And Derek's head tunes in the world skewed off the center signal. The novel deals with memory, perception, alcoholism and crime. So do a lot of other novels. What sets "The Blue" apart is the first person narrative. Derek is a fully realized individual who after a car accident has little memory and suffers face blindness where he cannot recognize faces and can't tell his doctors apart, nor recognize his parents. He has people who want to kill him - the brother of a family killed in the car accident, where Derek may have been drunk. Someone is stalking him and even if he sees the stalker up close he can't recognize him. His father pays for an expert witness at his trial who may try to lie Derek's way to freedom. Even though Derek is not entirely likable, he does have a moral center to which he tries to cling. All of these characters float in and out like people in dreams. The feeling is claustrophobic. All cylinders work here in a character based novel that mixes popular themes in the right doses. PKD can rest easy novels like this carry his favorite themes forward.
Link: The Blue by Scott Kelly
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