| Another
Review at MyShelf.Com | ||||||||||||||
|
by Christopher Buckley Christopher Buckley has taken an idea similar to that found in Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, but in this case the older generation is being sacrificed instead of the children. The novel relates the story of Cassandra Devine whose life went haywire after she could not attend Yale University because her father spent her education money on his company. After a disastrous stint in the armed services, she gets a job in a PR firm by day and by night blogs to bring attention to the economic calamities caused by the boomers who are beginning to retire and put tremendous strains on the American economy. The reader follows the ups and downs of Devine as she continues to suggest that older people be given a tax break if they will "voluntary transition" at the age of seventy with ever bigger tax breaks at age of sixty-five. Just like Swift, Devine is not really serious about this proposal - she simply wants to get the Congress to wake up and do something about the situation. What follows are some of the funniest situation since the Mary Hartman, Mart Hartman soap opera of the ’70s. Even though the scenes are funny and outrageous, we readers get the idea that this just may be the way it really is. The novel is filled with the f word and many other reference to sex acts, but again, is this kind of language beneath our leaders when they are not in the public eye. Normally, I would think the novel carries these events a little too long, but the reader is willing to listen because he knows some good lines are coming up. Check out the irony in the closing chapter. I read the novel on a trip out of town and it make the trip seems like a Sunday drive. The reading was superb - almost like a play script. |
|
|||||||||||||
©
2006 MyShelf.com |
||||||||||||||
Boomsday