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laterry75 's review for:
Spoonbenders
by Daryl Gregory
"Spoonbenders" has all of my favorite things. I can practically hear Julie Andrews singing along as I list them. Cardsharps. Organized crime. Telekinesis. Multi-level marketing schemes. Remote viewing. Marijuana. Con artists. Black book government agencies. Stage magicians.
The list goes on.
"Spoonbenders" is ostensibly about a Chicago family, the product of a sleight-of-hand confidence man and an actual, honest-t0-god psychic. The family was on the verge of becoming a worldwide sensation on a late-night talk show when everything fell apart. Now, twentysome odd years later, the family has ostensibly grown up, but that's not really the case.
This book is a wonderful, comic examination on the weight of expectations -- those imposed by outside forces and those we impose upon ourselves. It's about the joys and pains of familial obligation. It's about how no matter how close-knit people are -- especially family -- everyone has hidden challenges they're facing.
Then you throw in things like gangsters trying to recover the teeth they've knocked out of a victim's mouth, septuagenarians running the very definition of a long con, dueling Cold War psy-ops programs.... like I said, the list goes on.
Even given some of the heavier topics -- which never get too terribly heavy -- Gregory handles this giant mess with a deft hand. This book was a fun romp, and I never really knew where the Amazing Telemachus Family was going to wind up.
The list goes on.
"Spoonbenders" is ostensibly about a Chicago family, the product of a sleight-of-hand confidence man and an actual, honest-t0-god psychic. The family was on the verge of becoming a worldwide sensation on a late-night talk show when everything fell apart. Now, twentysome odd years later, the family has ostensibly grown up, but that's not really the case.
This book is a wonderful, comic examination on the weight of expectations -- those imposed by outside forces and those we impose upon ourselves. It's about the joys and pains of familial obligation. It's about how no matter how close-knit people are -- especially family -- everyone has hidden challenges they're facing.
Then you throw in things like gangsters trying to recover the teeth they've knocked out of a victim's mouth, septuagenarians running the very definition of a long con, dueling Cold War psy-ops programs.... like I said, the list goes on.
Even given some of the heavier topics -- which never get too terribly heavy -- Gregory handles this giant mess with a deft hand. This book was a fun romp, and I never really knew where the Amazing Telemachus Family was going to wind up.