"Standaert's unconventional first novel follows Pisco, a disillusioned rodent exterminator and taxidermy enthusiast. The main thrust of Pisco's life is spent killing bats and rats, attempting to coexist with a ragtag assembly of neighbors and lamenting the tragic death of his apartment building's handyman Paul Putty. Pisco's unhinged, naturally suspicious mother (who calls him by his given name, 'Moses') is a black Jamaican woman who adopted him; she and her much younger boyfriend, 'Fly Boy,' add little to his life of joyless annoyances, the zaniness of which is mind-bogglingly excessive: Pisco is bitten by a bat and develops rabies-like symptoms, he's fired then beaten down after vomiting on his boss' shoes, he wrestles emotionally with being an adoptee, then finds his friend Father John dead after a night of drinking and winds up in jail accused of murder (and is then rescued by a great flood)-all while corresponding with a gal named Sarah Ellen Roberts who may or may not be his niece. The author of Skipping Towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire (Soft Skull) and a blogger at the Huffington Post, Standaert targets the soulless options for 21st century living in this frenetic, bitterly funny paean to defeat." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Some say a hero will come to save the world from destruction, hopelessness and haywire weather; from powerful forces of evil — political, spiritual, or perhaps personal. Is The Pisco Kid that hero, or merely a literary instrument satirically skewering rapture-theorist conservatives, libidinous liberals, and many groups in between? In a surreal post-flood fantasy-scape, maybe it'ss all a wash.