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Apathy and Other Small Victories
by Paul Neilan
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About This Book
ISBN13: 9780312351748 |
Only 1 left in stock at $8.95!
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher 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:
"[J]uvenile fun for undiscerning lads with two hours to kill." Booklist
About the Author
Paul 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 Saying
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Average customer rating based on 7 comments:
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katherinemmoon, August 30, 2007 (view all comments by katherinemmoon)
Pretty much everything you've ever wanted to say but were too afraid of what people would think. You coward.
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gravey94, June 19, 2006 (view all comments by gravey94)
Not sure if Neilan has a secret longing to be like Palinchuck, but he might want the success of Palahniuk. This book is laugh out loud funny!!! That is, of course, if you have the wit and intellect to understand a well written dark comedy. If you need visual images for your humor, go rent a movie. If you want a hysterically funny and, at times disturbingly funny book, this is the one for you. Fair play to you Neilan!
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kpandos, May 20, 2006 (view all comments by kpandos)
Paul I am so happy for you! I always thought you'd be a writer, and not only a writer, but a great satirist of our time. Well done.
View all 7 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780312351748
- Author:
- Publisher:
- St. Martin's Press
- Subject:
- Literary
- Subject:
- Humorous
- Copyright:
- 2006
- Publication Date:
- April 2006
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 231
- Dimensions:
- 7.42x5.08x.84 in. .67 lbs.
