51

51 by Patrick O’Leary (2022 Tachyon paperback 296pp)

 

The first book by Patrick O’Leary which I read was “Door Number Three” way back in the late 1990s. It was a library book and I remember enjoying it but feeling it lacked a certain something for a SF, time-travel tale. I later bought the same library copy only to find a substantial number of the pages had gone missing. I must still have it somewhere. That was his first novel and he’s not a very prolific writer. O’Leary spent over 15 years writing and polishing “51” and it shows.

Going by the cover and the title you might expect this is another sub-X-files tale about UFOs, aliens and conspiracies but you’d be wrong. This is an exceptional novel that touches on all those things but is much more.

The set up is pretty simple – 70-something retiree and former alcoholic Adam ‘Nuke’ Pagnucco stops his car on a freezing night to help what he thinks is a vagrant in trouble. The other man actually turns out to be Winston Koop, formerly Nuke’s best friend in an earlier part of his life.

The majority of the rest of the book is Koop telling Adam anecdotes about what he really did after he accepted a top-secret job with the U.S. Government. The stories jump around from the early 1970s back to the 1940s and forward through to the 2000s. Slowly a strange picture builds up about what has been really going on at a certain secret base.

Keeping in mind that Koop is a classic unreliable narrator and all is definitely not what it seems we gain a vague understanding of that reality.

After 1940s nuclear tests opened a ‘door to anywhere’ the base has attracted entities known as IFs (‘Imaginary Friends’) in their hundreds and the military has been covering up their existence by laying hints that they are Aliens. Going as far as crashing a mocked-up flying saucer with three IFs onboard.

Koop himself took on a role that saw him travel the country removing the memories of those who either worked at the base or otherwise dealt with the IFs.

The above makes this seem like some SF pot-boiler but the prose is lyrical and sometimes dream-like. The story moves on to deep topics like love, friendship and loss. I was drawn right into the text and enjoyed every minute I spent absorbed in Koop’s stories. From runaway IFs, those who would try and help or harm them to the comical visits of US presidents to the base throughout the years. Some things were simply left unexplained – what was up with the eggs??

The big climax was a little bit cliched but I can forgive that in a book this strong – the mood and feeling of this book persists long after you finish reading it. That’s the best kind of writing.