A lively deluge of madcap humor, sometimes more silly than genuinely funny.
A clueless IT worker gets falsely arrested for domestic terrorism in this satirical comedy.
Chris Dawkins is a content developer for Sixdub, a successful tech company in Silicon Valley. His mundane job largely consists of scouring the internet for copyright-free video—once found, his company replaces the original audio with “random, computer-generated rap lyrics.” While doing this, he thoughtlessly likes a video recorded in a language he cannot understand that turns out to be terrorist propaganda disseminated by the Militant Islamic Liberation Front, an organization based in fictional Zazaristan, where “goatfighting is a sport of gentlemen.” Problematically for Chris, FBI Director Dick Barry is aggressively pushing for showy counterterrorism victories and tasks his agents Stanley Murphy and Francis Sullivan—the only two members of the Boomer Sooner task force, which searches cyberspace for evidence of terrorism—with producing one. Barry communicates his order in the kind of zany vaudevillian humor that permeates Henry’s book: “What concerns me the most are the enemies that we don’t know that we don’t know about. Right now, somewhere out there, someone may be sneaking up on America with a knife. I want you to find this person or persons and shoot them in the face.” The agents discover Chris’ tenuous and unwitting connection to MILF. A judge then orders his house arrest for conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. But Chris’ employer, Jasper Wiles, decides the only way for the IT worker to clear his name is to stealthily head to Zazaristan, the home of the man in charge of MILF, Wahiri Shwarma, known as Mohammad Mohammad.
The author astutely satirizes the absurd hypocrisy often involved in the prosecution of supposed terrorists. Shwarma has actually abandoned any real terrorist aspirations after discovering it’s far cheaper to take credit for random disasters in the Western world, an example of Henry at his comedic best. While in Zazaristan, Chris meets Fareek Wazaan, his IT equivalent working for MILF, who’s about as interested in terrorism as Chris is, a memorable juxtaposition. The entire novel is written as a farce in the spirit of Joseph Heller’s work—Henry even includes silly “Study Questions” at the book’s end: “What would you say is the smoking age in Zazaristan?” Unfortunately, he attempts, often with laborious effort, to squeeze a punchline into nearly every sentence, a comic relentlessness that finally becomes tediously exhausting. In addition, one can’t expect all those jokes to smoothly land, and often the author settles for unspectacular slapstick. For example, after drinking a tea laced with some kind of drug while in Zazaristan, Chris suspects he’s endowed with magical powers: “Hold on, that’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing as magic. Superpowers. Yes, of course. Superpowers. Let me see if I can hovertate. Is that a word? Hovertate? Hoverlate? Leverate? Leverate. That’s it. Leverate.”
A lively deluge of madcap humor, sometimes more silly than genuinely funny.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-70682-5
Page Count: 461
Publisher: Operation Dodecahedron
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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
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