What do you think?
Rate this book
The Failure
The Failure is a picaresque novel set in Los Angeles about two guys who conceive and badly execute a plan to rob a Korean check-cashing store in order to finance the prototype for an impossibly ridiculous Internet application. "James Greer, one of the nimblest and most multilayered American fiction writers, has, with his latest novel The Failure , pulled off a sublime and shivery-smooth literary hat-trick-cum-emotional-gotcha. I defy anyone to come up with an equation to explain how this book's first impression as a ridiculously clever, funny crime story can gradually disclose a metanovel built from far more encyclopedic scratch only to reveal upon its conclusion a central, overriding thought so heartfelt literally it trembles your lower lip. This is one stunning piece of work." --Dennis Cooper, author of Ugly Man "James Greer's The Failure is such an unqualified success, both in conception and execution, that I have grave doubts he actually wrote it."
--Steven Soderbergh James Greer is the author of the novel Artificial Light (Akashic Books), which won a California Book Award for Best Debut Novel, and the nonfiction book Guided By A Brief History (Grove Press), a biography of the band for which he once played bass guitar. He is currently working with director Steven Soderbergh on a rock musical about Cleopatra starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. He lives in Los Angeles.
--Steven Soderbergh James Greer is the author of the novel Artificial Light (Akashic Books), which won a California Book Award for Best Debut Novel, and the nonfiction book Guided By A Brief History (Grove Press), a biography of the band for which he once played bass guitar. He is currently working with director Steven Soderbergh on a rock musical about Cleopatra starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. He lives in Los Angeles.
- GenresFiction
220 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2010
8 people are currently reading
72 people want to read
About the author
James Greer
12 books36 followersJames Greer is a novelist, screenwriter, musician and critic. He was born in Portland, ME on April 23 1971. As a screenwriter, he's written UNSANE (directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring Clare Foy and Juno Temple) and many other films and TV series. As a novelist, he's written BAD EMINENCE, THE FAILURE, and ARTIFICIAL LIGHT. He's also written books about R.E.M. and Guided By Voices (a band for which he played bass guitar in the mid-90s), the short fiction collection EVERYTHING FLOWS, and was Senior Editor of SPIN Magazine in its early 90s heyday. He lives in Los Angeles.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 20, 2010
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
It's funny that I should read James Greer's The Failure, the latest by the always great Akashic Books, the same week I saw Steven Soderbergh's "lost" 1999 classic The Limey, because they turn out to be eerily similar in both concept and tone; namely, they are both at their hearts fairly standard noir tales, but elevated into the realm of fine art by taking a daring approach towards telling their stories. In the case of The Failure, for example, our noirish plot revolves around a smartypants loser in Los Angeles poetically named Guy Forget, who you can imagine as what would happen if some philosophy grad student started watching too many Tarantino-style indie films, and convinced himself that nerdy intellectuals can also somehow be at the center of gritty tough-guy crime tales; the storyline itself, then, hinges on the plan concocted by him and his harebrained friend Billy to hold up a Korean check-cashing place with the help of an inside employee, so that Guy can build the prototype for his insane Web 2.0 project that he thinks is going to make him a billionaire, all of which as you can easily guess goes straight to hell as the book continues, just as any good noir should.
But like I said, it's how Greer tells this story that makes the manuscript stand out, hopping from one non-linear moment to the next in almost random fashion, jumping for example from a conversation between Guy and his self-destructive girlfriend a week before the robbery, to a deadpan comedic conversation between Guy and Billy ten minutes after the botched robbery about what went wrong, straight to a bar talk three months previously when the plan was first being formulated. This effectively lets The Failure succeed at the same thing that the old hyperfiction online projects of the 1990s were attempting to do as well, to tell their stories to their audiences in a way much more similar to how humans actually learn stories in the real world, in bits and pieces and without a nice narrative structure to it all; and in fact, this book would make for a great interactive online project if the author ever wanted to try such a thing, to put each chapter on its own webpage and with references within the text made into hyperlinks to other chapters, so that audience members themselves determine the order of the book, an order that changes with each person and with each reading*. Greer already wrote this book in a way so that the story can be presented in this fashion; and although it's nothing spectacular when it comes to its actual plot or dialogue, it's worth checking out just for the inventive structure alone.
Out of 10: 8.4
*By the way, this hyperlink style of storytelling is now possible on e-ink devices like the iPad and Sony Reader, in that EPUB files for these devices are essentially nothing more than HTML documents, only rendered in a different way than how web browsers do it. I would love to put out a project like this through CCLaP's publishing wing; those who have a good idea for such a hyperfiction project are encouraged to drop a line and let me know. Why yes, this is essentially the same thing as the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" children's books from the '80s and '90s; those are in fact the most famous examples of hyperfiction we have.
It's funny that I should read James Greer's The Failure, the latest by the always great Akashic Books, the same week I saw Steven Soderbergh's "lost" 1999 classic The Limey, because they turn out to be eerily similar in both concept and tone; namely, they are both at their hearts fairly standard noir tales, but elevated into the realm of fine art by taking a daring approach towards telling their stories. In the case of The Failure, for example, our noirish plot revolves around a smartypants loser in Los Angeles poetically named Guy Forget, who you can imagine as what would happen if some philosophy grad student started watching too many Tarantino-style indie films, and convinced himself that nerdy intellectuals can also somehow be at the center of gritty tough-guy crime tales; the storyline itself, then, hinges on the plan concocted by him and his harebrained friend Billy to hold up a Korean check-cashing place with the help of an inside employee, so that Guy can build the prototype for his insane Web 2.0 project that he thinks is going to make him a billionaire, all of which as you can easily guess goes straight to hell as the book continues, just as any good noir should.
But like I said, it's how Greer tells this story that makes the manuscript stand out, hopping from one non-linear moment to the next in almost random fashion, jumping for example from a conversation between Guy and his self-destructive girlfriend a week before the robbery, to a deadpan comedic conversation between Guy and Billy ten minutes after the botched robbery about what went wrong, straight to a bar talk three months previously when the plan was first being formulated. This effectively lets The Failure succeed at the same thing that the old hyperfiction online projects of the 1990s were attempting to do as well, to tell their stories to their audiences in a way much more similar to how humans actually learn stories in the real world, in bits and pieces and without a nice narrative structure to it all; and in fact, this book would make for a great interactive online project if the author ever wanted to try such a thing, to put each chapter on its own webpage and with references within the text made into hyperlinks to other chapters, so that audience members themselves determine the order of the book, an order that changes with each person and with each reading*. Greer already wrote this book in a way so that the story can be presented in this fashion; and although it's nothing spectacular when it comes to its actual plot or dialogue, it's worth checking out just for the inventive structure alone.
Out of 10: 8.4
*By the way, this hyperlink style of storytelling is now possible on e-ink devices like the iPad and Sony Reader, in that EPUB files for these devices are essentially nothing more than HTML documents, only rendered in a different way than how web browsers do it. I would love to put out a project like this through CCLaP's publishing wing; those who have a good idea for such a hyperfiction project are encouraged to drop a line and let me know. Why yes, this is essentially the same thing as the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" children's books from the '80s and '90s; those are in fact the most famous examples of hyperfiction we have.
June 3, 2010
Loved this book. Here's a review.
June 7, 2010
This review originally appeared in The Fanzine
SUCCESS IS NOT AN OPTION
"Guy Forget––careening across Larkin Heights in a stolen Mini Cooper––suffused with bloodlust and baring a grin full of teeth, failed to hear the polyphonic belling of his cell phone."
The opening sentence of James Greer’s neo-noir, The Failure, published in March of this year by Akashic Books, is crammed with information. There’s the protagonist with the Paul Auster-esque name, both pulp-sounding and ontologically loaded; the absurd image of a Mini Cooper doing something other than look adorable; the schizoid description of Forget with murder on his mind and a smile on his face; and the homophonic pairing of “belling” and “cell phone” that turns an everyday irritant into something elegant. There’s so much going on, the hilarious central image––a clown car tearing down the road––almost gets lost in the shuffle.
Greer lays all his cards on the table. Each new chapter is announced with a descriptive chapter title that does much of the heavy lifting. For instance, the first chapter is called “How Guy Forget Ended up in a Coma” revealing Forget’s fate from the get-go. The story’s plot hinges on his disastrous decision to rob a Korean-owned check-cashing establishment, which is truncated as “the Korean check-cashing fiasco.” The narrative follows a linear structure, but the chapters are all out of sequence, so the reader comes to depend on the overly verbose descriptions to orient herself in the story. Greer realizes how heavy-handed this is, and provides the occasional meta-fictional wink:
"What Guy Needed and Why: In which the Not Entirely Omniscient Narrator Explains the Korean Check-Cashing Fiasco and Its Inciting Incident, about Two Weeks before the Actual Fiasco. For those interested, Guy Is Sitting on the Couch in His Apartment, which the Reader Will Never See Again and So We Will Not Bother to Describe It."
Guy Forget is a harebrained scheme addict of the highest order. He doesn’t just cut corners, he slices them off with lasers. Instead of going from points A to B, Forget concocts an easier, faster route. Arriving at the alternative, however, requires an investment that far exceeds the effort it would take to follow the original path. Forget’s motivation for robbing a check-cashing joint is to fund the prototype of a new kind of “subsensory advertising” that uses possibly nonexistent and most likely illegal technology to influence consumer decisions without their being aware of it. That this will make Forget insanely rich is a foregone conclusion; but he needs $50,000 to kick-start his company, Pandemonium, Inc., into the stratosphere.
It matters little that the reader knows the outcome from the onset, for the caper’s irregular course is fueled by Forget’s astounding capacity for self-delusion.
Money, as a thing itself, does not exist. It’s an extended metaphor for a complex system of commodity exchange. Thus, to think of money as “belonging” to someone or something is a pathetic fallacy, in the literal sense. It’s our jobs, as stewards of the language, to liberate money from its normative bounds.
Obviously, Forget is not your typical bandit. After all, what kind of “criminal” employs a stolen Mini Cooper as a getaway car?
Forget’s “gang” consists of a cast of characters of the only-in-L.A. variety: his love interest, Violet, the femme fatale with a libido stuck in overdrive; Forget’s nemesis, Sven Transvoort, a wealthy programmer-playboy who is far more successful at the former than he is at the latter; Forget’s brother Marcus, a professor of “quantum photodynamics,” who refuses to come to Guy’s aid until it’s too late; and Billy, Guy’s best friend, drinking buddy, and somewhat-reluctant partner in crime.
Their friendship is the book’s most important relationship, and the ways they betray one another is the key to what Greer is trying to accomplish. Incredibly, Billy is even less clueful than Forget, which makes the simplest task an adventure. The chapters that feature the two, usually set in a bar, are laugh-out-loud funny, and call to mind the dumb-and-dumber literary high-jinks of Patrick DeWitt, Sam Lipsyte, Tony O’Neill, Jack Pendarvis and Jerry Stahl. Consider the following exchange, which occurs after an argument between the two friends:
"––I mean, I’m sorry. I said I was sorry. Nothing else I can say will help. I should never have called you a… well, it’s no good repeating it, is it? The more you say, “A duck shits out more brains in five seconds than you’ll ever hold in your peanut-sized cerebellum,” the worse it sounds.
––You said baby duck."
Amidst the hilarity, there are a few flat notes. Greer, a musician who frequently writes about Guided by Voices, a band to which he once belonged, works in the occasional musical anecdote that feels out-of-place in the otherwise feverishly plotted book. Forget even composes a song shortly before slipping into a coma. Because of the novel’s frenetic structure, these scenes don’t disrupt the story. What’s a mystery without a few red herrings?
Ultimately, Forget is a conman whose skewed approach to conning others succeeds in fooling only himself. As a result, we see in Forget what he can’t see in himself: a fundamental earnestness that no amount of cynicism can ever stamp out. Guy Forget was born to lose, but who isn’t?
"There was only one flaw in the system, and that flaw, as with all flaws and all systems, was human."
SUCCESS IS NOT AN OPTION
"Guy Forget––careening across Larkin Heights in a stolen Mini Cooper––suffused with bloodlust and baring a grin full of teeth, failed to hear the polyphonic belling of his cell phone."
The opening sentence of James Greer’s neo-noir, The Failure, published in March of this year by Akashic Books, is crammed with information. There’s the protagonist with the Paul Auster-esque name, both pulp-sounding and ontologically loaded; the absurd image of a Mini Cooper doing something other than look adorable; the schizoid description of Forget with murder on his mind and a smile on his face; and the homophonic pairing of “belling” and “cell phone” that turns an everyday irritant into something elegant. There’s so much going on, the hilarious central image––a clown car tearing down the road––almost gets lost in the shuffle.
Greer lays all his cards on the table. Each new chapter is announced with a descriptive chapter title that does much of the heavy lifting. For instance, the first chapter is called “How Guy Forget Ended up in a Coma” revealing Forget’s fate from the get-go. The story’s plot hinges on his disastrous decision to rob a Korean-owned check-cashing establishment, which is truncated as “the Korean check-cashing fiasco.” The narrative follows a linear structure, but the chapters are all out of sequence, so the reader comes to depend on the overly verbose descriptions to orient herself in the story. Greer realizes how heavy-handed this is, and provides the occasional meta-fictional wink:
"What Guy Needed and Why: In which the Not Entirely Omniscient Narrator Explains the Korean Check-Cashing Fiasco and Its Inciting Incident, about Two Weeks before the Actual Fiasco. For those interested, Guy Is Sitting on the Couch in His Apartment, which the Reader Will Never See Again and So We Will Not Bother to Describe It."
Guy Forget is a harebrained scheme addict of the highest order. He doesn’t just cut corners, he slices them off with lasers. Instead of going from points A to B, Forget concocts an easier, faster route. Arriving at the alternative, however, requires an investment that far exceeds the effort it would take to follow the original path. Forget’s motivation for robbing a check-cashing joint is to fund the prototype of a new kind of “subsensory advertising” that uses possibly nonexistent and most likely illegal technology to influence consumer decisions without their being aware of it. That this will make Forget insanely rich is a foregone conclusion; but he needs $50,000 to kick-start his company, Pandemonium, Inc., into the stratosphere.
It matters little that the reader knows the outcome from the onset, for the caper’s irregular course is fueled by Forget’s astounding capacity for self-delusion.
Money, as a thing itself, does not exist. It’s an extended metaphor for a complex system of commodity exchange. Thus, to think of money as “belonging” to someone or something is a pathetic fallacy, in the literal sense. It’s our jobs, as stewards of the language, to liberate money from its normative bounds.
Obviously, Forget is not your typical bandit. After all, what kind of “criminal” employs a stolen Mini Cooper as a getaway car?
Forget’s “gang” consists of a cast of characters of the only-in-L.A. variety: his love interest, Violet, the femme fatale with a libido stuck in overdrive; Forget’s nemesis, Sven Transvoort, a wealthy programmer-playboy who is far more successful at the former than he is at the latter; Forget’s brother Marcus, a professor of “quantum photodynamics,” who refuses to come to Guy’s aid until it’s too late; and Billy, Guy’s best friend, drinking buddy, and somewhat-reluctant partner in crime.
Their friendship is the book’s most important relationship, and the ways they betray one another is the key to what Greer is trying to accomplish. Incredibly, Billy is even less clueful than Forget, which makes the simplest task an adventure. The chapters that feature the two, usually set in a bar, are laugh-out-loud funny, and call to mind the dumb-and-dumber literary high-jinks of Patrick DeWitt, Sam Lipsyte, Tony O’Neill, Jack Pendarvis and Jerry Stahl. Consider the following exchange, which occurs after an argument between the two friends:
"––I mean, I’m sorry. I said I was sorry. Nothing else I can say will help. I should never have called you a… well, it’s no good repeating it, is it? The more you say, “A duck shits out more brains in five seconds than you’ll ever hold in your peanut-sized cerebellum,” the worse it sounds.
––You said baby duck."
Amidst the hilarity, there are a few flat notes. Greer, a musician who frequently writes about Guided by Voices, a band to which he once belonged, works in the occasional musical anecdote that feels out-of-place in the otherwise feverishly plotted book. Forget even composes a song shortly before slipping into a coma. Because of the novel’s frenetic structure, these scenes don’t disrupt the story. What’s a mystery without a few red herrings?
Ultimately, Forget is a conman whose skewed approach to conning others succeeds in fooling only himself. As a result, we see in Forget what he can’t see in himself: a fundamental earnestness that no amount of cynicism can ever stamp out. Guy Forget was born to lose, but who isn’t?
"There was only one flaw in the system, and that flaw, as with all flaws and all systems, was human."
May 23, 2023
Really enjoyed this, laugh-out-loud funny.
Here is a little taste of Mr. Greer's style:
"The concierge at the Chateau nodded his usual greeting, into which Guy read headlines of condescension followed by lengthy articles unmasking the sham of his existence. Pulitzer stuff, really well-researched, thorough, irrefutable."
The story is fun the characters are fun the writing is fun.
enough said.
Here is a little taste of Mr. Greer's style:
"The concierge at the Chateau nodded his usual greeting, into which Guy read headlines of condescension followed by lengthy articles unmasking the sham of his existence. Pulitzer stuff, really well-researched, thorough, irrefutable."
The story is fun the characters are fun the writing is fun.
enough said.
December 3, 2018
"the only authentic act you can take as an artist is to destroy your creation. anything else, any public display, is vanity. just vanity."
May 10, 2012
from publisher
Listened 4/2/12 - 4/12/12
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of funny bank-heists-gone-wrong / Not as an intro to audiobooks
Audio download (approx 3.5 hrs)
Publisher: Iambik Audio / Akashic Books
First, I feel I should apologize for allowing nearly a month to pass without posting my review of James Greer's The Failure. I've been trying to decide if it was the book or the narrator that left me feeling sort of 'meh' about the whole thing, and didn't want to review it until I was sure which way I was leaning.
You see, the narrator of the audio file, Tadhg Hydes, has one of the oddest reading voices I've ever heard. His thick accent and rushed, breathy way of speaking made it very difficult for me to follow the story. Nearly every sentence began with a big push of air and ended on a soft whisper.
If you can't imagine what I am describing, you need to listen to the sample of the audio. Go on, I'll wait. It's only 4 minutes long, so you'll be back in no time....
See what I mean?
I also struggled with his strange phrasing - his Irish blood has him dropping the h's from words (so 'thanks' becomes 'tanks' and 'thoughts' becomes 'toughts') and the breathy-ness I mentioned makes his r's sound like wannabe w's (so 'rolling around' sounds an awful lot like 'wolling awvound'). The r's aren't affected all of the time. Just some of the time. And I would often catch myself listening more for those lazy r's than to the words he was actually speaking. It was a mess. Trust me.
One thing I did like about Tadgh was the fact that he didn't change his voice to differentiate between male and female characters, like other narrators I've listened to. He read everyone pretty straight, which was refreshing, even if I didn't care much for his natural voice. And his less-than-animated reading made some of the humor more humorous, if you can believe that. It was almost as though his rushed, deadpan delivery kicked my funny bone into high gear.
Now on to the story. The Failure is about two best friends - Guy Forget (what a name!) and Billy - and their absolutely insane idea to rob a check cashing building in order for Guy to get the backing money he needs for a breakthrough internet advertising website called Pandemonium that some stranger named Sven is trying to sell him. He and Billy know next to nothing about robbing a building, but they have a guy on the inside and feel pretty confident they can pull it off. And of course, it wouldn't be worth reading if everything goes as planned.
The book begins with Guy in a coma, so you know right from the start that this robbery thing was a bust, but that won't deter you from reading on. As a matter of the fact, the book is told completely out of order, and spans a five month period of time, so the entire novel you're sitting there trying to decipher and reorder the events to determine what exactly went down and who the hell foiled who.
James Greer seemed to have a good time playing around with the writing. It definitely shows through, even if I didn't appreciate Tadhg's interpretation of the text. A good chunk of the book is just out and out conversation taking place between characters. It's witty and wacky and a little all over the place. Greer understands human awkwardness - awkwardness between strangers, awkwardness between friends - and infuses Guy and Billy with the best and worst of it. If I had read this, rather than listened to it, I think I would have had a lot more fun with this one!
I mean, who the heck hasn't sat around and imagined robbing a bank or a jewelry store? Who hasn't wanted to make a cool 100k in the blink of an eye, by slipping on a ski mask and running into a store screaming "this is a stick-up, everyone down! Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt!" Ok, ok, so I admit, I've never fantasied about robbing a bank. But I have been driving behind an armored truck before and wished really hard that it would crash and explode, shooting hundreds of thousands of dollars into the sky so I could snatch them out of the air and run!!!
Listen, if you like books that mess with the sequence of events and share the end at the beginning, then you should check this one out. And if you like books that you know don't stand a chance of turning out well, and get a kick out of watching it all go wrong, check this one out. But I'm going to recommend sticking with the print version on this one, guys, and ask that you just trust me on this....
To see the review in full, with embedded hyperlinks: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.c...
Listened 4/2/12 - 4/12/12
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of funny bank-heists-gone-wrong / Not as an intro to audiobooks
Audio download (approx 3.5 hrs)
Publisher: Iambik Audio / Akashic Books
First, I feel I should apologize for allowing nearly a month to pass without posting my review of James Greer's The Failure. I've been trying to decide if it was the book or the narrator that left me feeling sort of 'meh' about the whole thing, and didn't want to review it until I was sure which way I was leaning.
You see, the narrator of the audio file, Tadhg Hydes, has one of the oddest reading voices I've ever heard. His thick accent and rushed, breathy way of speaking made it very difficult for me to follow the story. Nearly every sentence began with a big push of air and ended on a soft whisper.
If you can't imagine what I am describing, you need to listen to the sample of the audio. Go on, I'll wait. It's only 4 minutes long, so you'll be back in no time....
See what I mean?
I also struggled with his strange phrasing - his Irish blood has him dropping the h's from words (so 'thanks' becomes 'tanks' and 'thoughts' becomes 'toughts') and the breathy-ness I mentioned makes his r's sound like wannabe w's (so 'rolling around' sounds an awful lot like 'wolling awvound'). The r's aren't affected all of the time. Just some of the time. And I would often catch myself listening more for those lazy r's than to the words he was actually speaking. It was a mess. Trust me.
One thing I did like about Tadgh was the fact that he didn't change his voice to differentiate between male and female characters, like other narrators I've listened to. He read everyone pretty straight, which was refreshing, even if I didn't care much for his natural voice. And his less-than-animated reading made some of the humor more humorous, if you can believe that. It was almost as though his rushed, deadpan delivery kicked my funny bone into high gear.
Now on to the story. The Failure is about two best friends - Guy Forget (what a name!) and Billy - and their absolutely insane idea to rob a check cashing building in order for Guy to get the backing money he needs for a breakthrough internet advertising website called Pandemonium that some stranger named Sven is trying to sell him. He and Billy know next to nothing about robbing a building, but they have a guy on the inside and feel pretty confident they can pull it off. And of course, it wouldn't be worth reading if everything goes as planned.
The book begins with Guy in a coma, so you know right from the start that this robbery thing was a bust, but that won't deter you from reading on. As a matter of the fact, the book is told completely out of order, and spans a five month period of time, so the entire novel you're sitting there trying to decipher and reorder the events to determine what exactly went down and who the hell foiled who.
James Greer seemed to have a good time playing around with the writing. It definitely shows through, even if I didn't appreciate Tadhg's interpretation of the text. A good chunk of the book is just out and out conversation taking place between characters. It's witty and wacky and a little all over the place. Greer understands human awkwardness - awkwardness between strangers, awkwardness between friends - and infuses Guy and Billy with the best and worst of it. If I had read this, rather than listened to it, I think I would have had a lot more fun with this one!
I mean, who the heck hasn't sat around and imagined robbing a bank or a jewelry store? Who hasn't wanted to make a cool 100k in the blink of an eye, by slipping on a ski mask and running into a store screaming "this is a stick-up, everyone down! Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt!" Ok, ok, so I admit, I've never fantasied about robbing a bank. But I have been driving behind an armored truck before and wished really hard that it would crash and explode, shooting hundreds of thousands of dollars into the sky so I could snatch them out of the air and run!!!
Listen, if you like books that mess with the sequence of events and share the end at the beginning, then you should check this one out. And if you like books that you know don't stand a chance of turning out well, and get a kick out of watching it all go wrong, check this one out. But I'm going to recommend sticking with the print version on this one, guys, and ask that you just trust me on this....
To see the review in full, with embedded hyperlinks: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.c...
August 31, 2010
Presented in non-linear scenes, this book reads like a movie and is actually one book that I think would translate very well to the big screen exactly as it is.
The Key Players:
- Guy Forget
- Billy
- Violet McKnight
- Sven Transvoort
Plot Summary:
What happens is that Guy Forget's dad dies of a heart attack at a fancy steak house and his brother, Marcus, is trying to call Guy on his cell phone to let him know that father has died and left him $50,000 so he can start up Pandamonium.
However, at exactly the same time Marcus is trying to call Guy, Guy and Billy are in the middle of the Korean check-cashing fiasco also known as plan Charlie and can't reach the phone in time.
Guy's inaction of picking up the phone, ultimately leads to the ironic twist of the whole story which is that Guy gets into a major argument with Billy after they have robbed the Korean check-cashing place and leaves in such a tizzy that he causes an accident that ends his life by putting him in a coma.
Violet, it is learned later on, is the person who sabotaged plan Charlie and planted the seeds of failure so it would turn into the Korean check-cashing fiasco. She is also, Guy Forget's girlfriend.
Sven Transvoort is in love with Violet in his creepy sociopathic ways. He is also the brains behind Pandamonium and was supposed to be the get away driver for Guy and Billy during the Korean check-cashing fiasco. However, since he failed to show up on that fateful day, he takes full responsibility for killing Guy Forget, who was his arch nemisis.
The Key Players:
- Guy Forget
- Billy
- Violet McKnight
- Sven Transvoort
Plot Summary:
What happens is that Guy Forget's dad dies of a heart attack at a fancy steak house and his brother, Marcus, is trying to call Guy on his cell phone to let him know that father has died and left him $50,000 so he can start up Pandamonium.
However, at exactly the same time Marcus is trying to call Guy, Guy and Billy are in the middle of the Korean check-cashing fiasco also known as plan Charlie and can't reach the phone in time.
Guy's inaction of picking up the phone, ultimately leads to the ironic twist of the whole story which is that Guy gets into a major argument with Billy after they have robbed the Korean check-cashing place and leaves in such a tizzy that he causes an accident that ends his life by putting him in a coma.
Violet, it is learned later on, is the person who sabotaged plan Charlie and planted the seeds of failure so it would turn into the Korean check-cashing fiasco. She is also, Guy Forget's girlfriend.
Sven Transvoort is in love with Violet in his creepy sociopathic ways. He is also the brains behind Pandamonium and was supposed to be the get away driver for Guy and Billy during the Korean check-cashing fiasco. However, since he failed to show up on that fateful day, he takes full responsibility for killing Guy Forget, who was his arch nemisis.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 10, 2011
this is a funny, offbeat novel about a bank heist that goes wrong. Especially though, it centers around the lives of the two men who orchestrated what is referred to as the Korean check cashing fiasco. The story does not unfold straightforwardly, but jumps around in time,beginning with the robbery then going backwards at various points in the lives of the characters. I"m really enjoying it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 12, 2010
A guy tries robbing a check cashing store in order to fund an internet marketing prototype. Along the way there is a lot of double crossage, beautiful writing and fun.
I personally enjoyed this more than Artificial Light, which I really liked.
I personally enjoyed this more than Artificial Light, which I really liked.
June 24, 2010
the antidote to sam lypsyte
September 11, 2010
maybe 3.5 stars. It was creative and kinda funny, but not much to it. Started strong but ended weakly.
December 14, 2011
Charging. Absurdist. And fun.
More - http://bentanzer.blogspot.com/2011/12...
More - http://bentanzer.blogspot.com/2011/12...
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews