Staff Picks Blog
Super smart comic dystopic romance is more like it.
Lenny’s about to turn 40, which bothers him, as he works for a life extension company, and his friend the boss, seems well on his way to immortality. Worse, his girlfriend, Eunice is only 24 and about a third his weight. Tho he moons for her like a puppy, she finds his body kind of gross, his fashion sense ridiculous. Even worse, he likes to read books, or “bound, printed, nonstreaming media artifacts,” and everyone knows books smell.
America’s falling apart. The National Guard have checkpoints on every corner, attacking the homeless people who live in parks. The Chinese are about to foreclose. People can’t be bothered, as they’re in thrall to their apparati, which stream a constant flow of data–cholesterol levels, news, celebrity gossip, porn, how you feel about everyone in the room. Credit scores show up on public screens, so High Net Worth Individuals can be identified and marketed to. A good credit score is the one thing Lenny has going for him. His Male Hotness scores regularly place him in the lowest tenth percentile of any group he finds himself in.
The story is told by chapters that alternate entries in Lenny’s diary, and Eunice’s text messages and chats with her friends and family. Eunice the abused daughter of a Korean podiatrist, accepts the mindless consumerism of the day, and affects the casual vulgarity of children raised on porn.
This is very funny, pretty sad, relentlessly, exhaustingly clever, and an author I want more of.
