APRIL 2013 - AudioFile
Narrator Jake Hart makes an impressive debut with this strange, ambitious audiobook, managing to sound conversational, intimate, and nonplussed by the dark, crazy, and hilarious world he inhabits. Hart’s good with voices and stirs in the right mix of emotions for this literary tale about a man who (may have) faked suicide to improve his book sales. Although postmodernist in tone, Currie’s book addresses traditional themes—trust, love lost, and a father’s death—and the audio result conjures up elements of Mark Twain, Jean Shepherd (particularly in the way the book is narrated), and Fred Exley. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Chris Bohjalian
…I was nearly asked to leave the waiting room outside the endoscopy clinic at a Vermont hospital, thanks to Ron Currie Jr.'s new novel, Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles…I reached a scene so blisteringly funny that I laughed as I hadn't laughed in years: We're talking demonic, unstoppable, don't-sit-next-to-that-guy howls…any novel that can make time fly in an endoscopy waiting room has real merit. I wasn't always proud of myself for liking this book, but most of the time I sure did.
Library Journal
Trust the author of the acclaimed and decidedly unorthodox God Is Dead and Everything Matters! to craft an arresting bit of metafiction. His protagonist, a blend of fact and fiction from his own life, is so distraught by his father's death, a book lost to fire, and an unreciprocated love that he hides out on a Caribbean island to write a new book about the mess. Then he fakes his own death, which brings him fame, fortune, and big trouble. In our crusadingly transparent world of tweets and reality TV, playing with facts is not appreciated.
APRIL 2013 - AudioFile
Narrator Jake Hart makes an impressive debut with this strange, ambitious audiobook, managing to sound conversational, intimate, and nonplussed by the dark, crazy, and hilarious world he inhabits. Hart’s good with voices and stirs in the right mix of emotions for this literary tale about a man who (may have) faked suicide to improve his book sales. Although postmodernist in tone, Currie’s book addresses traditional themes—trust, love lost, and a father’s death—and the audio result conjures up elements of Mark Twain, Jean Shepherd (particularly in the way the book is narrated), and Fred Exley. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
A postmodern love story, self-consciously playful in a Vonnegut-ian way. At the beginning of the novel, Ron, the narrator and a writer, promises us a work that will be "capital-T True," though he's also careful to make a distinction between Truth and Fact. The object of his affection, adoration and obsession is Emma, someone he's known for over 20 years, since well before he escorted her to the senior prom. Now they're in their mid-30s--he's still besotted, and she's coming off a divorce. Although they've briefly gotten back together, she now feels the need for some "distance," so Ron hies himself to a Caribbean island, in part to write about their complex relationship in a new novel. While there, he temporarily takes up with Charlotte, a college student who finds it impossible to comprehend Ron's continuing infatuation with Emma. On the day he breaks up with Charlotte, Emma comes down to the island, and eventually Ron confesses his relationship with Charlotte. Emma is understandably pissed, so she leaves, and Ron tries to commit suicide by driving his Jeep off a pier. And here's where things get both crazy and interesting: While everyone thinks he's dead, he gets a fake passport and leaves for several years to Sinai. Meanwhile, his manuscript is discovered and published--and it sells 3 million copies. When he decides to return to assume his former life, everyone is outraged--his mother, Emma and the reading public, who feel they've been manipulated. (Some of his readers even sue him for "mental anguish.") But Currie's narrative is not just about the self-conscious act of writing a novel about Emma--it's also about the death of his father and the possibility of machines themselves becoming conscious beings in an act called a singularity. Free-wheeling--and at times both moving and hilarious.
