This amusing adventure delivers an enjoyable romp through a bizarre yet familiar landscape.
A debut absurdist novel parodies The Twilight Zone.
The year is 1962. A man in a skinny tie named Ron Sterling is in the Port Authority bus station in Manhattan. Ron is buying a ticket for Binghamton, New York, otherwise known as the “Fifth Most Depressing City in The Country.” Ron Sterling bears a striking similarity to Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone, right down to the Chesterfield he’s smoking. But Ron hosts something called The Detour Dimension. Things seem normal enough until it turns out the bus driver is a “Hot Dog Man” named Frank Weener. When Frank is not driving a bus, he is writing, and he hands a spiral notebook to Ron. Readers are introduced, via Frank’s writings, to The Anarchists. The group, with names like The Crazy Clown, Mr. Dude, and Larry Lutz, is seated at The Pancake House. The members of this crew discuss what they have been up to lately. The Crazy Clown, for instance, plans to park an M41 Walker Bulldog tank in front of a bank and sell Communist-themed ice cream. How does he manage to keep the ice cream cold? He explains to a questioning policeman he does so with “Cold War tactics.” The novel goes back and forth between such outrageous actions, both in Frank’s writing and on Ron’s journey. Mr. Dude teaches a poetry class, though he mainly has his students pretend to be him and take turns overseeing the proceedings. Then there’s action back at The Pancake House, where weird things happen. During a football game, “the Worcester sauce bottle in the middle of their table picks up nothing but John Madden and Pat Summerall.”
When readers first meet Ron and Frank, things are perplexing. While anyone familiar with Rod Serling’s work can easily imagine what Ron must look and sound like, what exactly is a Hot Dog Man and how does he manage to function like a human? In addition, it’s easy to be confused by The Anarchists, who are also called “comedians.” By the time The Crazy Clown talks about his tank, it’s clear that anything may transpire, with or without a satisfactory explanation. Nevertheless, once this tone is established, there is a great deal of humor to be found. In Mr. Dude’s poetry class, one student named Claude Spectrum puts on a drum machine and repeats the word Carbohydrates over and over again. The narrator later informs readers that “Spectrum’s deceptively simple lyric, stapled to an irresistibly militant rhythm…is ridiculously rich with allegorical, elliptical, empirical and erotic suggestion.” It’s a funny scene followed by a hilarious explanation. It’s also exactly the type of thing that might happen on The Twilight Zone if the episode were written by an insane part-human, part-hot dog bus driver. Keay’s book manages such playfulness without the sort of cruel mockery that sometimes surfaces in parodies. As zany as the scenes get, they maintain the feel of a tasteful homage. While not every bit lands as neatly as a Worcester sauce bottle that picks up football commentary, the novel never lets up on the fun.
This amusing adventure delivers an enjoyable romp through a bizarre yet familiar landscape.Pub Date: May 27, 2024
ISBN: 9798350944549
Page Count: 100
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
