Review: Only you know what's best for you!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 25, 2012
Wendell has escaped.The novel hits the ground running and the reader is quickly drawn in to Wendell's world.  What is happening to him? What is he becoming?  Why him?  His grip on reality is fragile as he struggles against an internal enemy and many imagined as well as real external enemies not least the past.It is a fast paced thriller with a very interesting theme:Many horrific things will happen to us as we go through life; these things may turn us into monsters but if we can find someone to be honest with, someone who listens and who is not judgemental, then we can hold back the monster and find the true us.Wendell's mother is very keen for him to take up a new job at the out of the way building, on the old industrial estate.  The anonymous building is at the end of an afterthought road which bends around meaning that the building is not easily seen.  Wendell is a quiet, insecure kind of guy who tends to go with the flow.  His colleague Laughlin is a drunken thug; his other colleague Connor is a part-time grad student dead set on ingratiating himself to the doctors who work at the medical lab which operates in this building.  One of his first jobs is keeping some protesters who have gathered outside the building as well as the news crews at bay.  One of the protesters tells Wendell: "They make poison. All those lab coats, those so-called experts. You think they'd know better."  Despite the warning and the imploring face of the young protester, Wendell is unfazed - it's a pay cheque after all and he can see nothing untoward.A while later one of the doctors approach Wendell with a proposition - would he like to take some pills, something like vitamins which can really improve his health?  Being the obliging chap he is, Wendell agrees and of course the extra cash will allow him to fulfil a dream of moving away from the city one day.  Far from feeling better he is sucked into a downward spiral.  Soon events escalate and it is more than pills, it's anaesthetics, gas, operations and permanent incarceration in a cell-like ward.  Chained to a bed, dowsed in sedatives he loses track of time and of reality; but the question he never forgets is, "Why me?" Wendell knows he must escape - he is part of an awful experiment and the screams from the floor below for tell his own fate.After a daring escape he finds himself hiding out at his dead mother's apartment.  Surely they will come for him eventually.  Suddenly he is confronted full on by the hideous transformation which he is physically undergoing.  Starving hungry yet terrified to be seen, the apartment is his new prison where the controlling, belittling, mean spirited ghost of his mother continues to taunt him.  He thinks back to the brutal muredr of his father, how the culprit was never found and how much his mother changed after that.Eventually he ventures out discovering an even more horrifying new dimension to himself.Where will it end?  When will the excruciating pain and the hallucinations end?  Will they find him and reclaim their experiment?  Should he end it all?An elderly nun living opposite takes pity on Wendell sensing his torment and offering a sympathetic ear.  As a reader I kept willing Wendell to talk to Sister Agatha and share what had happened to him, however Wendell is reluctant, he knows what he has to say is too unbelievable.The story rushes on to a gripping climax with an unexpected twist.As a reader I enjoyed the story on many levels and there was so much wisdom expressed by sister Agatha during her conversations with Wendell, themes which I think will chime with many.  Another theme of the The Death of Wendell Mackey is that one should never try and change or control someone else, especially a child.  They say parents only do what is best for you and this book quite rightly asserts that they do what is best for them.A very clever read that really did make me think.  I highly recommend it.