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A review by ribbenkast
The Postmortal by Drew Magary
funny
reflective
tense
2.25
When I started reading this book, I truly thought this book was going to be 5 stars. The more I kept on reading the worse it became. The ending belongs in a 1 star book. So let's meet in the middle?
The Postmortal is written in 2011 and tells the story of an alternative timeline where in 2019 the cure for ageing (not the cure for death) is discovered. It tells this story through the diary entries of the main characters John Farrel in 2019, 2029, 2059 and 2079. This is all intermixed with selected news excerpts, online posts and interviews John finds relevant to share with us.
This all sounds great, and it's a great way to tell the story. The book gets a bit philosophical with what such a cure would mean for all of us, what to do with overpopulation climate change, what does this mean for politics and hpw do we punish crimes if live in prison really means forever? Admitedly this book has a very politcally American take l, but hey the book takes place in America so can you blame the author? The writing is at times very funny as well.
But oh boy, does the positive end there. The main character is an unlikeable asshole who's only interested in himself and his self interest. This would be okay, authors write unlikeable protagonists all the time, however the way the book is written makes me feel like this wasn't on purpose. Drew Magaray probably set out to create an every day American man. This man never sees the consequences of his bad behaviour. He gets the girls, the money, and even the undeserved unconditiona love of his family who he has abandoned multiple times.
I am confused by the author's note where Drew Magaray thanks his wife and children. This is because I am convinced Drew has never spoken to a woman, ever. Every woman in this book is obsessed with having children, and that's it. That's their only personality trait, besides being inexplicably immediately into this douchebag of a man. Not to mention, not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 separate women get fridged to further his character arc. Besides being really weird about women, this book is also weird about its descriptions of black people (which is impressive because there aren't barely any).
The ending completely went off the rails and turned into a self-indulgent action movie of some sorts completly stepping away from the original draw of the book. It was a chore to get through and I had to push myself to finish because at that point the sunk cost fallacy was too big.
I'm honestly very upset that this book was this bad. Last year, Drew Magaray's book The Hike pulled me out of an 8 year reading slump. I went from reading 1-2 books every summer to reading 5+ books a month. This book nearly put me back into one.
The Postmortal is written in 2011 and tells the story of an alternative timeline where in 2019 the cure for ageing (not the cure for death) is discovered. It tells this story through the diary entries of the main characters John Farrel in 2019, 2029, 2059 and 2079. This is all intermixed with selected news excerpts, online posts and interviews John finds relevant to share with us.
This all sounds great, and it's a great way to tell the story. The book gets a bit philosophical with what such a cure would mean for all of us, what to do with overpopulation climate change, what does this mean for politics and hpw do we punish crimes if live in prison really means forever? Admitedly this book has a very politcally American take l, but hey the book takes place in America so can you blame the author? The writing is at times very funny as well.
But oh boy, does the positive end there. The main character is an unlikeable asshole who's only interested in himself and his self interest. This would be okay, authors write unlikeable protagonists all the time, however the way the book is written makes me feel like this wasn't on purpose. Drew Magaray probably set out to create an every day American man. This man never sees the consequences of his bad behaviour. He gets the girls, the money, and even the undeserved unconditiona love of his family who he has abandoned multiple times.
I am confused by the author's note where Drew Magaray thanks his wife and children. This is because I am convinced Drew has never spoken to a woman, ever. Every woman in this book is obsessed with having children, and that's it. That's their only personality trait, besides being inexplicably immediately into this douchebag of a man. Not to mention, not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 separate women get fridged to further his character arc. Besides being really weird about women, this book is also weird about its descriptions of black people (which is impressive because there aren't barely any).
The ending completely went off the rails and turned into a self-indulgent action movie of some sorts completly stepping away from the original draw of the book. It was a chore to get through and I had to push myself to finish because at that point the sunk cost fallacy was too big.
I'm honestly very upset that this book was this bad. Last year, Drew Magaray's book The Hike pulled me out of an 8 year reading slump. I went from reading 1-2 books every summer to reading 5+ books a month. This book nearly put me back into one.