Amazon.com Review
A debut of remarkable depth and complexity, Mike Heppner's
The Egg Code explores the influence of media and technology on a Midwestern community. The book's vast, nonlinear narrative investigates the lives of a handful of individuals with loose ties to a mysterious network management company called The Gloria Corporation. Gloria murdered the father of hyper-egotistical housewife Lydia Tree, manipulating her mother, expert cryptologist Kay Tree, into leaving her hometown to assist the developing company. Stuck in a dying marriage, Lydia's fortysomething friend Donna Skye remains devoted to her husband Derek, an author and motivational speaker on the brink of psychological collapse. Derek, a former Gloria employee, finds a friend in 24-year-old Scarlet, a sweet if hopelessly naïve disciple of his "easy steps" self-help philosophy. Scarlet's new boyfriend, Olden Field, is a self-proclaimed revolutionary who manages eggcode.com, a Web site devoted to spreading misinformation. As Olden's practices attract the attention of Gloria, his ad-exec friend Gray Hollows encounters legal trouble over a vaguely sexual ad campaign involving Lydia's son.
Though often as sprawling as they sound, these loosely connected narratives each reveal an aspect of communication's harmful effect on culture. Of particular interest to Heppner is the tragedy that results from the popularized belief in the potential for success without effort. The book's intertwining narratives and darkly humorous view of middle-class America recall the work of writer and film director Todd Solondz. Heppner, however, shows compassion and restraint in his albeit bleak assessment, rare qualities that help make The Egg Code a valuable, through difficult, work. --Ross Doll
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Heppner's bumptiously clever debut novel revolves around a vague premise: the Internet has been taken over, or even formed, by one business: the Gloria Corporation. In an oblique way, Gloria affects the interwoven fortunes of an odd set of characters who live close to each other in Big Dipper Township. Lydia Tree, an outrageously aggressive woman trying to hustle her intellectually underachieving son, Simon, into a stage and screen career, is the daughter of Kay Tree, a cryptanalyst who tracked Gloria for the Defense Department. Steve Mould, Lydia's husband, is not up-and-coming enough for his wife, until he gets Simon a spot on the advertisements for the chain that owns the furniture store he manages. These lewdly suggestive advertisements are merely a ploy by their creator, Gray Hollows, to provoke his boss into firing him. Gray's friend, Olden Field, meanwhile, is producing a factoid site, Eggcode.com, in order to flood the Web with disinformation. Lydia, in a typically manic moment, has entrusted Olden with pictures of Simon for a bogus Net-driven celebrity campaign, and Olden misuses them for his site. Eggcode's pics of Simon eventually backfire on Gray's ad campaign, resulting in a concatenation of disasters: Gray's ardently longed-for firing, Steve's dismissal from his company, Lydia and Steve's divorce and Olden's arrest. Meanwhile, Lydia's friend, Donna Skye, the daughter of an old German code man who knows all about Gloria, is undergoing a shaky divorce from her husband, Derek, America's premier motivational speaker, who was sponsored by Gloria until he lost his faith. Heppner resembles the movie director Paul Thomas Anderson more than he resembles any fellow writer like Anderson's Magnolia, this novel operates on multiple levels, alternating among an evidently empathetic intelligence, an uncommon comic brio and outrageously sophomoric symbolism.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
