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Chargement... The Egg Said Nothing (New Bizarro Author) (édition 2010)par Caris O'Malley (Auteur)
Information sur l'oeuvreThe Egg Said Nothing (New Bizarro Author) par Caris O'Malley
KayStJ's to-read list (1,105) Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. The Egg Said Nothing is a hot mess of awesome-sauce. It's hard to avoid spoilers when discussing this book, but I've dosed this review with them liberally. First off, the main character is a hot mess. He can barely keep his shit together. An utter basket case who would likely be a suicide risk if observed by a doctor. The guy lives off Second off, the plot involves a hot mess of It's like an angry fist of This is a short novella, so there's no reason not to give it a read. It might just give you a good whack in the head with a shovel...treat your kids right or the results won't be pretty. Although it might make for an interesting story. *The back of the book does give away this particular plot twist, but I'm not going to give it away here. I usually don't read the backs of books because I prefer to let the author take me through the plot. Like an Old Testament prophet that has let his union dues lapse, Caris O'Malley's The Egg Said Nothing beckons to you from the dark alleyways of the unconscious. He smells funny, his hair is matted and he says the stories about handjobs aren't true. And then, before you know it, he's living with you: you're buying the redemption of violence and the prelapsarian wet dream. And the groceries, of course, because that shiftless s.o.b. sure as hell isn't buying anything. My advice? Cereal. He hates it. And be content in the knowledge that you can't be on the right side of History because History is a Möbius Strip. Is it possible to be so self-aware of one's isolation that one replicates? Consider this gem (lifted completely out of context, but it's a gem because it can be): "It’s lonely knowing you're the only one living your life." Yes, it is lonely knowing you're the only one living your life, but I feel a little less lonely for having read this book. I don't even know how to say what I want to say about this book. It's brilliant, funny, different, bizarro but not so freaky it didn't make sense, tragic, weird and a dozen other adjectives. The book should have been confusing but it wasn't. It was unpredictable until the last few pages really. The characterizations were good, the plot great, the pacing perfect. The chapter titles alone were worth the five stars. I am really relieved because I like to be honest in my reviews and Caris is a great guy and I didn't want to have to say anything negative. Luckily I didn't! I really loved this story. If you like Bizarro at all, you will too. Get it. Now. Right now I said. Nobody every listens to me. I'll just loop back in time and make you see that you have to get this book now. Yep, worked like a charm. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Appartient à la série éditoriale
Meet Manny. He's your average shut-in with a penchant for late night television and looting local fountains for coins. With eight locks on his door and newspapers covering his windows, he's a more than a bit paranoid, too. His wasn't a great life, but it was comfortable-at least it was until the morning he awoke with an egg between his legs. But what might have been a curse becomes a charm as this unlikely event leads him to all night diner, where he finds inedible pie, undrinkable coffee, and the girl of his dreams. But can this unexpected chance at love survive after the egg cracks and time itself turns against him, dead-set on rerouting history and putting a shovel to the face of the one person who could bring real and lasting change to Manny's world? Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Manny is a shut-in and a loner. He sits in his dark apartment, up all night watching late night television. He pays his bills by stealing change from local fountains (he justifies this by saying that they are no longer people's wishes once they hit corporate waters and become extra income for those who don't need it). He has a somewhat sketchy relationship with his senile mother. Until he wakes up one morning to find that he has laid an egg. Or he thinks he's laid an egg. All he knows is that he woke up with an egg sitting between his legs. Where else could it have come from? So you start to wonder if this is going to be more Kafkaesque and if Manny is going to turn into a chicken.
Thus begins Manny breaking from his routine has he tries to nurture the egg like any loving parent would do. Well, a loving parent from another species, maybe, but a loving parent nonetheless. He meets and starts a relationship with Ashley, a waitress at a local diner. And then thing really take off and his life takes a turn for the weird as he discovers the true contents of the egg an begins receiving messages and visitations from himself in the future.
“Listen: Manny has come unstuck in time.” Or that's what I expected to read at some point. The second half of the novel is heavily steeped in time travel and determinism. Like I said, O'Malley would probably make Vonnegut proud. As he starts to play with time very heavily, it can get a bit confusing, especially in keeping track of Manny's different selves as they appear and disappear, not to mention the true nature of the egg. Early on, you start to wonder why this title would be part of the Bizarro fiction line of books as it seems unusually normal during the first half or so (aside from the protagonist laying an egg), but about halfway through the weirdness is ramped up big time.
This becomes a problem. The heavy weirdness starts so fast after a somewhat leisurely pace that the reader could feel like they're getting literary whiplash. As such, uneven pacing contributes to some of the confusion I felt during the second half of the book. The reader might actually feel the need to start keeping a flowchart just to keep things straight in their head. I'll admit that I was trying to mentally do so. Then again, with novels that play with time, this isn't always unusual. On the other hand, the author kicks it up a few notches, making it feel like you need to be a Timelord to figure out who, what, and when people are from.
Despite this gripe, The Egg Said Nothing is still an excellent story that deserves your attention. At its heart, when you strip away the science fiction elements and the weirdness, it becomes a novel about the ultimate loser trying to break out of his own shell and not be such a loser anymore, to be someone and do something that matters, and how the most insignificant person could change the world simply by existing.
The Egg Said Nothing gets a solid 4 out of 5 stars. I hope this is not the last we'll see of Caris O'Malley, as I would really like to read more from him. My only suggestion is that he works on his pacing a little bit. ( )