When the Soviet Union collapsed, some triumphalists in the West expected something unlikely. They expected Russia to play nice. It hasn’t turned out that way, and they blame Vladimir Putin. But imagine Russia’s surly and enigmatic leader once he has fallen from power. Imagine him with his faculties less than intact. This is the premise of The Senility of Vladimir P., the ingenious second novel from former surgeon Michael Honig. 

The five-term president, two-term prime minister and de facto czar suffers from hallucinations. An imagined Chechen torments him, so he treats the mirage to his well-known judo skills. In more lucid moments, he raves about his own cunning and watches TV footage of his exploits. Putin’s long-suffering, long-term nurse, Sheremetev, considers himself the last incorruptible Russian. Then his nephew Pasha goes to jail, and Sheremetev takes to pawning Putin’s vast collection of luxury watches to set Pasha free. 

Marx said history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Honig’s novel is the farce to Russia’s genuine tragedy. The dacha where Putin convalesces comes to symbolize post-Soviet Russia as a whole, and the novel betrays a serious anguish at what has befallen the country. It delights in showing its architect as a destructive megalomaniac. Today, Putin likes to appear shirtless to show his virility. Honig suggests instead that the emperor wears no clothes.

This article was originally published in the August 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Mark Leyner’s electrifying and theatrical fourth novel, Gone with the Mind, opens in the food court of a shopping mall during a book signing. While the title recalls Margaret Mitchell, that is only the first of many literary touchstones for this imaginative autobiographical novel, initially narrated by Mark’s mother to an audience of two proles on work break. As her monologue proceeds for pages without a paragraph break, one is reminded of the final chapter of Ulysses, in which Molly Bloom’s river of consciousness makes her seem more formidable with each breathless word. Mark then takes the stage, and in his casual concatenation of pop-culture references with science, philosophy and OED vocabulary, the reader enters the rarefied and rich territory charted by David Foster Wallace.

You never know what Mark is going on about, but you can’t stop listening. It’s like Saul Bellow without the plot, a three-hour-long therapy session in which you are the therapist and Mark is the patient. Or a more frenetic Notes from Underground, with prostate cancer replacing Dostoevsky’s liver disease.

To wit: Mark is a 58-year-old struggling Jewish writer recovering from prostate surgery. He is unusually close to his mother and lacks two shekels to rub together. Mark careens from rage to despond and back again, while the two service workers in his so-called audience remain glued to their smartphones. Mark is often hilarious, but usually in a manner calculated to shock. Life, he says, is “pretty much like Carrie’s prom,” referring to the vengeful Stephen King character.

Leyner launched his writing career in the 1990s, alongside Jonathan Franzen and Wallace, and has worked as a screenwriter. His novels, which are cult literary classics, have titles like My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist and The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. James Wood called this “hysterical realism,” a genre aspiring to approach in fiction the mania of contemporary life, to leave nothing out. Gone with the Mind could have been written only by someone coping with the overstimulation of today’s cyberspace. Leyner suggests that any other kind of fiction is lacking, and he may, to our detriment, be right.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A literary conference might not seem like an obvious setting for mayhem and nonsense, but that’s just what’s on the agenda in Chris Belden’s enjoyable Shriver, in which a lonely man gets invited to a university conference thanks to a case of mistaken identity. Shriver—the wrong Shriver—RSVPs, thinking it a good practical joke, until he’s swept up in the sordid, confusing world of egomaniacal writers and those who adore them. 

The gathering’s broad theme of “reality-slash-illusion” is one that the novel does great work of confusing—it pretty much blurs the slash right out. Who is Shriver? The writer of a controversial novel—or the man mistaken for that man? What makes a writer, anyway? Literary culture’s penchant for superlatives and hero-worship is enjoyably skewered: The real Shriver is revered for a 20-year-old book most people haven’t even finished. 

Shriver is a semi-likable character with more than a couple neuroses, which makes him plausible to the conference-goers as the reclusive author of the same name. He considers himself the furthest thing from a writer; he’s a man of simple pursuits who loves his cat, Mr. Bojangles, and enjoys a one-sided correspondence with a local news anchor. But everyone seems willing to be convinced, especially Professor Simone Cleverly, the university’s conference coordinator, who ironically hates writers; Edsel Nixon, Shriver’s always-there-when-you-need-him handler; and the cowboy academician T. Wätzczesnam (pronounced “whatsisname”) who quotes poetry in every conversation. 

The wacky cast of characters, inane situations and a whodunit subplot brings to mind the 1980s cult classic movie Clue. At every turn in the satirical story, someone who could unmask our protagonist lurks. Meanwhile, Shriver juggles the investigation of a missing poet last seen in his hotel room, a bewildering plague of mosquitoes and a shadowy figure in black. Shriver’s fear of being outed as an impostor rings true for any writer—wannabe or bona fide—who’s ever doubted their abilities.

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Canadian author Leah McLaren walks a fine line in A Better Man, and following along as she navigates it is part of what makes her novel worth reading. A Better Man is a deft blend of comedy, wisdom and character, and it’s one of the most entertaining books of its kind you’re likely to find.

Nick Wakefield, a successful man with a big house, a pretty wife and twins, wants out. He’s tired of the grind of married life, but his best friend—a divorce lawyer—warns him that the split could cost him. To preserve his financial future, he needs to spend time playing the perfect husband and father first. As Nick tries this tactic, he finds that he’s actually growing to enjoy married life again . . . at least, until his wife, Maya, learns his secret.

Though the overall premise would be right at home in a screwball comedy, A Better Man has an incisiveness that goes straight to the dark core of a troubled marriage. Key to this is McLaren’s mastery of character. We see it in Nick’s careful yet cavalier approach to flirtations with other women and in Maya’s pragmatic evaluation of her body. 

A Better Man is a gripping, intimate book that will thrill with its juicy plot and win you over with its powerful insight into relationships.

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Power comes from being in the limelight. That’s the lesson Miranda Ford takes away from her second-runner-up win at the 18th annual Miss Daviess County Fair Pageant. As the winner and first-runner-up involuntarily step aside, Miranda becomes queen—a position she’s determined never to lose.

Two decades, a husband and three children later, Miranda Ford Miller wants her 9-year-old daughter, Bailey, to take center stage. Nothing will get in Miranda’s way—not Bailey’s growing disinterest in pageants, husband Ray’s hectic schedule with two full-time jobs or the expenses the family’s 14 credit cards can barely accommodate.

Or will it? In the rip-roaring Pretty Ugly, Emmy-nominated writer and producer Kirker Butler writes of the Southern child-pageant circuit with all the acerbic, snarky wit he’s brought to shows such as “Family Guy.”

Butler turns a gimlet eye to each family member’s motivation and conflict. Miranda pours everything into Bailey’s career, including purchasing a gym membership complete with private pole-dancing lessons. However, Bailey is ready to retire from the pageant circuit, and so she sabotages her mom’s efforts by binge-eating. Ray’s nursing and hospice jobs allow him easy access to all the pills he can pop, as well as a young mistress. Miranda’s mom, seventh-grade-educated Joan, homeschools the boys to save them from the horrors of public education. Miranda, meanwhile, is sure that the daughter she now carries will be the answer to everything.

Butler’s debut novel is a smart, sarcastic portrayal of a dysfunctional American family—one that’s sure to have readers eager for more.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Paul Beatty is not afraid to push and shatter the boundaries of political correctness. Like many of his other works—including his acclaimed debut The White Boy Shuffle—The Sellout is unafraid to ask big questions about America. In this gorgeously eclectic novel, Beatty tells the story of a black man cast out from his hometown of Dickens, California—a man considered to be a sellout for everything from listening to Neil Young and reading Franz Kafka to growing and selling watermelon for a living. It doesn’t matter that these watermelons are the world’s best, or that he is the son of a maniacal psychologist bent on testing racial identity.

But when Dickens is removed from the map, the sellout comes up with an idea to not only bring back the neighborhood, but to remind everyone of what it means to be a community. With the help of Hominy Jenkins, a self-purported slave and local celebrity of “Little Rascals” fame, the narrator sets out to re-instate segregation—forcing the world, and the reader, to question how segregated this country already is.

It’s a dark but comic plot that shapes this angry satire, but Beatty is less interested in getting to the end as he is in exploring the myriad experiences of being black in America and an individual in a society. He does so with freewheeling prose that is electric with intelligence, and yet never above the reader’s head. In a single sentence he might reference obscure existentialist philosophers alongside string theory and bebop jazz, but it is all with respect for the reader’s ability and no distinction between highbrow or low.

At once hysteric and hysterical, angry and full of heart, The Sellout is a smart, funny and distinctly American novel.

Theodore Yurevitch is a writer and editor at the Nashville Review. 

Amanda Filipacchi’s fourth novel is a matchless satire that manages to make a point or two along with the fun. It follows a memorable cast of characters, led by Barb, a costume designer and world-class beauty with the kindest of hearts. Convinced of the sheer uselessness and even destructiveness of beauty after a spurned lover kills himself over her, Barb hides her looks under a fat suit.

By contrast, Barb’s best friend, Lily, is ugly but plays the piano like a dream, to the point where she can inspire listeners to see her as incredibly beautiful—as long as her music goes on. And there’s Penelope, whose pottery store is filled with merchandise designed to crack when lifted by a customer. (This brings in a steady income, thanks to the store’s “you break it, you buy it” policy.) The three are part of an artsy community, the Knights of Creation, where they help each other achieve their various creative goals.

The story is both daunting and haunting, as Lily and Barb face the deaths of friends (which one of their fellow Knights may be involved in) and the threats of needy fellow members.

Obviously, total realism is not Filipacchi’s specialty, but no reader would want it otherwise. A novel of deliberate contrariness, The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty takes on some thorny issues and speaks to both the mind and heart at the same time. Not to mention the funny bone.

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It takes real talent to concoct a plot about our celebrity-obsessed culture that’s as outrageous as the stories we can consume every day with the click of a mouse or remote control. Following on his impressive fiction debut, the somber What Happened to Sophie Wilder, Christopher Beha has pivoted away from that novel's dark tone to create a wicked satire that’s every bit the equal of its predecessor in tackling serious moral issues.

It’s fairly obvious that private high school drama teacher and failed actor Eddie Hartley’s decision to sell the sex tape he made years earlier with his ex-girlfriend, Martha Martin, the star of a popular television medical drama, will turn out badly. That’s so despite his noble motive: to raise $10,000 to finance his wife Susan’s final attempt to conceive through in vitro fertilization. Eddie’s imprudent decision sets in motion a wild series of events when Susan becomes the star of a reality show and he recognizes, as it quickly becomes a hit, that his life has been irretrievably changed.

In his depiction of the “through the looking glass” world of reality television, Beha clearly has done his homework, exposing, with style and wit, the techniques these shows employ to create an impression of verisimilitude for what’s really a carefully crafted story arc.  Eddie watches with rising dismay as Susan becomes an object of mass sympathy, while he’s cast in the role of a home-wrecking villain, even as he plots an ingenious strategy to win her back. Beha wisely doesn’t confine himself to the machinations of the reality show plot, portraying alongside it Eddie’s sobering discovery that the gap between his early dreams of fame and success and the reality of adulthood can only be bridged in a way he never could have imagined.   

Our obsession with the lives of celebrities and our absorption in reality shows isn't likely to abate any time soon. Whether that pleases you or not, if you surrender for a few hours to the spell of Christopher Beha’s well-crafted novel, it's certain you’ll never view these phenomena with the same eyes again.

Edward St. Aubyn’s Lost for Words is a breezy, yet biting satirical novel about the internecine intrigue that unfolds behind the scenes of a major book award that is clearly a thinly disguised version of the Booker Prize. St. Aubyn, whose own novel, Mother’s Milk, was shortlisted for that honor, writes in the great pithy British tradition of David Lodge and Muriel Spark, infusing a deceptively lighthearted surface wit with more trenchant intent.

The committee for the prestigious Elysian Prize (funded by a multinational that, among its many controversies, genetically modifies crops by crossing vegetables with animals) is headed by Malcolm Craig, a backbench MP hoping to raise his public profile. The rather ragtag team of judges includes a popular newspaper columnist, an actor, an Oxbridge academic (who, no doubt rightly, believes she is the only member who knows anything about literature) and the ancient prize committee chairman’s erstwhile secretary/mistress, who now writes popular thrillers. None bothers to read more than a handful of the hundreds of books submitted, embracing titles to which they are already predisposed. The inevitable alliances form amid polite quarrels.

The proceedings reach a fever pitch, albeit in a restrained, polite English manner, as the longlist becomes the shortlist and the winner proves difficult to decide. No one is spared as St. Aubyn skewers the literary “elite” and aspirants alike. In one typically sly development, one of the presumed frontrunners, literary star Katherine Burns, is not even in the running. An editorial assistant mistakenly sent in the manuscript for a cookbook instead of Burns’ novel (the cookbook, viewed as a postmodern experiment in narrative, makes the list).

Delightfully entertaining, Lost for Words nonetheless casts a cold eye on the very nature of awards, and questions whether they in any way reflect the quality and permanence of the art they ostensibly celebrate.

This article was originally published in the June 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Worst. Person. Ever., Douglas Coupland’s new novel, is engaging, funny and a rocking good read. As the title implies, the main character, Raymond Gunt, is not a nice person. The book is written in the first person, in what is known as the “unreliable narrator” style. Ray Gunt is a highly unreliable narrator.

Ray’s ex-wife hires him as a cameraman to film a sequence of reality television in the South Pacific. On an odyssey that takes him from London to a small Pacific island nation, Ray manages to insult, denigrate and otherwise abuse absolutely everyone he encounters, beginning with airport security and ending with the grossly overweight man seated next to him on the plane, to whom he says, “by the looks of you, you’d best hope they have all of Noah’s Ark on the menu.” He keeps it up and so completely enrages the obese man that the poor guy has a heart attack and dies on board the plane. Ray expresses no remorse.

Not surprisingly, Ray often pays a price for his bad behavior, but the reader roots for him nonetheless, maybe partly because many of these encounters are laugh-out-loud funny. Equally enjoyable is the character of Neal, a homeless man whom Ray meets (read: insults) on the street in London and later recruits as his assistant/slave for the trip, and who provides an excellent foil for Ray’s stunts.

In addition to the humor, which is plentiful and uproarious (albeit colorfully expressed and, as in the example above, not always PC), the book is successful because of Ray’s me-first attitude and his willingness to express any nasty thought that comes to mind—things that the rest of us would like to say, were we a little less civilized. Readers will identify with Ray Gunt in spite of themselves, taking pleasure in his crazy antics.