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Wallflower
Ever want to go back in time to fix your life? It won't be easy. Time Trouble bubbles behind every wall. After a car crash, failed comedian Ray Bradley hears beautiful music that won't go away. As a capricious God of Time plays dice with all existence, everything Ray knows is broken. Our future depends on the Wallflower with the concussion, one doomed genius and Kurt Vonnegut.
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311 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 19, 2016
17 people are currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
Robert Chazz Chute
65 books95 followersAfter escaping retail hell, I trained as a journalist and worked in newspapers and magazines before becoming a drone in the book publishing hive. I worked for Harlequin, The Canadian Book Information Centre, Lester & Orpen Dennys and Cannon Books in various capacities in editorial, publicity and sales. I learned a lot about what not to do. (All of the above companies are dead and gone except, of course, for Harlequin. I didn't kill them. It was suicide.)
I went over the wall again and worked a few miracles in the field of alternative medicine. Then "they sentenced me to 20 years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within." (Identify that quote and we are inextricably, irrevocably friends.)
Writing full-time now, I tell everyone I'm "in Suspense." I hope you read, review and enjoy my books.
I went over the wall again and worked a few miracles in the field of alternative medicine. Then "they sentenced me to 20 years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within." (Identify that quote and we are inextricably, irrevocably friends.)
Writing full-time now, I tell everyone I'm "in Suspense." I hope you read, review and enjoy my books.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 30, 2017
Ray Bradley’s Epiphany
By Bob Gelms
Wouldn’t it be enormous if you could fix everything that is wrong with you by traveling back in time and tweaking just a little bit?
I’m not going to get into my nitty-gritty personal dirt, but there is one incident from my misspent youth that I regret to this day. It even makes me uncomfortable thinking about it and here I am writing about it. During a brief moment of insanity, I introduced my then current girlfriend as my previous girlfriend. Yes, gentle reader, I would truly like to fix that and all the repercussions that followed for three years. Do you have something to fix?
Robert Chazz Chute, in his massively entertaining novel, Wallflower, has done just that: he tried to fix something. Maybe Mr. Chute has unresolved issues that he is trying to work out by writing a novel? Well this is quite an effort.
Wallflower is an especially smart, in-your-face tour through pain and suffering, through reality and “not” reality, through serenity and panic, with a touch of Kurt Vonnegut thrown in. It reads a little bit like a Vonnegut novel. To ward off any comparisons, Mr. Chute did the only thing he could. He made Kurt Vonnegut a character in the book.
Chute's use of Vonnegut as a character in a book is just as good as Vonnegut putting himself in his own novels thinly disguised as Kilgore Trout. Wallflower is gut-wrenchingly funny and extraordinarily dark. I found myself laughing at things that horrified me, and when I realized it I laughed even harder.
Poor, poor Ray Bradley is not having a good time. Life handed Ray an excreta pie that he is required to eat and Life won’t leave him alone till he cleans his plate. To wit, Ray’s wife left him. He didn't even know anything was wrong; found out from his best friend, who turned out to be the “other man".
Ray is served divorce papers and becomes irrational, climbing in his car and driving very fast. When a tree jumps out in front of him it is apparent that Ray was trying to commit suicide. However, since he had also used his seat belt, he woke up in the hospital. While in a coma, his wife Marla taped a complete list of her objections to their marriage to his hospital door. Farts were mentioned. Ray was not having a good time.
The prescribed therapy for Ray's concussion was to sit and stare at a wall for long periods at a time. When he was discharged, Ray fell in with some mighty unique people including one of his doctors and a faux wizard who told him all about a quantum world where all things are made right with the universe. As it happens, getting into the quantum world involves staring at a wall, meditating.
During one of his first visits to Quantum-burbia, Ray meets himself as a little boy. He gives the lad instructions on how his life will turn out just as lovely as can be. Enter stage left, Ray’s father, who only sees a grown man in a bathrobe talking to his little son. Dad punches adult Ray in the face, Ray falls backward, trips over a picnic bench, hits is head incredibly hard and dies.
This is where I need to tell all you sci-fi fans that the Time Paradox, in a quantum world, is null and void. In a quantum world you are not exactly time traveling, you are “traipsing across dimensions trying to outrun Death.”
Ray finds this mind-boggling. He is also being pursued by some mean nasty types who want to kill him. Ray needs help and it is given unto him as a hand comes through his basement wall (otherwise known as The Gates of Perception). The hand pulls Ray through and standing there is Ray’s guide through the messy world of traipsing across dimensions – KURT VONNEGUT. All is well and right with the world.
In Wallflower, Mr. Chase's use of Vonnegut to explain how things work had me thinking for a long time. In the end, it all made sense, I’m sure of it. The only thing that has me a little concerned is that I found Schrödinger’s cat living under my front porch.
By Bob Gelms
Wouldn’t it be enormous if you could fix everything that is wrong with you by traveling back in time and tweaking just a little bit?
I’m not going to get into my nitty-gritty personal dirt, but there is one incident from my misspent youth that I regret to this day. It even makes me uncomfortable thinking about it and here I am writing about it. During a brief moment of insanity, I introduced my then current girlfriend as my previous girlfriend. Yes, gentle reader, I would truly like to fix that and all the repercussions that followed for three years. Do you have something to fix?
Robert Chazz Chute, in his massively entertaining novel, Wallflower, has done just that: he tried to fix something. Maybe Mr. Chute has unresolved issues that he is trying to work out by writing a novel? Well this is quite an effort.
Wallflower is an especially smart, in-your-face tour through pain and suffering, through reality and “not” reality, through serenity and panic, with a touch of Kurt Vonnegut thrown in. It reads a little bit like a Vonnegut novel. To ward off any comparisons, Mr. Chute did the only thing he could. He made Kurt Vonnegut a character in the book.
Chute's use of Vonnegut as a character in a book is just as good as Vonnegut putting himself in his own novels thinly disguised as Kilgore Trout. Wallflower is gut-wrenchingly funny and extraordinarily dark. I found myself laughing at things that horrified me, and when I realized it I laughed even harder.
Poor, poor Ray Bradley is not having a good time. Life handed Ray an excreta pie that he is required to eat and Life won’t leave him alone till he cleans his plate. To wit, Ray’s wife left him. He didn't even know anything was wrong; found out from his best friend, who turned out to be the “other man".
Ray is served divorce papers and becomes irrational, climbing in his car and driving very fast. When a tree jumps out in front of him it is apparent that Ray was trying to commit suicide. However, since he had also used his seat belt, he woke up in the hospital. While in a coma, his wife Marla taped a complete list of her objections to their marriage to his hospital door. Farts were mentioned. Ray was not having a good time.
The prescribed therapy for Ray's concussion was to sit and stare at a wall for long periods at a time. When he was discharged, Ray fell in with some mighty unique people including one of his doctors and a faux wizard who told him all about a quantum world where all things are made right with the universe. As it happens, getting into the quantum world involves staring at a wall, meditating.
During one of his first visits to Quantum-burbia, Ray meets himself as a little boy. He gives the lad instructions on how his life will turn out just as lovely as can be. Enter stage left, Ray’s father, who only sees a grown man in a bathrobe talking to his little son. Dad punches adult Ray in the face, Ray falls backward, trips over a picnic bench, hits is head incredibly hard and dies.
This is where I need to tell all you sci-fi fans that the Time Paradox, in a quantum world, is null and void. In a quantum world you are not exactly time traveling, you are “traipsing across dimensions trying to outrun Death.”
Ray finds this mind-boggling. He is also being pursued by some mean nasty types who want to kill him. Ray needs help and it is given unto him as a hand comes through his basement wall (otherwise known as The Gates of Perception). The hand pulls Ray through and standing there is Ray’s guide through the messy world of traipsing across dimensions – KURT VONNEGUT. All is well and right with the world.
In Wallflower, Mr. Chase's use of Vonnegut to explain how things work had me thinking for a long time. In the end, it all made sense, I’m sure of it. The only thing that has me a little concerned is that I found Schrödinger’s cat living under my front porch.
May 3, 2017
Delightful romp through the multiverserses.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews