SAINT RICHARD PARKER

In Franco’s novel, a South Asian man seeks personal rejuvenation as a spiritual traveler.

It’s 2014, and despite his hilariously smug, egocentric attitude, Richard Parker remains a struggling journalist at New Delhi’s Indian Republic newspaper. Not content with just writing articles, the busy bachelor also moonlights as the entrepreneurial CEO of Cow 'n' Roots, a business that outsources the sale of sun-dried organic cow waste products at a 300 percent profit margin. A botched media spectacle meant to expose a local unscrupulous kingpin results in his swift and unceremonious termination. Jobless, with a destroyed career, Parker temporarily retreats to his native village seeking to change his life’s path through enlightenment and take a “passage into sainthood” through a pilgrimage with seven others. This spiritual cleansing journey is just one in a series of false starts toward reenergizing his broken spirit. Heavily immersed in Hindu spiritualism, tradition, culture, and doctrine, Parker’s sojourns guide the narrative through several holy stops as “RP Saamy” (Parker’s spiritual pseudonym) and his fellow seekers are dazzled by the temples of gods and goddesses. Parker soon gives up on the pilgrimage, however, and falls for a lovely girl named Chandini, admitting that “my enthusiasm tanks, but my hormones don’t.” These misadventures and setbacks form the bulk of Franco’s rollicking, densely populated narrative. Bonds are quickly formed and broken as Parker searches for love, belonging, and meaning throughout dizzying months spent in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. The novel’s length becomes an issue as Parker’s wearying mishaps, spiritual tribulations, Tinder dates, and the onslaught of peripheral characters and prophesizing shamans eventually run out of steam. Still, he’s an engrossing, if self-absorbed, personality to observe—Franco excels at keen characterization and effervescent dialogue. The globetrotting, vibrant, culturally rich adventures of Richard Parker are hard to resist.

A fun, frenetic, and overly ambitious yarn about finding purpose in a sea of tangled intentions.