INSURRECT ME

A brilliant woman with Alzheimer’s disease and a not-too-bright conspiracy theorist become entangled in a terrorist plot in Kirk’s satirical novel.

For 20 years, Maryland resident Andy MacClean allowed his wife, Melody, to assume leadership over their lives; after all, he’s not the smartest man, and she’s a bona fide genius with multiple doctorates and a successful career as a corporate executive at a reinsurance company. However, she also suffers from early-onset Alzheimer’s, so Andy finds himself forced to assume responsibilities for which he’s deeply unprepared. He’s also become a devoted supporter of ex-president Donald Trump, and he’s convinced that his hero only lost the election because it was rigged by evil elites; in fact, Andy believes just about every bizarre conspiracy theory that Trump and his disciples espouse. Things take a strange turn when Andy—who’s nicknamed “Handcream” because he used it to treat his dyshidrotic eczema in high school—rescues 17-year-old Telly Kind from her stepfather, Lutz Delorean, the police chief of Damascus, Maryland, when the latter attempts to kidnap her. When Melody discovers that Lutz implanted a microchip into Telly’s hand, she thinks that the teen is a pawn in some sort of nefarious plot hatched by her stepdad—who has his own sordid reasons to loathe America. Over the course of this book, Kirk delivers a thoroughly farcical plot with eccentric humor; at one point, for instance, the none-too-sharp Andy is said to take “information in on a catch-and-release basis.” Along the way, he shrewdly plumbs the depths of the chaotic American political psyche, and, in particular, many of its angry citizens’ attraction to bombast: “Loud is the best answer to everything. You know that movie with all the fast action scenes that were impossible, but the speed with which they flew by suspended your skepticism? Political rally organizers took note.” Overall, it’s a delightfully strange and refreshing work that effectively combines a comedic wildness with a clear-eyed political commentary.

A compelling amalgam of ludicrous humor and sober cultural analysis.