Helloland

by Nick Walker

For a man who craves anonymity, Chip's job working the switchboard of the E Z Sleep hotel, is perfect. But today is launch day and the switchboard hums portentously. It brings voices from the past. People who remind Chip of his old life - the one in which he had hopes and dreams - and they tell why he's happy being a no one, nowhere, when he could've been orbiting the earth.

Genres: Fiction, Comedy

Paperback

Published August 4, 2003

Reviews

[Alien · Rating 4 out of 5]

The space shuttle finally launches. Chip was competing for a seat (sponsored by a soft drink manufacturer). He did not win and now he works in a hotel instead. He has invited the other losing candidates to a party. But many things go wrong.

A strange book. After a few pages I was going to quit early. But then something grabbed me. The text flows very nicely, especially the dialog. The plot seems to head towards a cataclysm of insanity. But then everything starts to unwind. Which turns out to be a bit of a disappointment.
Even the resolution of the great mystery, why Chip lost his arm, was not all too interesting in the end. I give it 4/5 all the same.

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pros: the dialogue made this super quick to read

Cons: everything else

Everyone in this book sucked. How Chip lost his arm became pretty obvious quite early on. The ending where they dive into the telephone was so out of place and ridiculous. I have no idea why the waitress/love interest was included, she added nothing to this story.

[Corey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange and more than a little melancholy, a tale of interpersonal concerns and self-pity.

[Sammy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Strangely depressing despite the actual story having nothing to do with depression at all. The whole mood of it is just...off, and not in a good way. It’s not really about anything – yes, there’s a story about a one-armed switchboard operator who works in a hotel – but everything is so surface level and dull yet somehow exasperating. Things happen, bland conversations occur, and there is no point I can defer. There’s cheating and death and craziness, but it just felt empty. There was nothing really there except a sad one-armed man and the ever-increasing losing of the plot to the point the last paragraph turns into an acid trip. Every character just seems to drift around with no purpose.
It’s not offensive, nor really frustrating, nor interesting at all. It just exists, I suppose. Easily forgettable and rather dull.

3/10

[Neil Powell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A surreal, satirical story in the mould of JG Ballard or a David Lynch film. Chip is a receptionist and switchboard operator in a discount hotel chain near a NASA launch site. He was once in a competition to be a space tourist with 9 other people, but he lost out, and the launch of the winner in the shuttle is today. He has arranged a reunion party with the other losers to celebrate the event but has to deal with a crazy paranoid hotel owner, bible bashing cleaner and crazy taxi driver mate with one leg. It was hilariously funny in parts, particularly the chapter where one character phones a sex line and gets put through to the most inexperienced operator ever.

There are two narratives, but only the hotel based parts really added anything to the story. All the humour, interesting characters and plot developments seem to have been focused here. The back story which involved the elimination process for the space tourists and the eventual winner in the shuttle seem very underdeveloped, and I feel this added very little as a distinctive thread.

Overall I found it entertaining, if a little odd. It was also frustrating that it ended quite abruptly, without tying up the story neatly.

[Soraya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps it is just because I'm a sucker for the kind of dialogue that this novel plays with,
but I really loved this book.
I'm unsure of how to talk about it, so I guess I'll start with what my immediate thoughts are when I think about this story.
I had never before bought a book off of one of the sales tables at Big W,
but this beauty was sitting there for $4.00, and I flipped to a couple of pages in and liked all the dialogue i was seeing,so I bought it.
I devoured it quickly,completely sucked in,
loving the space travel side of things,and the idea of this lonely one-armed man running the circuit-boards in this weird hotel.
I loved the utter destruction at the end of the novel,how every part of the story sort of crashes down and collapses,
I could picture absolutely everything,and the devastation and disfunction was just so comical by the end,
I loved it.

[Rickard · Rating 2 out of 5]

One part of the story presented wit and humour whereas the other part presented... hmmm.... well, nothing too good. funny thing was that these two sides of the book intervened with each other. either way, no more than 2 stars out of 5

[Andrew Scholefield · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the writing style was really interesting and at times it was quite funny. However, the characters were two dimensional and I felt nonplussed by the ending. Disappointed.

[Jana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of the wierdest books I've ever read.