Scam Bam Thank You Ma'am

The Scam hurtles slowly towards it's sense shattering climax!

The Scam page 26

Can one hurtle slowly? Don't ask me, I just work here.

Another sketch in the tough guy series:

























So I finished another book - The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver.























This one is kind of a romance novel about a children's book author who one fateful night decides whether or not to embark upon a life-changing affair, and the novel then goes on to tell two parallel stories chronicling the effects that decision has on her life one way or the other. I'm not much of a romance guy, but I picked this up 'cause it showed up on a whole bunch of Best Books of the Year lists. I'm gonna spoil it here so if you think you wanna read it, I suggest you stop reading now.

I found the book fascinating, but ultimately annoying in the extreme. The lead character, Irina, is sympathetic, but kind of a doormat. She's in a relationship with a seemingly nice, stable, but boring kind of guy, but she's wildly attracted to a slightly dangerous and charismatic snooker player. Ostensibly the novel seems to set out to explore the pros and cons of stability versus passion. So far so good. But as it turns out, both guys are pretty much useless douchebags.

And don't say I didn't warn you, here comes the big massive spoilers: In the end Irina's life turns out pretty shitty either way. The dangerous guy is a tempermental dickbag who mostly treats Irina like shit but his one redeeming quality is his "beautiful dick". The book actually has long passages describing how wonderful this guy's dick is. Ugh. So mostly she's unhappy except when they're screwing. Then, after 5 years Mr. Dangerous gets prostate cancer and can no longer get it up and then dies. Irina is fucked. The boring guy turns out to be having an affair of his own, which Irina discovers only after spending 5 years of drudging loyalty to the guy whereupo she tries to take up with Mr. Dangerous only to find out he's got prostate cancer and can't get it up so she missed out on that wonderful dick. Irina is fucked again. So this nice lady that we just spent 500 pages reading about was really fucked from the outset. There was no right decision. Love sucks. Nobody lives happily ever after. The end.

I found this ending to be very annoying. Now I like dark endings. I usually love it when everybody dies, but here I don't get the point. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, but the lightness of the premise doesn't seem to match the doom and gloom resolution.

Whatever. I did find the book interesting and I've certainly found myself thinking a lot about it and the nature of relationships. Mostly that I'm glad mine doesn't appear to be fucked up beyond all recognition. Maybe that's the point. But I wouldn't recommend this one unless you're in the mood for a healthy dose of frustration.

So there you have it. Next on the reading list is a Norwegian book called Out Stealing Horses. I'll keep you posted.

Have a good weekend!