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3.02 AVERAGE
3.02 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
There's an old AP prompt that reads: "A critic has said that one important measure of a superior work of literature is its ability to produce in the reader a healthy confusion of pleasure and disquietude."
Mark this one down as swimming in that "healthy confusion". This book, like it's protagonist, is a mess, but deliberately so. Joshua is an ineffectual turd who sows not only discord but destruction while still believing himself the hero of his own story, as one will. Truth be told, he's carpet-bombing the lives of everyone around him and offering no meaningful aid (beyond broken or soon-to-be broken promises). W's invasion of Iraq is the absurdist scrim against which the story is cast, and the explosion of horrific unintended consequences and collateral damage serves as Hemon's commentary. A good and perhaps fabulous book (I read this too fast to see all the pieces clicking together but not so fast as to not hear them clicking around me) that makes you feel awful about laughing and forces you to delight in how awful you feel.
Mark this one down as swimming in that "healthy confusion". This book, like it's protagonist, is a mess, but deliberately so. Joshua is an ineffectual turd who sows not only discord but destruction while still believing himself the hero of his own story, as one will. Truth be told, he's carpet-bombing the lives of everyone around him and offering no meaningful aid (beyond broken or soon-to-be broken promises). W's invasion of Iraq is the absurdist scrim against which the story is cast, and the explosion of horrific unintended consequences and collateral damage serves as Hemon's commentary. A good and perhaps fabulous book (I read this too fast to see all the pieces clicking together but not so fast as to not hear them clicking around me) that makes you feel awful about laughing and forces you to delight in how awful you feel.
Going in to this, I thought the main character's screenplay was going to actually be made into a film. Not so much. Joshua Levin does not have his shit that together. He attends weekly screenwriting workshops, run by another aspiring writer who hasn't actually had anything produced. He works as an ESL teacher, rents an apartment from a Desert Storm vet suffering from PTSD, and has somehow managed to score a girlfriend who does have her shit together. You know it won't last.
...Zombie Wars is in the same "dude lit" genre as [b:This is Where I Leave You|6224935|This is Where I Leave You|Jonathan Tropper|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336344327s/6224935.jpg|6405647] and I had the same uncomfortably amused reaction. There's less family in this one, but still plenty of sex, lots of hijinkery, and a fair amount of violence.
...Zombie Wars is in the same "dude lit" genre as [b:This is Where I Leave You|6224935|This is Where I Leave You|Jonathan Tropper|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336344327s/6224935.jpg|6405647] and I had the same uncomfortably amused reaction. There's less family in this one, but still plenty of sex, lots of hijinkery, and a fair amount of violence.
I was put off from this book very early but tried to persevere. It just kept getting more unpleasant to read, and I found myself less and less interested in a sad sack writer who has multiple beautiful women who want to sleep with him. If you enjoy lines like p. 9 "With his testicles squeezed by his twisted underwear, Joshua avoided all eye contact with the beflanelled Dillon, who was outlining some idea of his, hip-deep in the faded, sunken futon," this may be the book for you. I'd be really interested to compare male and female reactions to this book.
I've liked this guys other books, however this was such unreadable trash. I am such a hater here, this was so terrible.
Have you ever read a Jonathan Tropper or other dude-lit novel, and thought, "Hmm, this is pretty good, but what it needs is more graphic sex and violence"? Well, here you go! Chicagoan Hemon gives us this goofy tale of a 33-year-old struggling screenwriter named Joshua Levin. Our boy Josh gets himself into hot water with his beautiful, kinky, way-out-of-his league lady Kimmy when he can't resist the charms of a beautiful Serbian woman named Ana, a student in the English as a Second Language night class he teaches.
Joshua participates in a screenwriting workshop, and though he has many ideas for screenplays, he never finishes any of them ... that is until a great idea for a movie about zombies occurs to him. It's spring 2003, we've just invaded Iraq, and war is fresh in the hearts and minds of everyone. Part of the idea of the novel is to draw a silly parallel between art and life by showing that we dumb humans are more or less like zombies, only responding to our urges of the flesh (like sex and violence). And for Joshua, the irony here is that the only thing that can elevate him above his current zombie-esque urges is his art about zombies who can't resist their own urges.
It's a deceptively funny novel that includes a samurai-sword-wielding, Guns'N'Roses-listening, post-smoking, Desert Storm veteran named Stagger, cock rings and handcuffs, and Serbian toughs named Esko and Bega who are constant thorns in Joshua's side.
Don't take this novel too seriously, and I think you'll dig it. It's a quick, light read with plenty of laugh-out-loud absurdity.
Joshua participates in a screenwriting workshop, and though he has many ideas for screenplays, he never finishes any of them ... that is until a great idea for a movie about zombies occurs to him. It's spring 2003, we've just invaded Iraq, and war is fresh in the hearts and minds of everyone. Part of the idea of the novel is to draw a silly parallel between art and life by showing that we dumb humans are more or less like zombies, only responding to our urges of the flesh (like sex and violence). And for Joshua, the irony here is that the only thing that can elevate him above his current zombie-esque urges is his art about zombies who can't resist their own urges.
It's a deceptively funny novel that includes a samurai-sword-wielding, Guns'N'Roses-listening, post-smoking, Desert Storm veteran named Stagger, cock rings and handcuffs, and Serbian toughs named Esko and Bega who are constant thorns in Joshua's side.
Don't take this novel too seriously, and I think you'll dig it. It's a quick, light read with plenty of laugh-out-loud absurdity.
funny
tense
I read this on vacation after seeing positive review about it in the newspaper. It was good vacation reading, but not a great read.
The main character is a hapless loser trying to write a screenplay in Chicago and teaching ESL to disinterested adults. He has a girlfriend, although we have no idea what she sees in him, who he loses, and manages to derail most of his life.
The characters seemed to come from sitcoms or Carl Hiaasen books. Ana evoked Jennifer Coolidge's character in 2 Broke Girls, and Stagger was Hiaasen's Skink without a moral compass.
The Zombie Wars script interludes were good, and would make a great story if it hadn't already been told to death. Too bad that was only a plot gimmick and not the actual story.
The main character is a hapless loser trying to write a screenplay in Chicago and teaching ESL to disinterested adults. He has a girlfriend, although we have no idea what she sees in him, who he loses, and manages to derail most of his life.
The characters seemed to come from sitcoms or Carl Hiaasen books. Ana evoked Jennifer Coolidge's character in 2 Broke Girls, and Stagger was Hiaasen's Skink without a moral compass.
The Zombie Wars script interludes were good, and would make a great story if it hadn't already been told to death. Too bad that was only a plot gimmick and not the actual story.
I liked the other two books I’ve read by Hermon—The Question of Bruno and The World and All That it Holds—so I was disappointed to not like this one. There are parts that are funny, but overall the humor didn’t work for me and the moments of depth were kind of sloppy. I think it would’ve been more enjoyable if the script inserts that we get to read were better written. Instead I found those parts poorly written and the connections with the main plots didn’t add anything to my reading of the situation.