Zack’s Choice

As young Zack, a commonplace twenty-year-old law student, is swallowed up by the fantasmagorical tale of a young hitchhiker he picks up during his pre-college road-trip and consequently conned into committing grand theft, we are left in a queer vertigo of doubt regarding where the truth lies: are we being too cynical, or is Zach really as gullible as he seems to be? But we are not given half a minute to catch our breath and think: from the asphalt of the American highways, to federal prisons, then Mexico, Rome and Ukraine, this roller-coaster novel sends us flying across the world with this touchingly naïve anti-hero, who always seems to miraculously get away with all his blunders, though, for the reader’s delight, always by the skin of his teeth. Zach is the textbook modern day American student, torn between the materialistic straightforwardness of a life already written out for him in bold letters, and higher aspirations, thrown into a James Bondish scenario that he just isn’t quite James Bondish enough for.

Because Zach could be you or me, because it is just happenchance that this tornado of an adventure hits him and not another, this novel gives us a tempting taster of what life could be, if only we could let go – just for a minute – of our grim lucidity that paints the world in grey and keeps us clammed up in our narrow little everyday routines. Out there is a world full of vivid colours, full of cops and robbers passion and adventures that could be all ours if only we could, as S.T Coleridge prompted us to “suspend our disbelief.” The “choice” is all ours. We are, therefore, led to follow Zach’s path. He also faces a “choice,” which surfaces – just as ours would – as a cornelian dilemma between heart and reason. Which will it be? Let us not spoil the reader’s pleasure, but limit ourselves to one small clue: “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know,” wrote French philosopher Pascal in his Pensées.