Review by Booklist Review
To pick up Boudinot's debut collection of stories is to enter a funnyman's twilight zone. In the title story, nine-year-old Davy dresses like Hitler, in khakis and a paste-on mustache, for Halloween and then is ridiculed mercilessly by Lisette, one of his class's smart pretty girls, who comes as Anne Frank. Civilization gives us a warped world where teens must kill their parents to get into college. Other stories are rife with supernatural but deadpan characters--a woman who arrives at work with a bee beard, a macho flautist, a group of terrorists who dress like clowns to blow up the town courthouse but take out, by mistake, a convent full of nuns. The details are what give these nervy stories punch; consider the family who looks like the most geeked-out panel of Family Circus known to man. Reading Boudinot may make you worry about where our pop-culture-infused society is headed, but you will laugh the whole way through. --Emily Cook Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Boudinot proves himself a twisted, formidable storyteller in his dark and surefooted debut. In the title story, fourth-grader Davy, with his father's assistance, dresses up as Hitler for Halloween ("I had gotten the idea after watching World War II week on PBS"), but realizes his terrible judgment after an encounter with a classmate dressed as Anne Frank. "On Sex and Relationships" brims with irony as two yuppie couples get together for dinner; the evening is banal enough-board games, nostalgic chitchat-but festering rivalries, buried secrets and bitterness color the evening and threaten to sink the narrator's relationship with his girlfriend. In "Civilization," teens of the future receive "duty papers" when it's time to kill their parents, so as to be accepted into college. Despite his parents' encouragement to kill them ("Don't let your nerves get to you!" reads a Post-it his father sticks to the refrigerator), narrator Craig has his reservations. Reminiscent of early Rick Moody or the short stories of Daniel Handler, each of Boudinot's 13 stories is a microcosm of weirdness imbued with imagination and maniacal wit. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Weirdness rules in the 13 button-pushing stories of this debut collection by a talented Seattle writer. Many are quick black-comic jabs, set in an absurdly over-regimented, depersonalized near-future. For example, the mandate to respect diversity is sorely tested by a woman executive who wears a "Bee Beard" to her office. High-school graduates are offered full college scholarships for "do[ing] the shit work of making America proud"--by murdering their parents (thus, one infers, making way for more patriotic new generations). "The Sales Team" (in an acknowledged parody of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross) turns its reps into "Modern-day Vikings" who get customers' attention via housebreaking, rape and murder. If Donald Barthelme had cohabited with Kathy Acker, he might have dreamed up these, or the brief "Absolut Boudinot," about terrorists who oppose "decadent Western civilization" by wreaking genocidal mayhem on Halloween. But Boudinot can do better, notably in the fine title story--also set during Halloween, when a kid who arrives at school dressed as Hitler finds the little girl on whom he dotes garbed as Anne Frank. The story twists memorably, as Boudinot makes us realize that the boy's confrontational masquerade expresses his divorced father's pathetic clamoring for attention. Good things also happen in "Written by Machines," the tale of a software geek's Faustian pact with his cancer-ridden colleague, who has created a computer program that writes original poetry (shades of Richard Powers here). Best of all is "So Little Time," whose preadolescent narrator weighs the enticements of sexual hearsay and a (hilariously described) sci-fi convention with the hopeless real life of his disadvantaged buddy, whose embittered dirt-poor family endures dangers far removed from the tacky melodramatics of "Dungeons and Dragons" and British TV's Dr. Who. When Boudinot writes shtick, he's tiresome. When he writes fully developed stories, he's abrasive, thought-provoking and explosively funny. 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 Kirkus Book Review
