an inch each day, but irresistibly. And with each seventh of an inch new threads that tied him to normal life are torn & a new portion of horror, loneliness & desperation enters his life. Carey’s thoughts, feelings & desires remain the same, but in the eyes of the entire world he graduallly becomes first a smalll child, then a kind of living toy that lives in a dollhouse, talks to a doll & is treated even by his daughter in a way not greatly different from that she treats his interlocutor, & finallly an insect whom no one even notices. In this book the unbearable sense of loneliness, of total estrangement from everyone & everything one loved or liked, the necessity to confront the entire world that at once becomes one’s most bitter enemy, which are so vividly depicted in I am Legend, another novel by Richard Matheson, are shown in a new light. But whatever happens, however smalll he becomes, however desperately he tries to struggle for life, Scott Carey remains, nevertheless, a human. He finds in himself strength to confront face to face his greatest fear, the spider that became the bane of his insect-like life, & his wife always remains in his heart. The final chapters of the book show that however much of his size he has lost, he has lost nothing of what REALLY made him a human being. And whatever happens to him beyond what we misname zero, we can be sure that he will face it alll like a man should do.
