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The Ugly Guys Club

Name: The Ugly Guys Club
Author: Dan K. Oh

THE MOST VULGAR, SEXIST, RACIST, BLASPHEMOUS, SARCASTIC, AND POLITICALLY-INCORRECT TESTIMONY EVER TOLD!

by Dan K. Oh ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Far from a sanitized fable, this book delivers a highly nuanced and lurid account of one man’s surprisingly spiritual quest.

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A debut novel chronicles a young Asian-American’s odyssey of frustration and redemption.

To say that David, the narrator of this story, is irked by a lot in life would be an understatement. Feeling as though “the Creator didn’t like me,” David details his coming-of-age in Los Angeles as he attempts to get rich, have sex, and otherwise attain the more tangible rewards in life. But those prizes, despite his best efforts, manage to remain out of reach. Beginning with his stalled pursuit of a girl named Jeannie Kim, who he winds up admitting “never considered me a real man,” David’s long story of embarrassment goes on to incorporate a number of adventures. From his time spent with a pyramid scheme to a stint in Mexico City, his experiences are varied, brutal, and not meant for the squeamish. A lover of movies and professional wrestling, David frequently embraces pop-culture references. When observing a fight at a nightclub in which he spends time as a struggling waiter, David sees a patron “doing the flying body press like Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat.” While such reflections may not be universally understood, they help to humanize the protagonist. David may be short, no friend to the environment (his pastor admonishes him as “the biggest litterbug I have ever seen!”), and downright pathetic, but he is, in the end, just as flawed as the rest of humanity. Though his thoughts delve deeply into the crude (“My schlong was like the Elven sword wielded by Frodo that turned blue whenever the Orcs were near,” he says of his penis), they are never outside the imagination of a man mystified and alienated by modern sexuality. Notable for informative tidbits (such as the concept of “booking” at Asian nightclubs), Oh’s tale also offers some episodes that drag. While much can be gleaned from David’s time as a nightclub waiter (including images of his business cards), readers may find their attentions wandering when the narrative turns to topics such as the markup price of whiskey. Though David’s eventual path to Christianity is long (and bumpy), the final pages of this vulgar, detailed, and amusing novel see a man who has come an extraordinary distance.

Far from a sanitized fable, this book delivers a highly nuanced and lurid account of one man’s surprisingly spiritual quest.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Tellwell Talent

Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

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Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

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Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.