Syrup– review on Goodreads

SyrupSyrup by Max Barry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read Syrup a few weeks ago, so this review might be a bit vague. Short version: I liked it. I read Jennifer Government years ago, Company before realizing it was also by Max Barry, and jumped on Machine Man as soon as I saw it on the shelves. I liked them all, for different reasons, and so when I came across Syrup in a used book store, buying it was a no brainer.

I read the book as a “break” from trying to plow through this year’s Booker Prize long list. So, right there, I’m calling out Syrup as “light” reading. My apologies, to readers and Mr. Barry alike. I do not mean to insult or denigrate. But this is certainly a younger Barry writing, a more eager, maybe even less serious Barry. Which is not to say later works are more “serious.” Just that the wit in his later books is a little more world-wise, while the events in Syrup are little more farcical.

However, rest assured this is still a work written by a gifted hand. Syrup reads easy, flows smoothly, and like a roller coaster either makes you scream or guts you with anticipation. It’s a fun story, silly in places, outright absurd in others.

I’m not sure if I can be objective and judge the book on its own without considering Barry’s other works or the order in which he wrote them. (I did, after all, pick this up just cause I liked his other stuff). But I’ll tell you this: I just found out they’re shooting a film version of Syrup, and I can guarantee you it won’t do justice to Barry’s tone or style. The film could be quite good though, based on the story alone. There’s your review.

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The Custodians

fiction by Jason Edwards

There I was, sitting in the kitchen reading the December, 1958 edition of The Economist (yellowed pages, ads for blenders) when Lana called me from the other room. “Steve,” she said. So I got up, fetched my pipe, and walked into the den good naturedly.

“Steve,” she said. “I want to go buy a pair of boots.” Her gaze was pointed more or less towards the television, although not quite focused on it. One of the ESPNs, what looked like some kind monster truck thing. Didn’t matter, since who knows what Lana actually saw, inside her head.

“Macy’s?” I said, pretending to take a puff on the pipe.

“Woolworth’s, Steve,” she said. It used to sort of creep me out, how much she said my name. Well, not my name, really. My name is Douglas. I have no idea who Steve is.

“Okay,” I said, fighting back a sigh. They say yawns are contagious. I’ve never seen Lana yawn. But if you sigh in her presence, she’ll sigh back, and long, deep-chested sigh, the kind that can dim the lights in a room and put pictures in your mind of sloppy nooses, small caliber hands guns, discrete poisons.

I stood there for a second, looking at her, frozen, which I knew pleased her. She liked it when we looked like a photograph taken by an old Brownie 127, which is why she wore orange capris with a mustard and brown horizontal striped knit sweater. Her head seemed to gently bobble on her long, almost ungainly neck. Her cream-colored lipstick and bee-stung lips, her pointed noise, enormous thick black eyelashes, lazy eyelids, hair swept up high, big bangs sweeping back over her head and cascading down her back, in desperate need of Lustre Crème.

I usually came to the house dressed in blue jeans and a ratty old black concert t-shirt, but somehow, throughout the day, I found myself in slacks, a button up shirt, a sweater, my own hair brill-cremed. And I was always carrying this damn pipe. But, a job’s a job. And no time like the present, so I picked Lana up and slung her over my shoulder, carried her out of the den and into the garage.

Car port. When I came to the house every day I parked my 2008 Kia Spectra in the garage, but whenever Lana wanted me to take her someplace, it was a 1960 Ford Thunderbird, parked in a car port. You’d think this would be cool, a sweet ride. No. The car was filthy, not well maintained, ran poorly. I mean, it was no worse than my Kia, but certainly no better. But I had gotten used to it. I opened the door, set Lana in the back seat, adjusted her body so she didn’t seem to loll so much, then got behind the wheel, brushing aside fast food wrappers and empty coffee cups. I had no idea where they came from—we never ate in the car, I was the only one who ever drove it, and I cleaned the damn thing out two or three times a week.

Anyway. Whatever. I backed out and we drove to Macy’s. Of course, Woolworth’s went out of business in 1997. Didn’t matter. I could’ve taken Lana to Hot Topic—in fact, I had once, and that’s where she’d gotten the orange capris. Lately, though, whenever she wanted me to take somewhere, I chose Macy’s. I liked the mall because I could park far away in the huge lot. You see, sometimes when we came back to the car, it was a different car. Not often, but sometimes. And being able to park in a specific spot, away from everyone else, made it easier get past the cognitive dissonance.

And the mall was a short drive. The first time we went out, I actually thought I should try and take her to an actual Woolworth’s, so we went to the old one on Maple, which rotated between temporary usages—election campaign headquarters, raves, Halloween costume stores—but still had the old Woolworth’s sign. That day there wasn’t anything in the store itself, but I hadn’t known any better. Carried Lana to the front door, and just stood there like an idiot. Back then I was still carrying her in front of me instead of over my shoulder. Some hipster prat (wool stocking cap, horn-rims, pierced lips, ear lobe plugs, full beard, blue short sleeve chambray worksheet buttoned to the neck, both arms tattooed from biceps to knuckles, Levi 511s rolled up to reveal naked ankles above busted Vans) was taking pictures of us with his iPhone, and Lana started singing “Blue Velvet” in the deep voice which means she’s feeling uneasy, so we left.

So now I know better. Like I said, I’ve amused myself, now that I’m a little more comfortable around her, since it sort of doesn’t matter where we go. “Steve. Gelato, Steve,” and I’ll take her to Arby’s (she doesn’t eat anything—I’ve never seen her eat). Or “I want to buy you a beer, you big strapping man,” and we’ll go to Starbucks so I can get a mocha. But after a while, amusing myself sort of got boring, so now I just take her to the same few convenient locations.

Like this Macy’s. I slung her over my shoulder and marched towards the store front. No one gave us a second glance. When I felt weird carrying Lana around, people would stare. Then I stopped caring, and so did they. And it’s interesting to me—Lana doesn’t weigh very much, but it would be a lie to say she weighed less than, say, a sack of wet rice. She was definitely proportional to a slender twenty-six year old five foot seven inch bottle-red head. But you know how it is—the perception was that she was light. Toss me a 50 pound sack of potatoes, and I’ll marvel out how ungainly it is. But Lana was just Lana, and carrying her over my shoulder was really no big deal.

We got inside the Macy’s and I set her down in the evening gown section. She said she wanted boots, but I knew better—she wanted to drift around the dresses, humming to herself and letting her fingers caress the fabrics. It was the only time I ever saw her walk on her own. She wore pants—orange capris, like I said—and I could see her feet move. But on days when she wore dresses, I swear it looked like she was floating. Her head never bounced or bobbed.

I let her go to it and sought out the men’s room for a quick smoke. You can’t smoke in Macy’s. You’re not even allowed to in the restroom. But when I got there, I snapped a Chesterfield out of a pack and had a few quick drags. I don’t smoke, and I have to special order these damn things from a tobacconists in England, since they don’t sell them where I live and shipping cigarettes over state lines requires a special license that I don’t have.

And if you’re wondering, don’t, because there’s no use to it and you won’t get anywhere anyway. I mean I’ve tried. I was looking for work, answered an ad in the paper for a “personal custodian,” and just sort of started showing up at the house where Lana lives. Or, if not lives, is. Nothing is ever consistent, sometimes I recognize things from the late 50s, early 60s, those few months in the 80s when everyone thought they were doing 50s retro but were really doing 60s retro. For a few days it was 90s retro 70s, but Lana didn’t seem to like it much so I don’t know if she controls it or if someone else does or if, somehow, I do. I try not to think about it. I try not to look things up in the internet anymore. I mean, I’m pretty sure The Economist never ran ads for blenders—that was probably Life magazine. The point is… well, there is no point. I show up and do what Lana wants and everything seems to be fine and who am I to judge? I don’t know even know who I am, so who am I to judge?

I finished my cigarette, looked at myself in the mirror, decided I needed a shave. Or a martini. Instead I went back to the gowns to see how Lana was doing. When I got there, she was talking to someone… or at least the Lana version of talking, which was to stand close as if in conversation, but sort of gaze over their shoulder. I’d seen her do that with salespeople, mannequins, the homeless, old ladies at bus stops. Usually they just stood there too, as if content to have a conversation without words—again, as if captured in a photograph.

This time, oddly, Lana was actually saying things, and so was the other person—a thin girl in a purple satin dress, spaghetti straps, wavy brunette hair, maybe too much eye-makeup, cheek bones that didn’t say genetics as much as they said wealthy eating disorder. She seemed vaguely familiar.

I wanted to hear what they were saying, so I moved closer, but slowly, so as not to disturb them. As I did, a burly man dressed in a tight brown Hugo Boss suit entirely well-fitted but entirely wrong for his body stepped in front of me. “Can I help you?”

I knew he didn’t work there, but it clicked almost immediately. “I’m with the lady in the stripes there. Can I help you?”

He smiled. “Personal custodian?” he said.

I smiled back. “Yeah. Mine’s Lana.”

“Allegra,” he said, and took a step to the side so we could both watch them. “I’d always assumed I was the only one.”

“Me too.” I said. I tried not to think about it too much, but found I was somehow comforted.

“How does yours work? Does she take you on jets?”

I shook my head. “No, mostly we just go shopping.”

He nodded. “Yeah, we do that sometimes. Mostly I take her to the airport. We get on privates jets—they don’t go anywhere. I read GQ, she holds a cell phone up to her ear. Never says anything. This is the first time I’ve seen her talk to anyone else.”

“Me too.” We stand there for a while, watching, not quite making out what they’re saying. Eventually, Lana drifted away from the other girl, and the guy turned to me. “Antonio” he said, holding out his hand.

We shake. “Steve,” I said. “Actually, it’s Douglas.”

He smiled again, and then chuckled. “I used to be Dave.” He walked towards his girl.

I went over to Lana. “Ready to go home?”

She turned to me, a sort of smiled, looking over my shoulder. “Take me home, Steve.” So I picked her up, threw her over my shoulder. I turned, and Antonio (Dave) had his girl over his shoulder too, a big grin on his face, almost as big as mine. We left through different doors.

I walked us back to the car (still a 1960 Ford Thunderbird) and settled Lana into the back seat. Got behind the wheel, and glanced at her in the rearview. Somehow, she was holding a shoebox, what looked like a picture of cowboy boots on them. I sighed a sigh of contentment, and Lana picked it up, and sighed too. It wasn’t so bad.

Chatter

fiction by Jason Edwards

I was sitting at home, watching a taped re-run of the 2010 VMAs, and I found I was thirsty. I got up from the couch, didn’t bother turning off the TV as I’d seen this tape a hundred times before (it was starting to show signs of wear, of stretching, blue and red and green lines across the picture in places. I bet if Nicki Minaj were to work with one of those hipster producers, they’d love the effect). At my front door, I eschewed the leopard print high-heels for some flippity-floppies, and left my rented domicile. I didn’t bother locking the door. Yolo.

The 7-11 is only a block from my house, and I do sport mad swag, but I didn’t fear any uncouth comments from the neighborhood denizens. My weave was perched, purple and gold glitter, expertly atop my crown. My jean jacket hugged my curves like Drake hugs lyrics. My strut did things to my butt that marshaled respect, not cat-calls. And so it was: I arrived at the goal of my brief sortie, and I entered the place, twerking like a coaster.

Behind the counter, a down digga Crucian name of Raja Mahn. On the PA, Waka Flocka, which meant Raja’s boss, a racist, was gone for the day. Not that I cared. Racists don’t step to when I break the scene. But I always feel bad for Raja, off the boat and working for a wheat thin. Then again, bad job better than no job, as the float-brothers say, and it’s not like Raja can work a pole, trap a baby daddy and get some government, buy him formula and blank video tapes. More power to him, and for solidarity I raised a left fist as I made my way to the 4-Loko. Raja never stares at me ass. Maybe he sweet.

Grabbed the can, really, and spun on my toes (purple and gold glitter, polish to match my ebony tiara) and considered beef jerky. Does it have pork in it? Should a queen of my demeanor eat of the pig? My mother ate of the pig, and looked what happened to her. Flat broke, don’t know who her children’s father is, I should say are, riding the bus every place and so damn skinny she was always knees and elbows. Naw, I said to myself in my quiet voice. I chose Slim Jims instead.

I went up to counter, forgetting for a second my flippity-floppies and walked on my toes like I was in da club and pretending to be Tay-Tay so I can get some baby drank. My own fault. I was already thinking about the 4-Loko coursing down my throat, grape and that alcohol bite, heady fumes cascading up and down my sinuses, rendering a sister cloudy and not unhappy with her brief pinprick of an existence in the universe’s vast eternal nothingness. As if. As if I was down at AppleJacks with Gucci Mane all in my lobes and Raja my standby, purchasing overpriced potables for me to guzzle before I gargle. As if, as I said.

Mahn rang me up, shy-like, but I already had my pickles and limes in hand to pay. And then he said, in that island voice “We now take EBT” And he pointed at the front door, where there was probably a new sticker sign saying the same thing.

In a perfect world, the PA would have screeched to a stop, like a piano player in one of those old Oaters freezing when the uncouth gentleman larger than his horse stomps through the saloon doors. EBT. Electronic Benefit Transfer. Fancy for foodstamps. This big-ass adam’s apple havin’ dark as 97 cent cacao bein’ Goodwill bought FUBU-wearin’ for the man workin’ lips like a coupla tuptus boy motherfucker thinks I’m on the welfare? I didn’t know whether to laugh in his rat-zombie face or swing my hand around like Jackson Tyson Jordan Game 6 and slap that black off his pan. Break a nail if I did.

Instead, I went Socrates on him. I said “How’s EBT going to pay for alcohol, brother?”

He just blinked a few times. “Alcohol?” he said.

I held up the 4-Loko. “What do you think this is, baby ap-ser-in?” I can cop a hood accent when I need to.

Raja looked baffled. “But this is not alcohol. Children come in here all of the time and buy this.”

I just shook my head, counting out coins for my drank and my jims. “Methinks you’re the victim of some faulty logic there, Smullyan. The crime’s not in the buying. It’s in the selling.” Slapped my change down on the counter and turned to the door. Didn’t care if it was exact. Home slice can keep the pennies.

“Smullyan?” he said, as I was leaving.

“Less digga mo’ periodicals, rain man,” I said, and left.

Strutted my stuff down my block and to my place. Nice day, so I sat on the stoop steps and sipped my simple spirited libation. I could hear my TV through the window, three floors up, VMA tape still playing, a commercial for Pepsi or Fritos or Chrysler or something—I can never tell that trailer park shit apart. This was the point on the tape where I usually turn it off, because the next part was where that stimple maphro wins the award for video of the year. In a meat dress (and you know there’s of the pig on it).

But I let it play, sitting there, the sun bouncing around brownstones and even the one tree half a block away still standing. A few rats walked by, didn’t say a word. A car drove past, with nary an acceleration or deceleration and its bass wasn’t too loud to drown out my thoughts: poor Raja. Maybe he sweet, maybe not. Maybe he thought he was being nice, offering up the EBT, maybe that boss told him to tell everyone. And I maybe I should have been more angrier at him, but if he’s selling Sparks to babies, he’s got more to worry about than using foul vocabulary in front of a queen.

Sometimes you just got to let folks be. Isn’t anyone who can harm you that you didn’t hand the weapons to yourself. One of the Martins said that.

Panorama City– review on Goodreads

Panorama CityPanorama City by Antoine Wilson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are two connotations of the word “idiot.” Panorama’s Oppen is not the willfully ignorant idiot, the one who holds intelligence in foul regard and ironically is proud of his stolid foundation. Oppen is the other kind of idiot, the one who’s guileless, more innocent than merely stupid. He’s the village idiot (his aunt’s words) and his “adventures,” although confined to a few small places, are a kind of modern picaresque.

Oppen doesn’t tilt at windmills, exactly, and is closer to a Sancho Panza assisting others as they assail pointless endeavors. He’s a fool in as much as he doesn’t understand the people around him are fools as well, trusting in their own trust in themselves. But unlike most of them, he’s no hypocrite, and his earnestness is genuine.

Antoine Wilson’s novel is almost as simple as his main character, and through those simple eyes we see how rural American and big city America is more or less the same when it comes to people and their small-world aspirations. The novel begins with death and ends with new life, a nice backwards trajectory, with the main character’s time in-between spent in a sort of purgatory as he finds a way to re-assert his own small-world aspirations.

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Swimming Home– review on Goodreads

Swimming HomeSwimming Home by Deborah Levy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It took me 28 days to read a book I didn’t enjoy. It took me about 18 hours to get through Swimming Home, so what does that say? One thing it says: short book. “Slender” is the word I see other reviewers use. Somebody’s probably got something to say about modern attention spans and novels these days, although I wonder if it’s more a matter of readers being smarter than they use to be. I’m rationalizing, trying to justify the book’s brevity, to justify my enjoyment of it. I don’ know the author very well, so who’s to say: in another writer’s hands, there would have been more back story, more history. And that would have been a different novel.

Five people on holiday, each a stranger to the others thanks to the strangeness that intimacy breeds. And then another stranger arrives, stranger than them all, and a new intimacy opens everything up. A tried and true formula, with two possible outcomes: the solid foundation survives, or the crumbling foundation founders. This is a short novel, so you can probably guess the ending.

There’s language and emotion, but not too much to get in the way. There’s economy of scene, nearly but not quite absurd. Maybe that’s how they do things in Europe these days, maybe I’m not worldly enough to know how vacationing Englanders behave in southern France. It was a bit alien though, and I was able to keep the characters at arm’s length enough to keep from being absorbed. A short novel, too brief to immerse yourself in, despite all the obvious symbolism.

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Narcopolis– review on Goodreads

NarcopolisNarcopolis by Jeet Thayil

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

For the sake of brevity, so you can skip my review: did not like this book. Did not enjoy it. Don’t like dream sequences, stream-of-consciousness rambling, random imagery catalogs, pointless meandering. But that’s just me, and if pointless meandering is your cup of tea, you might enjoy the book. No, really: there’s definitely an expertise here, a sense of balance. Some people don’t get “abstract” art (I’m one of them) but we at least recognize that a defter hand than our own created the piece.

Which is not to say, strictly, that Narcopolis is merely “abstract.” This is neither Finnegan’s Wake nor simply the nightmare chapter from Ulysses. There are stories here, of a sort, narrative, as it were. But for me, it’s all a little too self-indulgent, too drugged up and defecated and…. and here only the “F” word will do, which I hesitate to use in this review. But no other synonym suffices.

Maybe I can’t identify, and that’s the problem. I have no perspective on this kind of degradation, very little interest, even, and certainly no patience. I’d love to go back in time and give my younger self, the one who enjoyed Trainspotting, this book, and see if I would have liked it more then.

This book was shortlisted for the Booker prize, which says more to me about the judges than the prize itself. I shouldn’t judge. I should allow for their greater wisdom, insight, patience, and most of all, independence. They’re not picking books strictly as a list of recommended reads. So be it. That I decided to read through the list was my own folly, and, I am realizing, an arbitrary one at that.

Which is my take away. This book took me way too long to read, because I couldn’t get into it. Readers talk about not just what a particular books does but what the art of reading, in general, provides. And this one provided me a reminder: I don’t have to read every darn thing, not even the ones I said I would read, if my reasons for doing so where based on nothing more than a whim.

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Why Do I Hate Out and Backs?

Posted at The Loop, the blogs at Runner’sWorld.com

There’s this really great running trail in Shoreline, the Interurban, blacktop paved, wide, well maintained, with pedestrian bridges over a major intersection. I end up running along it three or four times a week, depending. Going south to north it’s a very gentle climb, making it easy to run both ways. But for some reason, I can only ever run it one way at a time.

I really despise out-and-back routes, and I’m not even sure why. The Interurban would be great for an out-and-back, but I end up taking sides streets for half the run, in order to create a loop, and this despite some pretty tough hills along those side streets. If I’m feeling creative, I’ll run up the Interurban, switch to a side street, then come back on the Interurban to the point I was on it before, then switch to another side street, creating a kind of figure-eight loop.

And although I said I’m not sure why I can’t bring myself to do out-and-backs, I have my suspicions. I think it might have something to do with GPS mapping—I have one of those Nike+ watches, and I love looking at the maps of my runs after I’m done, especially on a brand-new route. But if I’m going out for a 5 miler, and I’ll end up on a loop I’ve run dozens of times. So why should the map matter?

I can recall, five years ago when I started running, I ran for time, not for distance—the goal was, for example, to run for 30 minutes, and I always ran an out-and-back: 15 minutes out, 15 minutes back (20 back if I pushed too hard on the first half). But then I switched to mileage goals, and I’d create routes using an online mapping tool. Some of the tools would get wonky if I tried to create a way-point on a street that already had a route marked on it. That’s my excuse.

I’m writing this to see if you commiserate. Does anyone else had out-and-backs like I do? Just today, as I was heading home on the last half mile, I avoid a blind intersection by taking a side street, which put me on a street I had already run today for all of one block. And I cringed the whole time. Anyone else suffering from this ridiculous psychosis?

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry– review on Goodreads

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold FryThe Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

1989, I’m sitting in a car in a shopping mall parking lot, waiting for a friend to get off work. I’m 17, reading the last 10 pages or so of Fried Green Tomatoes, crying my eyes out. Fast forward to a few days ago, me sitting my home offices, reading the last few pages of Pilgrimage, and for the first time in 23 years, crying my eyes out again. A moving story, touching, gentle, subtle, simple.

I came to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry via the 2012 Booker Prize longlist, and maybe I was on the rebound from reading a rather difficult book before, but I thoroughly enjoyed almost every page of this one. Here’s a man who, on a whim, decides to walk nonstop from the bottom of England to the top. An old man, retired, who never made much of himself except that his life could have been a whole lot worse, and there’s triumph in not succumbing to one’s circumstance. Through the course of the walk he doesn’t overcome personal tragedies as much as he finally addresses old injuries, breaking himself down emotionally so that he can heal up again.

Rachel Joyce isn’t the first author to write a story about somebody taking along walk. There’s Lawrence Block’s Random Walk, and of course Stephen King’s Long Walk, and I’m sure many others. I was also reminded of the cross-country running section of Forrest Gump, and the young man’s self-imposed austerity in Into the Wild. There’s something very compelling about this urge to just start walking, and let everything else disappear behind you. More than once I thought about a man I met in Sonora, CA, who owned a used bookstore and who, himself, had once walked across the United States.

As I said, the book is subtle, building up to reveal Harold’s past slowly, and along the way the simple descriptions of his daily progress don’t get too bogged down in the mileage. And Joyce does an excellent job of showing how one person, doing something as simple as walking, can have a profound effect on so many others.

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A Hint of Fall on the Wind

poetry by Jason Edwards

Stepped outside last night in a pair of summer shorts

And a shirt with a reference to something Hawaiian on it

That was a size too small in June, 300 miles ago.

I’ve had a busy summer. I’ve enjoyed the weather.

Say Seattle, and people think rain, but

Seattle hasn’t been Seattle for a while now,

Like it always is from the end of July until

September. There was a hint of fall on the wind,

A taste of red leaves and that purple the sky gets

When the days are more orange than yellow,

Night time pines bathed in TV blues from windows

Where football’s on and so are the new sit-coms.

My toes curled up inside my flip flops.

A spider’s web dismantled itself on the breeze,

Since all the spiders are coming inside now.

But we don’t have enough flies. Or time, because

Things are going to slow down for a bit, last for

A few rounds of forever before next summer comes.

Skios—Review on Goodreads

Skios: A NovelSkios: A Novel by Michael Frayn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Here’s a fun, fast farce for you to read on a plane or a boat or a train, in a deck chair, or sprawled on your couch while the last of the summer breezes plays with your living room curtains. But maybe not curled up in your sweater and socks by a fire, cup of hot tea or cocoa nearby. Skios is more of a mai-tai or rum tiki kind of novel. It’s set on a fictional Greek island, you see, complete with accented natives, bubble-headed white people, a good looking ne’erdowell and a chubby, gruff old lecturer.

In other words, not a book for plumbing the depths of character development, or to peek a pique at the human condition. It was only after I read it that I discovered author Michael Frayn is a playwright, and a writer of farces, and this novel falls right into that niche as neatly as its characters fall into the absurdity of their assumptions.

Skios is a sort of a Comedy of Errors, but only sort of, as the situation is perpetuated not my mistaken identity and confusion so much as willful misrepresentation and ill-placed certainty. Coincidences stack on top of coincidences, near-misses abound, all of it heading towards an inevitable conclusion that, in the end, we’re saved from by some rather convenient deus ex machina.

But I guess that sort of thing is allowed in a farce. I guess if one’s going to take up the debris left behind by Comedy of Errors or even The Importance of Being Earnest, one’s allowed to make it all silly, then violently sweep away the anticipated conclusion. And I do mean violently.

Look for the movie based on this book at some point, starring whatever post-SNL (or the British equivalent) actor looking to bridge from comedy to something taken slightly more seriously. Look for Tom Stoppard to come in and do an emergency re-write, “saving” the story by actually giving it an ending. Look for the bartender when you’re half-way through the book, because even though it’s silly, you won’t want to put it down, but you will want another mai-tai.

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