A broad, well-crafted satire of political radicalization.
Some right-wing malcontents get in over their heads with an ocean-based secessionist movement in this debut comic novel.
North Carolina mechanic and Civil War reenactor Gage Randolph, recently unemployed, has just been paid to dig up Stonewall Jackson’s arm for a wealthy collector. Gage has the arm beside him in his Ford Bronco when he’s involved in a three-car accident. One of the other vehicles contains progressive TV host Monica Bell, who—right at the moment of impact—is conducting a call-in debate on right-winger Bill Spark’s internet radio show. The third car is piloted by Jacob Kelley, the so-called Unacrapper, on the run from the law after unsuccessfully attempting to blow up the IRS using a bomb made from his own feces (an act inspired by the same show that Monica has called in to). The two male drivers panic and kidnap the unconscious Monica, bringing her to Gage’s friend’s recently shuttered breast-themed wing restaurant. Now wanted for a whole slew of crimes, Gage and his assorted anti-government friends hatch a scheme to gain citizenship on FreedomLand, the mobile oil rig of anti-tax billionaire Zacharias Townsend. But Gage will soon learn that the conspiracy-fueled anarchic utopianism of people like Spark and Townsend may not be the best lodestar for a simple man like himself. Christopher Jackson’s prose blends madcap humor and Southern wit: “Honey, Gage dug up Stonewall Jackson’s arm and then kidnapped Monica Bell and the Unacrapper,” one of Gage’s friends tells his fiancee. “At several points during his evening, he could have opted not to commit a felony, and he blew past all of ’em.” The book skewers many recognizable figures and talking points on the American right, but the author’s characters are specific and original enough for readers to accept them as their own personalities. What’s more, he treats them and their views empathetically, exploring the motivations and emotions behind them. The author doesn’t have many answers to America’s problem of bitter partisanship, but he has provided a funny and fast-paced sendup of it for readers’ enjoyment. As things spin further and further out of control, they somehow become more cathartic.
A broad, well-crafted satire of political radicalization.Pub Date: July 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-09-838029-8
Page Count: 324
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
A fresh, often funny, always poignant take on the coming-of-age novel.
After a loss, a young British woman from a Ghanaian family reassesses her responsibilities.
Her name is Maddie, but the young protagonist in George’s engaging coming-of-age novel has always been known to her family as Maame, meaning woman. On the surface, this nickname is praise for Maddie’s reliability. Though she’s only 25, she works full time at a London publishing house and cares for her father, who’s in the late stages of Parkinson’s disease. Maddie’s older brother, James, has little interest in helping out, and their mother is living in Ghana and running the business she inherited from her own father. When she needs money, she always calls Maddie, who shoulders these expectations and burdens without complaint, never telling her friends about her frustrations: “We’re Ghanaian, so we do things differently” is an idea that's ingrained in her. Her only confidant is Google, to whom she types desperate questions and gets only moderately helpful responses. (Google does not truly understand the demands of a religious yet remote African-born mother.) But when Maddie loses her job and tragedy strikes, she begins to question the limits of family duty and wonders what sort of life she can create for herself. With a light but firm touch, George illustrates the casual racism a young Black woman can face in the British (or American) workplace and how cultural barriers can stand in the way of aspects of contemporary life such as understanding and treating depression. She examines Maddie’s awkward steps toward adulthood and its messy stew of responsibility, love, and sex with insight and compassion. The key to writing a memorable bildungsroman is creating an unforgettable character, and George has fashioned an appealing hero here: You can’t help but root for Maddie’s emancipation. Funny, awkward, and sometimes painful, her blossoming is a real delight to witness.
A fresh, often funny, always poignant take on the coming-of-age novel.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-2502-8252-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
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