Sock monkey is a bad wammerjammer. He has a deep soul. He will love the man forever.
Death is a part of life. Death is a virus that does not need email.
The man sees death. His job. He is police. A Diver. A wetsuit.
Retrieve the dead. Then he retrieves.
Her.

He sees her. The first time in years. Beaten. Soaked. Down by the river. Dead
Not as he remembered her. Smart girl. Fun girl. His love. His life.
His mission. His work. Search. Focus.
Hey ho let’s go.
Detective.

He is obsessed with finding her killer. He is the police. But the police are too slow.
The killing is stupid, but the killer is not so stupid.
Where he goes I’ll follow. I will follow him.
You never can win with.
Questions.

Tiny flaps of butterfly wings causing hurricanes of pain to rage through lives.
Sock by Penn Jillette is now available in print and as an e-book from independent bookstores, online booksellers, retail stores, public libraries and anywhere you get your books. ( )

The first chapter is five-star material, but the book loosened from there, and I missed Dickie's crazy-eyed Beat rhythm. Still, a sock monkey is a great vehicle for some id-powered stream-of-consciousness storytelling. A quick, addictive, fast-paced, pop culture-dotted, kind-hearted read. ( )

This is a difficult novel to review, especially if you are a fan of Jillette not only in his roll as bullshit bashing magician, but as a social commentator. Penn tells it like it is-constantly. And that is the problem with Sock.

As a debut novel it is brave, clever, insightful and raw. Unfortunately,if you've read any of his other works as I had with God,No! http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8495145-god-no, read any of his work online, or seen Penn & Teller:Bullshit, it's all old and just comes across as preachy ranting.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the first 100 pages or so, and using 'The Little Fool's' childhood sock monkey as the central voice is an inspired move. After that, it does tend to become a chore, making the 'broken fourth wall' trick just tiresome and annoying; so much so, that in the end you're praying for another voice to come through. Annoyingly, when that 'voice' does come through, it's just and even louder, shoutier version of what's preceded it.
Like other reviewers, I'm split on the song lyrics gimmick. At times they're clever, but there are instances where it takes you out of the story while you sit there running said lyric through your head.

If you're new to Penn and his ways then go for it. If you're experienced, then don't get your expectations up. ( )

Amazing book. It's so engrossing and erotic. Penn Jillette's personal style definitely shines through. One of my new favorites ( )

I alternately liked and disliked this book. Overall, the main plot is interesting and the p.o.v. is oftentimes brilliant. However, a lot of times the narration goes off a tangent that has nothing to do with anything other than background characterization. If only I could edit the thing down into a really long short story, I'd have been much happier.

The pop culture references thrown in at the end of certain sections are also alternatingly clever and capricious, and sometimes just plain annoying. They start out being most annoying and then the narrative settles down and they become more appropriate signals of the plot and mentality of the narrator. The reader needs to get 30 or 40 pages into the novel already before grasping what is going on. Not everyone will give a book that much leeway.

At the end, after the long read through all sorts of extraneous stuff, it's a great concept story. In the middle of it and toward the end, I got tired of the constant barrage of sex and foul language. The sex and foul language mostly had to do with point-of-view and the mental state of the narrator and was purposeful for benchmarking to the reader some of those things, but mostly it just got tiring to slog through it after a while.

The book was clever and amusing, although not usually laugh out loud funny, or snicker quietly to oneself funny. It ended up being quite heavy on some philosophical issues, especially as the reader discovers what the motive is by the end of the novel--which made some of the earlier tangents understandable but not very much tolerable--but then again, a whole lot of it was just pop psycho-babble that was entertaining to read, but leaves you dizzy from consuming too much all at once. ( )