Review by Booklist Review
English novelist J. G. Ballard calls suburban landscapes unmistakably sinister: Their very blandness forces the imagination into new areas. I mean, one's got to get up in the morning thinking of a deviant act. As a case in point, the narrator in Thirlwell's (The Escape, 2010) third novel wakes up naked in a hotel next to Romy, a woman who is not his wife, who is bleeding from the face, and who nearly dies of a ketamine overdose. He scrambles back to his family's suburban home, where he lives with his wife, Candy, and disguises his infidelity by citing a case of acute depression. Despite this close call, he proceeds to undertake a series of drug-addled antics with his compadre, Hiro, ranging from pill popping to armed robbery, to an impromptu orgy, all of which catches up with the devious duo with disastrous results. Dangerous escapades aside, the novel's most fascinating feature is Thirlwell's engrossing prose, and the commentary on contemporary ennui by his borderline psychotic, yet strangely sympathetic narrator. A supremely unsettling meditation on morality and melancholia.--Báez, Diego Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The nameless narrator of the latest from Thirlwell (The Escape) is a bit of a worrywart, constantly fretting over each decision laid before him. So when he wakes one morning next to a woman-who is not his wife, Candy-in a shabby hotel room, he begins a long, anxiety-driven journey down the road to disaster. The woman, Romy, is one of his closest friends and has overdosed on ketamine-which he provided; he's no saint, after all-and it's up to Thirlwell's protagonist to save her. Far removed from his normal life-living at home with his parents and wife in upper-middle-class comfort-our hero soon finds himself entangled in orgies, robberies, brothels, gunfights, and heavy narcotics. As he pines for romance with both Candy and Romy, his friend Hiro convinces him to push the boundaries of safety, and before long, the consequences rear their ugly heads when a pair of armed, masked strangers turns up at his front door demanding cash. Thirlwell's narration is interesting, with occasionally delightful flourishes, yet the inner monologues (full of ridiculous similes) eventually wear thin and often prevent anything from actually occurring for long stretches (think of Bernhard's The Loser, but less enchanting). And unlike Johnson's Jesus' Son or Welsh's Trainspotting, these adventures feel manufactured. Agent: Peter Straus, Rogers, Coleridge, & White. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A nameless first-person narrator, a young man, awakens in a hotel room after a night of drug-taking and sex with Romy, a girl he knows, and discovers that she is bleeding and unconscious. After much dithering, he takes her to a hospital, then returns home to his beautiful wife, Candy. They live with his well-to-do parents in a suburb somewhere. He continues to carry on a correspondence and sort-of affair with Romy, who evidently recovered, while he is unemployed and drifting. He and Candy have friends, they go to parties, they take drugs, they have sex. He and a friend visit a whorehouse and at some point decide to start robbing stores with fake guns. Perhaps as a result, some thuggish girls show up at his house and terrorize him and Candy at gunpoint. After much soul-searching and pondering, he and his friend decide to seek revenge and end up being chased and cornered in the woods somewhere, as the narrator wonders about the significance of these events, how they could have happened, whether he really loves his wife, and so forth. -VERDICT Throughout this long, slow, arduous account, the reader is essentially trapped inside the mind of a spoiled, alienated, fairly intelligent brat. Thirlwell (Politics) is not without talent, and some of his digressions are pretty funny, but the claustrophobic effect wears thin. [See Prepub Alert, 10/20/14.]-James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In a pallid sort of noir, a boy-man lurches through an aimless series of small adventures and stumbles into criminal behavior that eventually exacts its comeuppance.Thirlwell (The Escape, 2010, etc.) starts this trying novel with a strong episode and a real sense of foreboding. His hero wakes up in a hotel with memory gaps and a friend named Romy, whose bloody, comatose state requires some quasi-comedic devices to get her to a hospital. That his sweet wife, Candy, accepts a ludicrous explanation for his overnight absence and bloody T-shirt when he returns home reflects not her credulity but the cosseting she thinks his semidepressive state requires. A spoiled only child, he's in his early 30s, has quit working, has spent time in therapy and lives with Candy in his parents' home. He attends parties and ponders his relationship with Romy, a line of thought that gets gnarly when one party turns into an orgy and one polymorphous grouping entails him, Candy and Romy. He drifts into crime, and the book's noirish side grows darker. Throughout, he indulges in an endless diet of recreational drugs"these increasing narcotic entertainments did make the way I thought perhaps a little blurred." And there's the main problem: the squishy, doped-up, self-indulgent slacker-hipster voice and thinking of this first-person narrative is so well-rendered and so tiresome. Even if Thirlwell captures a type and time, was this a trophy worth aiming for? It calls for a tweak of Samuel Johnson's dated line on a woman preaching and a dog walking on its hind legs: It is done well, but one is still surprised to find it done at all. Recent years have brought drug-drenched efforts from well-established artists Pynchon and Lethem. Perhaps the kindest thing one can say is that the talented Thirlwell has gotten his literary substance abuse out of his system at an earlier age. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
