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This title in other formats:Apathy and Other Small Victoriesby Paul Neilan
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:The only thing Shane cares about is leaving. Usually on a Greyhound bus, right before his life falls apart again. Just like he planned. But this time it’s complicated: there's a sadistic corporate climber who thinks she’s his girlfriend, a rent-subsidized affair with his landlord’s wife, and the bizarrely appealing deaf assistant to Shane’s cosmically unstable dentist. When one of the women is murdered, and Shane is the only suspect who doesn’t care enough to act like he didn’t do it, the question becomes just how he’ll clear the good name he never had and doesn’t particularly want: his own. Review:"Like many a hip young literary antihero these days, the protagonist of this hilarious if aimless debut is sunk in slacker anomie. Shane has a monotonous temp job at an insurance agency, where he is supposed to alphabetize paperwork but instead spends his time sleeping on the toilet. After work, he is besieged by a gallery of grotesques: a vapid girlfriend who sexually brutalizes him; an absurdly macho neighbor with a leather-clad guinea pig for a sex slave; and his dentist's deaf assistant, who sings atonal karaoke, teaches him to sign obscenities and furnishes a wispy narrative thread by getting murdered. In a world both banal and assaultive, Shane can only drink, steal salt shakers and cultivate his sense of irony; '[t]here's only so much you can do,' he shrugs, 'and even that's not worth the trouble.' Shane's malaise doesn't feel earned; job aside, there are just too many gonzo goings-on — the landlord, for instance, is paying him to have sex with his wife — for him to feel so listless. There's not much to Shane besides a defiant dejectedness, but from that Neilan spins many sparkling comic riffs on the tawdriness and sterility of American life." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"If you can hang with Neilan's taste in rude jokes and non sequiturs, there's lots to like." Kirkus Reviews Review:"If Camus and Bukowski had written A Confederacy of Dunces and combined it with the screenplay for Office Space, it would have been this book. A triumphantly, weirdly hilarious comedy." Neal Pollack, author of Never Mind the Pollacks Review:"Neilan's wit is a razor that cuts and slashes mercilessly on every single page, in every single paragraph, so that your fingers will bleed even as the tears of laughter soak your face. So basically, you'll be reduced to a bloody, weeping mess, madly reading whole pages aloud as friends and family shake their heads and slowly back away." Jonathan Tropper, author of Everything Changes Review:"Comprising 50 percent sheer brilliance, 50 percent distilled cynicism, and 50 percent coronary-inducing humor, Apathy and Other Small Victories has more life, laughs, and story on every page than should be possible. A heartbreakingly funny paean to supercharged nihilism, it's the best book you'll read in years, and the funniest novel ever. If you don?t love it, there's something wrong with you, and if you do, there is also something wrong with you — but you won't care." Max Barry, author of Company Review:" About the AuthorPaul Neilan is working on getting fired from his mind-numbing job at an insurance company in Portland, Oregon, where he spends most of his time hiding in the bathroom and weeping. Born of this and many, many other humiliations, Apathy and Other Small Victories is his first novel. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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