My Cultural Diet

Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival is one of my all-time favorite movies, so checking out the debut novel from its screenwriter was a no-brainer. While investigating a pipeline explosion, Homeland Security agent Grant Lukather gets caught up in something far more mysterious when he meets a therapist who claims to be able to tap into people’s past lives. Soon enough, Lukather, the therapist, and her patient are on the trail of an impossible serial killer. Simultaneous contains some interesting ideas, and not surprisingly given Heisserer’s Arrival script, the reincarnation stuff is pretty high-concept. Unfortunately, the novel never really gelled for me, and the twists, though interesting in the moment, only further muddled things. Naturally, sparks inevitably fly between the agent and the therapist, but the characters are so bland in their respective traumas that it doesn’t really matter. Note: Sony Pictures has already acquired the movie rights to Simultaneous, so we’ll see what Hollywood does with the story.

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