THE LAST DIVE

A year after the author suffers severe brain damage from the bends following a deep dive, two close friends, a father and son, die of the same thing. Chowdhury's disjointed and repetitive story of the three lives and their extreme risk-taking in the ocean's depths includes the physics, physiology, and psychology of scuba diving into caves, wrecks, and lobster beds. The narrator is easy to understand, but his subtle sarcastic tone becomes tedious with time. On the positive side, he whines, shouts, and argues his characters' lines and gasps their dying words with passion. Some of the similes comparing the complex to the simple are so corny they may make one groan. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 03]