Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: To see more is to find oblivion…

Tommy Pic’s hallucinations come and go and leave sticky notes for him during his bipolar swings. Coming out of a blackout in an unfamiliar psychiatric ward, Tommy Pic awakes to his missing childhood love, his dead brother, his alive family, and a message from his agent that his latest screenplay may yet be his ticket back to Hollywood fame and fortune. If only he could remember writing it.

Searching out the hallucinations that will write Acts 2 and 3 of the screenplay that will oust Zypho as his best-known work, Tommy goes chasing his kidnapped childhood love, a witch from the magic shop, the komodo dragon he tried to cut out of his gut on Christmas Eve.

… This is what makes you die.

My Review: This book is bittersweet because its author died of a brain tumor last July. His career output was good-quality suspense and horror fiction, and a brief note from his widow posted on Facebook suggests that there could be posthumous goodies.

Let no one speak ill of the dead, runs the Roman maxim, and I have no ill to speak. I enjoyed this read, found it compelling, finished it in a day or so. The problems that knocked a whole star-and-a-half off my rating were all about the cohesion of the events in the book. A man having blackouts and talking to dead people is bound to have a continuity issue or two in his brain. On paper, these come across more as scattershot than as planned and placed pieces of the one story: Tommy Pic's life.

It's a good book, give it a try, just don't expect too much formal structure and all will be well. ( )

This book isn't a typical Piccirilli novel. There's no pulp fiction or crime noir that occurs. There's no supernatural elements (though this is debatable). And there's no horror, at least in the vampires, monsters, ghouls sense of the word. Considering though that Piccirilli has said in interviews that he finds more true horror in real life, this novel has tons.

The protagonist, Tommy Pic, wakes up in a mental hospital. Pic is a screenwriter with some success but not much. He also is haunted by the ghosts of his father, a girl who went missing when he was ten and a Komodo dragon. While Pic seems to be barely holding it together, he is also an old hat when it comes to dealing with a mental hospital. Waking up inside of one is not a new thing. At least not since after failing in Los Angeles and moving back home to live in his mom's basement. The story then follows Pic has he determines which ghosts to exorcise and which to accept.

Initially I was a bit disappointed with the book. The story seemed disjointed and scattered. There were pieces to the story that I wasn't understanding and didn't seem to fit. However, the second half of the book aligned those disjointed pieces together until I realized that they were never quite as disconnected as I thought. It was more like real life in that there was no gun fights or car chases or other hard edges. Instead relationships reached a plateau before changing. Lives evolved in steps, not jumps. And offbeat storylines matched life where not everything makes sense.

I should also point out the obvious that the book seems semi-autobiographical at times. Tommy Pic the character vs. Tom Piccirilli the author. Both are writers. However, that is pretty much it. According to IMDB, Piccirilli hasn't reach the same level of quasi-fame that the character has. And while the two might have similar ghosts to exorcise, that's what a write always does: puts part of himself into the story. The naming did make it a tad more difficult to get connected at the start of the novel. While I do believe that new readers should start with something else by Piccirilli, regular readers or fans shouldn't miss this one. ( )

What Makes You Die by Tom Piccirilli is an odd read.

The main character, Tommy Pic, may share the author's name, but I am assured that all characters and event are fictitious (though to what extent, who knows?). The story starts with him waking up in a psych ward, strapped down to a bed (a commonplace occurrence for him apparently). The last time he woke up with the straps, was a couple years previously, when he attempted to 'hara-kiri' himself with a steak knife. Not because he wanted to die (necessarily), but because he was trying to get Gideon out. Gideon lives in his stomach, and is the ghost of a giant komodo dragon- who lived during the Pleistocene Age, and whose fossil is now on display in the Queensland Museum in Australia. For those wondering, it didn't work. He lost four foot of intestine, but Gideon is still inside him.

A depressive, bipolar, alcoholic, who is subject to frequent blackouts, Tommy is lost in the past. He is a screenwriter, though somewhat of a failed one. There was a time when he was moving up in the scene, living in Hollywood, he had the world in his hands. A few of his scripts were picked up, but then changes were made, he lost his spark and all his money and is now most famous for films he despises, and living in his mother's basement.

His father died when he was eight, one of his friends went missing a few years later, and his wife left him when his career took a downward turn. Memories haunt him, and due to his imagination and profession, they play out in front of him, like one of his movies, with full surround-sound. He spends hours lost in his own mind. He focuses on his failings and his losses, creating a bleak environment, that looks as washed out as he feels.

But the words don't flow anymore. He's tried everything. So when his agent, Monty, tells him he loves his latest manuscript, Tommy is more than a little confused (while breaking the fourth wall a bit. The manuscript is 'What Makes You Die', but seems to tell a completely different story to this one). Monty returns his script with amendments and asks him for the next act by Monday. Tommy leaves panicked. The script is written on his paper, has his name, everything about it screams that he wrote it, but he can't remember writing it at all.

He meets various characters, though I'm not sure how many of them are actually real, but neither is he, and attempts to find closure, or finish his script, or come to terms with his past, or any number of things.

If you're having trouble figuring out the plot, don't worry. The entire book is practically told constantly in Tommy's mind, with not too much dialogue. Because of this, if can be confusing for the reader, as Tommy's mind is a chaotic mess, his thoughts whirl around in his head, howling. It is a jumbled flow of information, that is hard to understand and yet somehow causes unease. I doubt even he understands half the stuff that happens in this story.

There are times when this book is quite tiring to read. There are no breaks in the story, just a constant, turbulent flow of turmoil, self-loathing and uncertainty, that takes its toll after a while.

This is a bleak, reasonably dark story, but with a surprising amount of humour. I would describe it more, but one of the characters (Timmy Pic himself, in fact) explains it so well, I'll let him do it:

"Innocent kid who hasn't had his liver torn out and stuck on a pike yet:

Mr. Pic, some of your work is intensely stark and bleak, but it's also surprisingly funny. How
do you manage to put so much emphasis on such spiritual pain and have laughs along the
way?"

That describes his writing style in a nutshell. To hear the answer you'll have to read the book. Oh, and what a good answer it is.

Going through the story, with its lack of direction, there comes a point when you believe you've found the plot. It seems like it's going to be this big thing, this conclusion, this remedy for his mind, something to fix the damage that begun so long ago and help get his life back on track. Then it finishes with a a completely different, very ordinary and not quite fitting ending. There is a hopeful air to it, though it's still a little unsure, but doesn't entirely work with the rest of the story.

It's almost like the majority of the book is coated in deep fog, that makes it hard to tell what's going on, and then it lifts right at the very end and changes the story, it changes everything. The oddities that frequent the pages are made trivial and such a normal ending does not fit with the insanity that came before it.

After finishing the book, I went back, thought about the plot and discovered it to be something very simple- a writer overcoming his writer's block. There are a few additions and complications, but that is basically what the story is, though you wouldn't know it. But they do say it's the journey and not the destination.

Overall, this is an unusual book, quite macabre in places, and will most likely be a hit-or-miss kind of book. You'll either like it or you won't. For what it's worth, I enjoyed it, though most likely didn't understand most of it. I'm not even entirely sure whether most of the events in the book even happened or were just delusions of Tommy Pic's mind. I don't think he knows.

Maybe I enjoyed it because it was unusual. Because it's not something you read everyday. Why I enjoyed it isn't really relevant, all that matters is that I did- though the confusion does lessen than somewhat.

Disclaimer: I received this book through a Librarything giveaway. This is not a sponsored review. All opinions are 100% my own. ( )

Tommy Pic is a screenwriter emerging from a serious depressive episode. He cut his own stomach open, spent a long time under sedation and believes there is a dragon living in his stomach. Explaining it like that, you realise how dark a book What Makes You Die is, but strong prose makes it a light read. Tommy's depression is a buffer against poeticism. This is how he sees the world, with all the discontent that squirms between his life and the version of it he writes. It's a backhand to authors who use prose to mythologise themselves. Maybe only Piccirilli understands a lot of what's going on – and there must be something, because a book this smart can't have a resolution as underwhelming as this one seems – but at least some of it'll come together in your head once the book's had a while to mature on the shelf. ( )

I didn't like this one much, unfortunately. It was a bit of a bizarre story about a screenwriter suffering from a number of mental health issues. He has a lizard thing in his stomach, he writes without knowing about it and he hangs around with some very strange characters. I found the book extremely confusing and had to force myself to keep reading. I did find the second half of the book a little easier to read than the beginning though. Interesting to read so many positive reviews, but all in all, just not my cup of tea! ( )