Awesome [Hardcover]

Jack Pendarvis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 11, 2008

A new American tall tale from the author of Your Body Is Changing and The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure. Whales, caves, and robots abound.

A giant strides this land. A giant who builds robots, invents religions, and kisses like a dream. From the rocky coast of New England to the golden hayfields of Stockton, California, he searches for America s greatest treasures. You might recognize him by the twinkle in his eye or the lustrous derby hat perched on top of his boulder-sized head.

But for a dude who has it all, he sure seems sad a lot of the time what's up with that? And what exactly does he plan to do with all of those wonderful treasures, besides cart them across the country in his enormous red wagon? Is there someone, a beautiful lady named Glorious Jones perhaps, who has asked him to gather the bounty of America in order to prove his love for her?

There's no way to know, unless you buy Jack Pendarvis' awesome new novel and read it. Or have someone read it to you. Either way, laughter, wisdom, and good times are sure to follow...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his overly cute first novel (after two story collections), Pendarvis channels a hapless giant named Awesome who spends his days constructing robots, discovering a variety of uses for his bodily fluids and looking for those who will accept him. After having no luck with a group of teenagers who beat him to a pulp, and little luck with a Beluga whale he courts at the aquarium, the giant meets new neighbor Glorious Jones. Cut to their wedding a few pages later, where the giant botches his vows and is left at the altar. A madcap trek to prove his love and win back his fiancée ensues. While Pendarvis keeps the conceit furiously spinning, it's not enough to sustain the book, which fails to negotiate the perilous line between faux naïve and overly cute. May
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From Booklist

Pendarvis’ previous fictional outings include two collections of well-received short stories distinguished by their quirky humor, and in his first published novel, he pushes the envelope of eccentricity even further. It’s the tale of a derby-wearing giant who falls in love with a spirited woman named Glorious Jones. Awesome—Mr. Awesome to his adoring public—is renowned not only for his stature but for his proficiency in robotics, his hypnotic effect on women, and a predilection for glib philosophical musings. His world is thrown askew when Jones ditches him in a huff on their wedding day. To win back her affections, Awesome must meet several daunting challenges, including finding a literal needle in a haystack and finally resolving the meaning of life. Along the wildly unpredictable route of Awesome’s picaresque journey, he crosses paths with a cult of mushroom-gobbling hippies, brawls with another giant, and engages in bawdy encounters with numerous love-struck women. Readers who like their fantasy on the lighter side will appreciate Pendarvis’ laugh-out-loud wordplay and outlandish scenarios. --Carl Hays

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 196 pages
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage; First Edition edition (July 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596922400
• ISBN-13: 978-1596922402
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,329,793 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the little story of one heck of a giant., August 26, 2008

By 

Kevvboy "Kevv" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Awesome (Hardcover)

Despite the misinformation in the Publishers Weekly review above, which I found overly cute, Pendarvis is NOT a YA author and AWESOME is most definitely NOT a young adult book.

It's hilarious and strange, and bawdy, and weird, and over the top, and off the rails. It's a tall, tall tale, rather like a Paul Bunyan whopper filtered through the consciousness of a snarky modern lout in his twenties. If you want a comical, surrealist shaggy-dog tale about a giant with an overactive libido and a surfeit of positive self-regard, this is the novel for you.

Pendarvis fans, by the way, will lap this up.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wildly funny, but not YA., October 12, 2008

By 

Josh Goren (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Awesome (Hardcover)

I took tremendous pleasure describing details of this book to the proprietor of Book Hampton Sag Harbor and attempting to explain to her that despite the cover, despite the weird PW review (did he/she read the book?), this is not a book for children... that is unless they're into semen-powered cars equipped with a giant penis-pump, submarine-sized anal suppositories, the most hysterical penis-removal scene in recent literature, and numerous other descriptions of dozens of body fluids you didn't even know you had. The book is fantastic but a YA novel it aint.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant., June 29, 2009

By 

Robert L. Scribner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Awesome (Hardcover)

Jack Pendarvis knows how to write a funny sentence. He writes a lot of these to form funny paragraphs, which are used to compose funny pages. The result is Awesome (har har har).