11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cloud 9, January 22, 2004
This review is from: Cloud 8 (Paperback)
I ended up drinking 12-year-old scotch last night while putting together a piece of furniture that my TV set sits atop.
The Swedes put in some very easy-to-follow instructions. No words, just pix. It only took me an hour-and-a-half to do something that would have taken a sober/competent man a half-hour to do. I woke up this morning and looked at it. It wasn't leaning to one side or anything. Hurray for me.
I didn't know whether it was the scotch mixed with the fatigue of doing honest labor, or whether it was a good book, but I started reading "Cloud 8" by Grant Bailie (a Clevelander) last night after I slapped together the TV stand, and I couldn't stop. Got most of the way through the book by the time my wife returned from work. I got up early this morning and read it for about an hour and then finished it during my lunch hour. This guy's with a micro-press called "Ig Publishing." They have about 10 titles, most of them nonfiction books, notably drinking and eating guides to NY and a pretty good fiction book called, "For F***s Sake."
"Cloud 8" is about an ad copywriter who dies--and heaven turns out to be a place with a refrigerator full of free beer, a comfortable couch, a job where you're required to goof off and a TV set that lets you keep up with the living. It's a hoot and a half. Nothing is resolved in the book, the plot is loosey-goosey, and the writing is funny as hell and spot on. Give it a whirl if you're into unconventional fiction.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Tao of Reading, December 28, 2004
This review is from: Cloud 8 (Paperback)
Every once in awhile you see a movie or read a book
you find yourself thinking about much longer than usual.
*Cloud 8* by Grant Bailie is that kind of book.
I know I will reread it very soon; I need a little
time before reading it again, so I can soak up
all the metaphysical and experiential nuances that
keep occuring to me since reading it the first time,
a few days ago. I read it breathlessly, greedily,
anxiously, joyfully in one night and one
morning
James Broadhurst wakes up after a fatal
car accident to find himself in an afterlife
just as tedious, boring and uninspiring,
if not more so, than his life had been. He
is assigned a boring roommate, is drafted into
a boring job and disovers his boss to be a spoiled
hypocrite. His escapes consist of alcohol and television, but
television in the aferlife consists of watching
all the endlessly tedious details of the daily
lives of all the people he loved and who, from
one degree or another, cared about him. Chief
among these is his father, who he disovers
was a much more caring person than he ever
realized during his actual life.
The most incredible thing about this book is
the way Grant Bailie forces, or beguiles the reader into
confronting the experiential evidence that the most fascinating
thing about life is the way we think about
it, is our thoughts and interpretations themselves. Everything
"out there" to learn from is right at hand; your
noisy upstairs neighbor might be an angel
in disguise; the guy sitting next to you on
a barstool might rescue you from an eternity
of terror for a night; "whatever gets you through
the night is alright," as John Lennon put it.
This book deserves to be a movie; it has exactly
the same attributes to offer us, potentially, as Bill
Murray's hilarious, haunting
and achingly profound, *Groundhog Day."
(...)
Listen up, producers: We need this movie!
(...)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Grant Bailie could be the guy who lives next door to you..., August 12, 2003
This review is from: Cloud 8 (Paperback)
or he could be the guy who sat next to you in math, or he could be one of the best writers out there who is standing in line behind you at the grocery store and you don't even know it as his writing reflects a kind of quiet, unassuming charm. He uses this wonderful, creative charm to carry you in and out of the memories of his character James' life; and is there with you while James views from the afterlife; the family whom he's left behind, which I found very touching.
I loved the way Grant writes with a wit yet at the same time a note of sadness appears now and again in between, and sometimes is the center of the humor. I don't know how he does that. You are laughing at something that written any other way, would make you sad and he's written it so that you laugh anyway. The articulate expression he was able to give to the afterlife catches you off guard and woundering if you aren't infact in it already.
...this is the funniest twist on the afterlife since the movie 'Defending Your Life'. I have ordered another copy since I keep giving away my copies as I want all my friends to read this book. It's beautiful and sad and funny and inventive and charming and a great time.
Thank you Grant!!
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