As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the best nonsupernatural horror tales ever conceived. It is a mythic parable, a dark, wickedly bent and stretched nightmare version of one of Aesop's Fables, where the writer, unlike Aesop, is not nice enough to insert animals into his cruel lessons, but is content to give humans their just desserts in fiction that demonstrates the horror of reality.

Seconds is the story of "Wilson", who follows a circuitous route to a strange company that specializes in giving men a new start in life, by changing their appearance, their identity, their names, and even planting cadavers in their place that convince the world they are dead and gone. Wilson, bored and middle-aged, undergoes this clandestine process of instant rebirth, ignoring the signs that there is a sinister aspect to the whole affair (ie. he is ultimately blackmailed into the procedure once he knows too much about it, and is showing hesitation), and ignoring the tug of a previous life he is never quite convinced he is willing to leave. Suddenly it's too late to back out--"Wilson" has a new face, a trimmer body, a new career as a painter (he is instructed to get better at what was once just a hobby, but until he is a professional-level portraitist, paintings will be provided by the company that buttress his new, phony artist's credentials), and even a personal servant named John, sent to help him accept his new life, in case "Wilson" has any...misgivings...that may cause him to try to...reject his new situation.

What an opportunity! And yet, "Wilson" does seem reluctant to accept the gift he has been given, the gift that he made an effort to seek out. His benefactors had always been a bit worried that he might be one of their failures--certain things in his personality suggesting that our pal Wilson might not be able to adjust to a new start--but "Wilson" gives real cause for concern when he hints at his old life while drunk and maudlin at parties, and worse, when he tries to reach out to his supposedly rejected past.

The whole thing is superb from page one to page last. There is a sinister, mysterious aura to the organization who grants "Wilson" this magnificent boon, a chance to start over and finally discover true happiness. Slowly there creeps in the sense that "Wilson"has signed up for more than he bargained for, and is maybe just a pawn in some secret, horrible game that he can never stop playing, or else...

A brilliant, chilling work of literary terror that plays with a reader's head and heart. I enjoyed the movie version when I saw it years ago, and the original novel is no letdown.

As a movie buff,and I like to see how the screen plays
are made,I bought the book so I could see the propensity
that was sought after the book was reviewed and made into
a movie.The movie starred Rock Hudson and this was his best
role that he ever acted in.This movie and of course the book
makes the book,and the movie come alive again.Read the book
or see the movie if you can find it,oh yea it will remind you
of " THE TWILIGHT ZONE".Well the choice is yours.

A truly masterful tale on why science has its limitations. Combined with a breathless, harrowing narrative style, the book will give you an unhappy feeling as you read how the main character is slowly locked away and euthanized as a failed project. It makes you think...

Hey - If you like reading about people who think they're famous talking about themselvs - this is a good book for you. He's a good guy tho.

Ely's elegant prose drew this reader, who knows little of Russia, into a new landscape and illuminated the ways it was seen (and not seen) by its nineteenth century inhabitants. Although I was familiar with references to the Russian landscape in literature, I knew nothing of the Russian landscape painters of the nineteenth century. Ely introduces this fascinating subject and guides one through the work of such painters as Shishkin and Vasil'ev (with fine illustrations) to an appreciation of the way they saw and painted their native land. He then links this to a developing sense of national identity in the Russia of this period.
I was particularly interested in what this suggests about the role of a nation's landscape in its national myth, in the role it plays as a source of common pride in one's country and the ways we choose to portray specific features of our landscape to ourselves.
A good read from start to finish.