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jessicaxmaria 's review for:
The Postmortal
by Drew Magary
I came upon this book on my friend's bookshelf - I'd never heard of it, but the author of this dystopian novel was the same columnist I read every week during football season on Deadspin. After taking a look at the first paragraph, he also named his main character John Farrell, a name shared by the manager of the Red Sox (this was during Game 4 of the World Series, so of course I decided to borrow it). I enjoy Drew Magary's column Jambaroo a hell of a lot -- he makes me laugh (snicker) at my desk every Thursday in the fall/winter. But his foray into novel-writing was a bit less entertaining...
The premise is great: what if a scientist discovered a genetic trick to delete the gene for aging? People could still die by accidents, murder, disease, etc., but not by growing old and weak. What would such a thing to do the world? If everyone could have this "cure"? Pretty fascinating to think about, and I was definitely thinking about it even when I had to put the book down between reading.
Where the book falters is John Farrell himself. Indescribably bland, there's not much to him. I had no sense of his character before he gets the cure, and not much of it after, either. He's utterly undefined. An Everyman, I suppose, but the characters around him were much more interesting - I wanted to follow them around. The best parts were the 'global aspect' sections, whether they're news headlines or social commentary by pundits. Hearing how the United States and other countries were reacting to depeleted resources and expanding populations was super-interesting. And sad. Humanity, y'know?
Magary doesn't have much of a hold on description... there were so many times that I had to reread a paragraph describing action because I couldn't see it in my head. There were things that didn't make sense, felt were left out, that maybe Magary can see as he writes, but the words don't effectively describe what he's seeing. Disappointed a few times by this.
While interesting and quick to read, not a great read - potential for so much more! Will continue to be reading Magary, for sure.
The premise is great: what if a scientist discovered a genetic trick to delete the gene for aging? People could still die by accidents, murder, disease, etc., but not by growing old and weak. What would such a thing to do the world? If everyone could have this "cure"? Pretty fascinating to think about, and I was definitely thinking about it even when I had to put the book down between reading.
Where the book falters is John Farrell himself. Indescribably bland, there's not much to him. I had no sense of his character before he gets the cure, and not much of it after, either. He's utterly undefined. An Everyman, I suppose, but the characters around him were much more interesting - I wanted to follow them around. The best parts were the 'global aspect' sections, whether they're news headlines or social commentary by pundits. Hearing how the United States and other countries were reacting to depeleted resources and expanding populations was super-interesting. And sad. Humanity, y'know?
Magary doesn't have much of a hold on description... there were so many times that I had to reread a paragraph describing action because I couldn't see it in my head. There were things that didn't make sense, felt were left out, that maybe Magary can see as he writes, but the words don't effectively describe what he's seeing. Disappointed a few times by this.
While interesting and quick to read, not a great read - potential for so much more! Will continue to be reading Magary, for sure.