| Another
Review at MyShelf.Com | ||||||||||||||
|
by Ruth Dudley Edwards Ruth Dudley Edwards offers the most fun with skewering sacred cows and blowing up stereotypes to their maximum absurdity of any author I know. This isn't the series for the politically correct or easily offended (and yes, this American gets the irony of that warning, given the primary target of this volume), but if you take it for the riotous satire it's meant to be, it's side-splittingly funny. Prior books took on targets ranging from the British Civil Service to The Troubles in Ireland. This time Americans and their culture are up for murdering, literally and figuratively, as a Distinguished Visiting Professorship invitation lands conservative Baroness Jack Troutbeck at a small private university in Middle America, run by left wing political correctness gone mad. Jack is a rollicking, outrageous, larger than life figure dedicated to her own pleasures and stirring up trouble. Her usual aide de corps, the more superficially conventional Robert Amiss, doesn't join her in the American wilderness until halfway through the book, but that hardly holds her back. Jack arrives on campus to find the romanticized America of her movie-driven imagining -all free spirits, roadside diners and battered Chevys- replaced with plastic food, plastic people, and an extreme left wing agenda being enforced with intimidation tactics more usually associated with the far right. Jack is more than capable of tackling such problems head on and investigating a murder or two while she's at it. It's the all-too-vocal company of her parrot that's really starting to get her down. The story does get bogged down a bit toward the end, with some lecturing, but most of the book is great fun to read. And that includes the satirical criticism of an America whose depiction here may be over the top, but is also still sadly recognizable. I started it with a reluctant smile (it had been a very long day) at the email exchanges in the beginning, and was grinning openly and appreciatively only a few pages later after Jack had dealt with the evil airline stewardess as many of us wish we dared. Do yourself and your sense of humor a favor and settle in to Murdering Americans. Recommended. |
|
|||||||||||||
©
2006 MyShelf.com |
||||||||||||||
Murdering Americans