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#5 Platform - Boomsday
Jul. 14th, 2007 08:49 amMaybe it's not quite as sharp, but mass suicide still makes for good satire.
Book #29: Boomsday
Author: Christopher Buckley
Provenance: Bookmooch
After reading Thank You For Smoking, I figured I'd bump up the new Buckley book towards the top of my reading list. I didn't regret it; in fact, I tore through the book in a matter of a few days. Still, I don't think it was quite as good.
This story centers around Cassandra Devine, a PR firm VP and Social Security activist blogger, who advocates that baby boomers should be given incentives to kill themselves at age 70 (special bonus if you do it at 65!), in order to make the nation solvent again. The idea gets taken up by a senator, and her boss at the PR firm, and it's what drives the story, for the most part. There are a bunch of other characters floating around as well, such as a right-to-life preacher and Cass's dad, a multi-billionaire software engineer, that fill out the story.
The plotline is pretty imaginative and fun, and the dialogue is sharp and witty. The interplay between characters of different viewpoints makes for a fairly realistic view, which is essential to the satire. And it is funny; I did still find myself laughing several times over the course of the book, and that's no small feat.
The flaws I found, though, were that the plot felt like it dragged, particularly towards the end, when the presidential campaign is playing out. It also came to feel like it was hard to tell how much time was going by. Also, the characters felt somewhat stagnant, and particularly the relationships between them felt like they didn't change sufficiently for the actions that had gone on. There were points where that aspect felt almost sitcom-esque, even if I did like the characters themselves.
Still, this book was a lot of fun, and a good satire; I wouldn't start reading Buckley from here, but I wouldn't have much of a problem recommending it at all.
Next up: The Long Halloween. Don't exactly know whether I should count it, but...
Book #29: Boomsday
Author: Christopher Buckley
Provenance: Bookmooch
After reading Thank You For Smoking, I figured I'd bump up the new Buckley book towards the top of my reading list. I didn't regret it; in fact, I tore through the book in a matter of a few days. Still, I don't think it was quite as good.
This story centers around Cassandra Devine, a PR firm VP and Social Security activist blogger, who advocates that baby boomers should be given incentives to kill themselves at age 70 (special bonus if you do it at 65!), in order to make the nation solvent again. The idea gets taken up by a senator, and her boss at the PR firm, and it's what drives the story, for the most part. There are a bunch of other characters floating around as well, such as a right-to-life preacher and Cass's dad, a multi-billionaire software engineer, that fill out the story.
The plotline is pretty imaginative and fun, and the dialogue is sharp and witty. The interplay between characters of different viewpoints makes for a fairly realistic view, which is essential to the satire. And it is funny; I did still find myself laughing several times over the course of the book, and that's no small feat.
The flaws I found, though, were that the plot felt like it dragged, particularly towards the end, when the presidential campaign is playing out. It also came to feel like it was hard to tell how much time was going by. Also, the characters felt somewhat stagnant, and particularly the relationships between them felt like they didn't change sufficiently for the actions that had gone on. There were points where that aspect felt almost sitcom-esque, even if I did like the characters themselves.
Still, this book was a lot of fun, and a good satire; I wouldn't start reading Buckley from here, but I wouldn't have much of a problem recommending it at all.
Next up: The Long Halloween. Don't exactly know whether I should count it, but...
