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Boomsday
 
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Boomsday (Paperback)

by Christopher Buckley (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 15.50
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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Despite the technicality of her birth at the tail end of the baby boom in 1964, comedian and actress Janeane Garofalo embodies a unique combination of edge and sincerity perfect for Buckley's tale of Generation X activism. At 29, Washington PR chick Cassandra Devine launches a grassroots entitlement reform movement but quickly determines that only shock can break through people's fog of apathy, so she floats a plan for baby boomer suicide—dubbed voluntary transitioning—as a means to preserve Social Security for future generations. Garofalo effectively portrays Cassandra's angst amid the absurd scenario of her macabre treatise—inspired by Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal—entering the public policy mainstream. Garofalo also demonstrates tremendous vocal range with male characters, especially prolife leader Rev. Gideon Payne and Cassandra's love interest and ally Sen. Randolph K. Jefferson. Yet, like his protagonist, Buckley seems compelled to address the topic at hand only through the boldest possible strokes of the satirical brush. Garofalo certainly does the colorful characters justice, but listeners may ultimately feel weighed down by the tone and scope of the overall experience.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From AudioFile

Government-encouraged suicide isnÕt a new idea for fiction--think SOYLENT GREEN, WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE, and THE CHILDREN OF MEN. But Christopher BuckleyÕs approach--mass suicide as a panacea for a defective Social Security system--is boldly absurd and, at the same time, sobering. In other words, itÕs everything you expect from good satire. The narrative is timely and amusing, but the real revelation is Janeane GarofaloÕs reading. SheÕs great as the voice of Cassandra, the 29-year-old blogger who instigates this social revolution, and sheÕs also excellent at voicing the roundtable of special interests--a right-wing evangelist, a dirty-tricks president, and a gung-ho senator who is an amputee. The result is a truly democratic audiobook that makes fun of all parties equally. R.W.S. 2008 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Boomsday
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Boomsday 4.5 out of 5 stars (2)
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4.0 out of 5 stars Funny, Twisted, Interesting Story - That Putters to an End..., April 20 2008
By Adam Adamou "grazen" (Toronto, ON, CANADA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Boomsday (Hardcover)
Buckley, as usual, has put together another interesting, cynical and relevant novel about the impending generational crisis (in short - there's too many old period retiring and not enough young people to pay for them) and how political ideas are generated, grow, and eventually come to a life and existence of their own.

Unfortunately, the book appears to hit its peak about three quarters of the way through, and then begins to roll down hill - it seems to this reader as if Buckley ran out of ideas and wasn't sure how to wrap things up. While the ending isn't completely satisfying, it is a good read, and recommended.
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5.0 out of 5 stars A work of art, Nov 3 2007
This review is from: Boomsday (Hardcover)
Let's see...Hmm...How can you explain that a book about "incentivising suicide" and "US political campaigns" is not just "fun" but the most hilarious thing you've read in ages? Those words rarely appear in the same sentence, but this book is unfortunately just that: an ingenious tale of spin doctors and radical cost-cutting suggestions that are beautifully simple while somewhat unappealing to many, namely that when you hit age 75, poof, you politely go off to ki11 yourself and "do your bit" to help out the country's ailing welfare system.

Once I'd managed to get over the general plot, I was left trying to justify some of the more outlandish characters in this book. Cassandra Devine is a 20-something living in Washington who spin-doctors by day, and blogs by night. Her route into this job took her by way of Yale (almost), Bosnia (briefly), a Senate office (unappealingly) and a minefield (unfortunately) but despite her unconventional CV, she is a well settled, productive member of a DC based PR company. Randy Jepperson is a senator from the great state of Massachusetts, who lost a leg in that same minefield, and now has his heart set on a seat in the Oval office, a feat he plans to accomplish by some outlandish statements (telling the current president to "Shut the **** up" live on national TV, for example) and some even more outlandish actions (taking off his prosthesis during speeches and shaking it for dramatic effect, for example).

When Cassandra and Jepperson team up to take on the White House with an outrageous solution to the mounting social security debt, the aforementioned incentivising suicide bid, their main opposition comes in the shape of Gideon Payne, a dubious member of the Religious Right who may, or may not, have killed his mother on the sly, and the current president of the United States, a hapless character who is a mere puppet in the hands of his aides, and whose similarity to a certain current president appears far from coincidental.

There are lots of "stories within stories" in this book. Cassandra's family history is brought to the fore when her estranged father, newly loaded, buys himself a spot in the president's inner circle. Her relationship with the senator is a frequent cause for speculation among the press, including what they were doing in the minefield and why they were there in a minefield in the first place. Terry, her mentor and manager at the communications firm is a lovable rogue who could spin his way out of any tangled web, while others' credentials come under scrutiny when their business affairs are uncovered and they have to jiggle the resulting mess, including justifying their own cashing-in-on-the-dying strategies while publicly denouncing Cass's, ongoing campaigns for a monument to foetuses, and a newly discovered and somewhat uncomfortable new longing for ladies of the night. You couldn't make this stuff up.

What I really, really liked about this book was the lack of loose ends by the epilogue. As the story progresses more and more new facts and relationships are discovered, and the resulting web of who knows whom, who is in league with whom, who is genetically related to whom is convoluted but not too confusing. And yet, you imagine that somewhere along the way a few of these facts with fade away in an open-ended way, or disappear quite without thought, leaving you to wonder what happened there. This simply doesn't happen in this book, and I'm struggling to think of a single thread to this very well woven story that wasn't carried on and explained to a suitable conclusion.

Some might think the themes in this book are tasteless, that the characters and the situations in which they find themselves are despicable, disgusting or downright dreadful, but I'm afraid to say I thought it was a brilliant read. The ideas might not be to everyone's liking, (though I would say, far from sick and twisted, I found them inspired and motivating), but the writing itself is a work of art.
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