This amusing adventure delivers an enjoyable romp through a bizarre yet familiar landscape.
A debut absurdist novel parodies The Twilight Zone.
The year is 1962. A man in a skinny tie named Ron Sterling is in the Port Authority bus station in Manhattan. Ron is buying a ticket for Binghamton, New York, otherwise known as the “Fifth Most Depressing City in The Country.” Ron Sterling bears a striking similarity to Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone, right down to the Chesterfield he’s smoking. But Ron hosts something called The Detour Dimension. Things seem normal enough until it turns out the bus driver is a “Hot Dog Man” named Frank Weener. When Frank is not driving a bus, he is writing, and he hands a spiral notebook to Ron. Readers are introduced, via Frank’s writings, to The Anarchists. The group, with names like The Crazy Clown, Mr. Dude, and Larry Lutz, is seated at The Pancake House. The members of this crew discuss what they have been up to lately. The Crazy Clown, for instance, plans to park an M41 Walker Bulldog tank in front of a bank and sell Communist-themed ice cream. How does he manage to keep the ice cream cold? He explains to a questioning policeman he does so with “Cold War tactics.” The novel goes back and forth between such outrageous actions, both in Frank’s writing and on Ron’s journey. Mr. Dude teaches a poetry class, though he mainly has his students pretend to be him and take turns overseeing the proceedings. Then there’s action back at The Pancake House, where weird things happen. During a football game, “the Worcester sauce bottle in the middle of their table picks up nothing but John Madden and Pat Summerall.”
When readers first meet Ron and Frank, things are perplexing. While anyone familiar with Rod Serling’s work can easily imagine what Ron must look and sound like, what exactly is a Hot Dog Man and how does he manage to function like a human? In addition, it’s easy to be confused by The Anarchists, who are also called “comedians.” By the time The Crazy Clown talks about his tank, it’s clear that anything may transpire, with or without a satisfactory explanation. Nevertheless, once this tone is established, there is a great deal of humor to be found. In Mr. Dude’s poetry class, one student named Claude Spectrum puts on a drum machine and repeats the word Carbohydrates over and over again. The narrator later informs readers that “Spectrum’s deceptively simple lyric, stapled to an irresistibly militant rhythm…is ridiculously rich with allegorical, elliptical, empirical and erotic suggestion.” It’s a funny scene followed by a hilarious explanation. It’s also exactly the type of thing that might happen on The Twilight Zone if the episode were written by an insane part-human, part-hot dog bus driver. Keay’s book manages such playfulness without the sort of cruel mockery that sometimes surfaces in parodies. As zany as the scenes get, they maintain the feel of a tasteful homage. While not every bit lands as neatly as a Worcester sauce bottle that picks up football commentary, the novel never lets up on the fun.
This amusing adventure delivers an enjoyable romp through a bizarre yet familiar landscape.Pub Date: May 27, 2024
ISBN: 9798350944549
Page Count: 100
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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