FAIL SONS

Brothers Scott and Nick Platt are under pressure to drive their cryogenically frozen father from a shuttering Arizona facility to a new Cryo Center in Massachusetts before he melts.

It’s the summer of 2022. Simon Daniel Platt, author of a critical study on Stanley Elkin (one of the Jewish novelists Wilson clearly admires), was frozen 25 years ago by the Revivify company after having been diagnosed with terminal cancer. On a mission, the brothers can only hope time—and temperature—are on their side. Now at a comfy -324°, the body can’t rise above -109° without dire results. Scott, an unemployed arts writer who can and will tell you which Eve Babitz books are best and which Tom Waits albums feature guitarist Marc Ribot, has other big worries. His pregnant wife in New York is close to delivering, he’s depressed with pelvic floor symptoms, and he’s continually at odds with the buttoned-up Nick, who’s in permanent Covid-protection mode. “Fuck’s with the face diaper?” utters one of the charming red-state characters they run across, referring to Nick’s KN95 mask. Antisemites, not to mention neohippie Gen Z girls, also appear during the cross-country drive, a broken-down one as things develop that test the brothers’ resourcefulness—it’s not easy transferring a frozen human body to a motel room. Scott copes with recreational drugs and playlists that annoy Nick, who prefers playing personal accounting audiobooks. The novel loses its comic edge as it goes along, and its flood of pop-culture references can wear you out. But it’s hard to imagine a breezier treatment of brotherhood, blood counts, and body parts, or one in which a character asks, “Did I mention I found Dad’s toe?”

A consistently amusing road comedy with dark-ish undertones.