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rainybeet 's review for:
Spoonbenders
by Daryl Gregory
Cross The Partridge Family with Uri Geller and the Amazing Randi, add some real psychic powers and the psychic programs of the United States and USSR during the Cold War, and then mix them all up in with healthy doses of the movie Goodfellas and the time twisting narrative of Slaughterhouse-Five and you have a fair approximation of Spoonbenders, the fun and thrilling book that spans the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.
The main narrative takes place between June and October 1995, when the most popular drink coaster in the United States was the AOL disk and the internet was just coming into its own. This also happens to be the time period when I met my wife in an AOL chatroom, an episode out of my own life that parallels a side story in this book pretty well. The Telemachus family lives in the Chicago suburbs with Teddy, the patriarch, siblings Buddy and Irene, and Irenes son Matti in one house, while a third sibling, Frankie, lives a short distance away with his wife Loretta, stepdaughter Mary Alice(a goth who goes by "Malice" for short) and twin daughters Polly and Cassie (named for Castor and Pollux from Greek myth, since Frankie considers his family to be descendants of Greek gods, though the god part is laughable and even the Greek bit is debatable).
The Amazing Telemachus Family made the psychic stage circuit in the late 60s before being humiliated on a television talk show by a psychic debunker (though the only true charlatan in the bunch was Teddy). The family falls into chaos after that with the death of the mother, Maureen, the "worlds most powerful psychic," a title that is as deserved as it is grandiose. Irene is a single mother who, as the "human lie detector," has trouble holding a decent job or maintaining a relationship while raising her teenage son and looking after her childish father and two brothers, one a withdrawn but gentle man who spends all of his time starting home renovations that never seem to get finished, the other a lifelong screw up who seems never to have met a bad decision he didn't like. With Mattys newly discovered ability to leave his body, the return of a CIA agent seeking to keep his psychic programs afloat and a "chance" encounter with the wife of the son of a local mob boss by Teddy, the family is thrown into even greater turmoil, and unbeknownst to everyone else the responsibility of keeping the family together and safe lies with Buddy, the heir to his mothers title.
This was a very enjoyable book with many surprises and several twists, some predictable, others not so much, but all of them are a joy to watch unfold. On a 10 point scale, this would rate a 9 out of 10.
The main narrative takes place between June and October 1995, when the most popular drink coaster in the United States was the AOL disk and the internet was just coming into its own. This also happens to be the time period when I met my wife in an AOL chatroom, an episode out of my own life that parallels a side story in this book pretty well. The Telemachus family lives in the Chicago suburbs with Teddy, the patriarch, siblings Buddy and Irene, and Irenes son Matti in one house, while a third sibling, Frankie, lives a short distance away with his wife Loretta, stepdaughter Mary Alice(a goth who goes by "Malice" for short) and twin daughters Polly and Cassie (named for Castor and Pollux from Greek myth, since Frankie considers his family to be descendants of Greek gods, though the god part is laughable and even the Greek bit is debatable).
The Amazing Telemachus Family made the psychic stage circuit in the late 60s before being humiliated on a television talk show by a psychic debunker (though the only true charlatan in the bunch was Teddy). The family falls into chaos after that with the death of the mother, Maureen, the "worlds most powerful psychic," a title that is as deserved as it is grandiose. Irene is a single mother who, as the "human lie detector," has trouble holding a decent job or maintaining a relationship while raising her teenage son and looking after her childish father and two brothers, one a withdrawn but gentle man who spends all of his time starting home renovations that never seem to get finished, the other a lifelong screw up who seems never to have met a bad decision he didn't like. With Mattys newly discovered ability to leave his body, the return of a CIA agent seeking to keep his psychic programs afloat and a "chance" encounter with the wife of the son of a local mob boss by Teddy, the family is thrown into even greater turmoil, and unbeknownst to everyone else the responsibility of keeping the family together and safe lies with Buddy, the heir to his mothers title.
This was a very enjoyable book with many surprises and several twists, some predictable, others not so much, but all of them are a joy to watch unfold. On a 10 point scale, this would rate a 9 out of 10.