Customer Reviews

Lord Vishnu's Love Handles: A Spy Novel (Sort Of)

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Okay, it's not your basic spy novel, or fantasy novel, or...novel, period. But what a bizarre and hilarious ride it is!

From page one I was hooked and couldn't let go. Lord Vishnu's Love Handles is a story about a man holding on to the last threads of his sanity as he realizes, more and more, that he has visions and learns of things he should not (and could not) know. The narrative is strong and keeps the pace rolling nicely. I actually found myself wanting more when the story was over (@220 pages is like eating tapas--I'm never full).

As a reader who normally does not enjoy "fantasy-like" or impossible elements to stories, I was easily pulled in to the plot line of this story (in the same way you may be pulled in to the impossibility of Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby). Fans of Chucky P. or Dave Eggers will dig this.

The writing is edgy, quirky and a blast! Too bad I couldn't find it in hardback - this one is a keeper.

I randomly found this book and ordered it, not knowing anything about it and I was really suprised by how much I liked it. I don't even know what category to place it in, it would be definitely be very funny, but it also has a small sci-fi/other worldy twist, while at the same time being a very normal story of a man and his life.

It is the story of an every day guy who very vivid visions. He is married with a wife and young son and has to try to keep things normal while he's constantly seeing and knowing things he shouldn't know. And that's only the first few chapters. I don't want to say anymore and risk ruining things, but suffice it to say, it gets really really good.

Every character completely breaks out of whatever mold you placed them in and as you read the book, you are constantly amazed by where the book goes. But what's great is no matter how weird things get, the main character thinks completely rationally, so it keeps it easily readable and not "oh please" like when some books get rather weird and no one seems to care.

At the time I'm writing this, there is no review with the book so I want to give information, but I also don't want to spoil it. It's not a John Grisham type book, or a mystery or even a suspense novel, it's just an extremely interesting, twist and turning, funny, great book. If you have an imagination and are not into the ordinary & predictable, you should definitely get this book!

Judging from the title and the cover of this book, I had no idea what I was getting into. It's a 2005 Amazon Breakout Book, however, so I jumped right in, and it was a thrilling ride!

Travis Anderson is a quintessential bored upper-middle-class yuppie, finding escape from his perky wife, all their material possessions, the neighborhood dinner parties, and his boring personal business through alcohol. He also thinks he's psychic, but then again, who believes a drunk man who pulls all the kids out of the pool at a dinner party because he thinks there is an alligator swimming around?

Enter the CIA psychic team, who whisk Travis off to a super-secret boot camp of psychic spooks who work for the government. All of this is done under the cover of him going to rehab for alcoholism. In one hilarious chapter, his wife's "Intervention Party" is planned to the smallest detail, and Travis is briefed on how to behave during the course of the evening so that it is a successful neighborhood social event.

A battle between the forces of good and evil ensues in the psychic spook world, and Travis has to learn how to harness his psychic energy both to read others and to control people. The book is a drama about yuppie life, a sci-fi story, and a comedy wrapped up in one. Fans of Vonnegut and Palahniuk will enjoy this book. If you are looking for similar new fiction, try Slavin's Carnivore Diet.

Do you love a crazy premise? Can you really get into wacky fiction like Chuck Pahalniuk?

Psychic CIA agents tracking killers and each other are quite a stretch. It makes it seem as if the book should belong in the Sci-Fi section of the library, but as with Pahalniuks work, it manages to be well written enough to see the mainstream light of day.

I love books that show their main characters coming to grips with their need for material goods. the lyfestyle of the main family reminds me of many Americans constant reach for more and more stuff, things and junk. The main character is forced to see what his life would be like with what is really important, his family, taken away, thus realizing what is truly important.

Will Clarke is the funniest man on this planet. This book is like nothing you have ever read.

Psychically-gifted-but-tragically-shallow Travis Anderson milks his premonitions only to acquire an upper-middle-class lifestyle--pretty wife,big house, and shiny car--without having to make an effort. But recent visions threaten his yuppie contentment.It appears that his wife is cheating on him, and bad guys want to harness his mental powers.

Travis has never spent much time contemplating how he could better mankind, but suddenly he is saddled with the responsibility of saving the world. The way he goes about it, complaining every step of the way, is laugh out loud funny.

First let me say that I read this book over a year ago because of Amazon.com's "if you like this..." Because of all the buyers here at Amazon, Mr. Clarke's novel was reissued and is going to be a movie. I can't wait to see it. Read the "interview" between Clarke and Vishnu at the top of the page; it is a good representation of his skill as a humorous author.

I was into C. Palahniuk and wanted to find others like him. While I could not make a direct comparison to CP, this story is similar in that Travis, the main character, is stuck in a life revolving around possessions and status and much like CP, Clarke puts his main man through hell.

This is the story of Travis Anderson. Travis sees the future, somewhat. Instead of doing great good, or evil he decides that all he wants is a cushy middle class life. Unfortunately, for him, his premonitions start to turn ugly. He sees dead babies and train wrecks. At the same time, the IRS decides that he owes them tons of cash because his business partner is a complete screw up. Thankfully, the CIA (a covert cell) decides to bail out old Travis, and pay him another ton of money, if he'll use his gift to help them. He then must leave his family and go live with a bunch of psychic CIA agents in what would mildly be considered as a madhouse.

Anyone with half a brain and a whole funny bone will love this.

I picked this book up at a library book sale for a dime. So I wasn't expecting too much from it, but it was worth every penny. Its basically a story about a man who seems to be going mad, but finds out that he has special powers and is recruited by a secret government agency to do their bidding. The entire book is hilarious and the end is quite suspenseful. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in kind of strange, off beat stories, with "different" characters.

"Lord Vishu's Love Handles," written in the present tense using a wacky first-person narrator whose every other word seems to be of the four-letter variety, springs from an utterly absurd premise, uses cliched phrases when it wants to, and resists any attempt to pigeonhole it into a particular genre. Will Clarke's complete disregard for literary convention goes along way toward explaining why this entertaining work was spurned by traditional publishers until it proved its marketability by developing a cult readership as a self-published novel under the aptly-named "Middlefinger Press."

Our hero is Travis Anderson, an alcoholic suburbanite whose obsession over his wife's possible infidelity and growing uneasiness with his psychic abilities drive him into financial ruin and make him easy prey for recruitment by a shadowy arm of the government that covets his unusual remote viewing skills. What follows is a series of darkly comical adventures in which Travis is forced to reexamine his comfortable, yuppie-fat-inducing lifestyle in the context of the Hindu religion, pit his talents against a rogue remote viewer who fancies himself as the second coming of Rasputin, and save the day in one of the most outrageous climax scenes imaginable.

This book made me laugh harder than anything I've read since Carl Hiaasen's "Skinny Dip," all the while reinforcing some good old fashioned values, like the sanctity of all living things, the evils of jealousy and materialism, and the importance of family. We can only hope that Paramount exercises its option rights and that the film remains true to Clarke's offbeat vision.

-Kevin Joseph, author of "The Champion Maker"

When my wife first gave me this book and told me I would like it, I was a little skeptical. But then she gave me this pitch: "It's about a guy who wastes time at work playing a game on the web called Psychic Cow, where all you have to do is guess what color the cow's udders are. But it turns out that it's a setup by the CIA to find psychics to use in international espionage." That description worked for me, and I hope it works for you too, because this is a fun read.

The main character of "Vishnu" is Travis Anderson, a latent psychic who has been unwittingly using his abilities to grow semi-rich and marry the girl of his dreams. But his dreams of late are more and more disturbed.

Travis is not a basically nice guy- he is, in fact, kind of a jerk, for all that he has good intentions most of the time. His easy life to date combined with the stress of seeing the future in flashes has made him borderline alcoholic and not-so-borderline paranoid. Furthermore, as the story progresses and Travis lurches from one crisis to the other, we start to realize that he has practically no impulse control. All of this together hardly makes him likable, or even admirable.

However, by the end of the book he has definitely taken greater responsibility for himself, and perhaps even grown into a little better person. Mostly though, he's still the endearing reprobate he was throughout the story, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I picked this book up at the library - recently I've gotten into Christopher Moore a lot (Fluke, Lust Lizard of Melancholy Grove, etc) and this book seemed kind of similar, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Started reading it on Sunday afternoon, and finished it Monday evening - it's completely addictive, and a fast read.

It really is genre-defying: thriller, philosophical, kind of romantic, kind of general fiction, parts were laugh-out-loud funny; it's the kind of book you don't want to end. I'll definitely be following Will Clarke now!

If you want a book that makes perfect sense and stays firmly rooted in reality, this isn't it. If you're willing to go "huh?" a few times until you start to get it, then this is definitely a good book to take a chance on.