Boomsday
by Christopher Buckley
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Book Reviews of Boomsday
Book Review: Boomsday needs a little more bite.
Summary: 4 Stars
Boomsday has a great title with tremendous potential however, it looses steam in parts. It's good, but not great. I was looking for a little more bite. Political satire needs to tear out chunks of flesh only to leave the sadistic reader begging for more. I didn't have that reaction with Boomsday. It's not a book that left me with a lasting impression.
The conflicts between the characters were a little too tame. Cassandra Devine, for one, was descibed to be a character that could have whipped some serious booty but, she was never given the chance, even when going toe to toe Gideon Payne, a total marshmellow. The fight between them went a few rounds only to have Cass toss in the towel, what's up with that. She should have lodged her foot in his baby boomer rectum. Even though Social Security reform was an important issue for her, she never stood her ground. Gideon won the battle without even putting up a fight.
The spats between Randy and Cass were serious dubs, too. All disagreements between them ended with barely a cross word dispatched. The first time he got out of line she should have kicked him hard enough to lodge the jewels in the roof of his mouth and then said, "Oh I'm sorry did that hurt." Instead she buckled under the strain of her aching libido. Come on man, a chick like Cass doesn't give in that easily. She must have left her heart in San Francisco and her brain in the trash bin at Starbucks. This girl needed more bite to give her bark some substance. Cass was cool at the beginning of the story but, didn't have enough steam of sustain the novel.
I give boomsday four stars because the sentences were well structured and the narative was decent. As political satire goes though, it lacked the punch of a classical.
Book Review: Fiction or Reality on Steroids?
Summary: 5 Stars
It is rare when I read a work of fiction, and even rarer when the fiction I do read is outside of the mystery/thriller genres. This book, however, was recommended to me by Amazon.com and when I read the synopsis I was intrigued. So with hesitation, I bought the book.
I will not spoil the plot by writing any more about it than has been written in the book overview. I will say that there are still plenty of twists and turns left in the plot. In addition, the book is extremely well written with good dialogue, fairly quick action and a lot less of the fluff usually found in novels. It reads quickly and is hard to put down.
In the beginning, I didn't see the big deal about the humor that was supposed to be in the book. It was "ha, ha" funny, but I didn't belly laugh. Alas, I jumped to conclusions too quickly. The book had me laughing out loud in a number of places. In addition, the entire book is funny in a morbid and distressing sort of way; similar to looking at a Gahan Wilson or Charles Addams cartoon.
The plot is absurd, which makes the book work. Isn't everything about Washington, D.C. absurd to begin with? The author just takes everything to the next level...or does he? Is this fiction or reality on Red Bull? While reading the book, I had the sense there was a message underlying the main story. I will let the reader figure this out for themselves.
This book will appeal to all, but especially to baby boomers and to the generation of kids that they spawned. If you haven't bought it, or do not know the author's work, I highly recommend this book for a good, fun filled laugh. Just leave room to finish it after you start.
Book Review: Almost too true to be funny - but it still is
Summary: 4 Stars
With the bottom dropping out of the economy and bad news coming from every direction, Chris Buckley's satire on similar times sparking a youth uprising against the Baby Boomers - whose retirement after a life of self-indulgence threatens to bankrupt the nation - is almost too true to be funny. Happily, it still is funny. Buckley has great comic chops.
Protagonist Cassandra Devine is a twenty-something PR woman in Washington, bitter over losing a chance to go to Yale because her father invests her college tuition in a dot.com IPO. Forced to join the Army instead, she becomes a scandal queen when, guiding blue-blooded (and headline-seeking) Congressman Randy Jepperson through Bosnia, he drives their Hummer into a minefield. The ensuing scandal gets her kicked out of the military.
Jepperson tries to make it up to her, giving her a job on his Congressional staff, and from there she gets hired by his PR man. She spends her nights blogging about Social Security. And she becomes an overnight sensation when she suggests the government balance the budget by offering tax and inheritance incentives to Baby Boomers willing to commit suicide at age 70. Youths riot in Florida, trashing golf courses and gated communities at her suggestion.
Jepperson, now a senator, sees her platform as his ticket to the White House, while the president, up for re-election, plots with her own father - now a dot.com billionaire - to politically destroy her. A leader of the Christian right fights this appalling insult to life. Political chaos ensues. Great fun.
Book Review: You gotta laugh...
Summary: 5 Stars
Listen, is everybody here reading Christopher Buckley? Seriously folks, you need to pick up a book. I know it's political satire. And a book about Social Security reform doesn't sound like it has a lot of potential. But trust me, this is laugh-out-loud funny stuff.
Who else could invent a pro-life organization called the Society for the Protection of Every Ribonucleic Molecule--or SPERM for short. Even his little throw-aways are fabulous. The protagonist is briefly incarcerated. In prison, there are so many jailed journalists refusing to name sources (from the Society Page, for example) that they have their own gang: Pulitzer Nation.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Cassandra Devine is a 29-year-old on a crusade. She feels passionately that her generation should not be bankrupted paying for the retirement benefits of baby boomers. With the government apparently unwilling to propose a workable solution she decides to bring this front and center in American politics as a "meta-issue." With her PR background and her senatorial mouthpiece she can make it happen. Suddenly "voluntary transitionsing," (legalized suicide at the age of 70 for tax breaks and other benefits) is all anyone can talk about. It goes from being a tool for dialogue to being seriously considered by voters.
Buckley has an amazing eye for skewering our culture. The reason he's so funny is that everything he observes is so painfully true! Fans of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report will surely enjoy.
Book Review: Satire Which Approaches Documentary
Summary: 4 Stars
Christopher Buckley comes by his wit and writing skills the really old-fashioned way - he inherited it. He has all of the mordent humor and superlative writing style of his dad, substantially updated for a new generation. Despite his actual age, he is obviously in touch with the concerns and worldview of the post-baby-boom generation, and indulges in a perilous thought exercise as to what would happen if this generation of under 40's were to flex their political muscle in a meaningful way.
He gleefully describes the biggest elephant in the room of current fiscal policy - the coming trainwreck of social security and medicare. The present entitlement system is unsustainable, but is presently being sustained by the fact that the boomers - tens of millions of silver heads - vote and contribute to political compaigns in huge numbers. He mercilessly lampoons the so-called Christian conservatives, limousine liberals, the AARP, and others will equal glee and unerring marksmanship.
A laugh-out-loud farce, Boomsday is also a sobering examination of a very real, if exaggerated, trend in American public policy: journalists jailed for refusing to name sources, American military power overextended and overdeployed throughout the world, and American fiscal policy held hostage by patronage, devisive politics, and lobbying.
The society he describes might be characterized an unthinkably remote possibility, but the one we live in today would seems so to someone living only 10 years ago.