Customer Reviews

Love in the Time of Fridges

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I loved the characters in this book, the way the author plays with time and memory (and how they can be portrayed in fiction without losing the flow of the book), the plot, the all-too-plausible "marketing" of everything from police equipment to the idea of not "dying for no reason." It is sui generis, and it is brilliant. The naysayers are probably the same people who don't "get" Philip K. Dick and don't understand why the movie theater accidentally showed that "Memento" movie backwards. "Love in the Time of Fridges" truly exists in a plane of its own, and it was very fun to visit that universe for a while.

After his beloved Abigail died, ex police officer Huckleberry Lindberg left New Seattle and worked in Memory Print Store where he took pictures of other people's memories. Now he is on his way home where the highway sign reads "Welcome! New Seattle Welcomes Visitors ... See Exclusions". The West Coast of America is run by the Health and Safety Department. He shares a drongle with a woman he does not know when the cops stop him for a routine check. When they learn who he is, they decide to do a mind hack and include the woman Nena too.

Huck gets loose and rescues Nena who hides secrets from him. They separate, but she tells him to meet her at the Halcyon Hotel. There he finds four talking Fridges and a dryer. When Nena arrives, the clerk calls the cops on them. The Fridges and dryer escape, but Nena tells him if something happens to her he is to save the little Fridge because inside is the means to saving New Seattle.

This is classified as a sci fi thriller, but it is more a tongue and cheek satire of government using security to control everyone. The tale is filled with humor often biting especially when the Fridges and Dryer sing out of tune and exchange barbs. Underneath all the jocularity ironically is a serious post 9/11 message that to live free means taking risks even when a person wants to run from bad memories to hide inside a secure cocoon.

Harriet Klausner

Love in the Time of Fridges is not an imagined Gabriel Garcia Marquez sci-fi book, but a bonafide different approach to the medium. Full of surprises, and good character development, this 2nd novel by Tim Scott definitely makes one want to search out his first. Very visual, but contemplative, the scores of short chapters chop up the story well enough to provide many insights into the characters and the storyline, while providing good humor throughout. An enjoyable read that mixes elements of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. with Ray Bradbury.

This book is a string of one-liners and cheeky metaphors randomly thrown together without the slightest attempt at a plot. The story is confusing and disjointed. The chapters are two pages if you are lucky and half a page if you are not, making any train of thought completely broken.

Sure, the flowery phrases are wonderful. The man knows how to paint a picture, but he does not know how to tell a story. Writing a novel requires memorable characters, a worthy story, and beautiful prose. Scott only delivers one piece.

Don't waste your time. Unless you want to spend several hours reading about the way light from a street lamp fails to fully illuminate the dreary front of a dingy hotel.

No matter how you look at the details of how the plot and characters resolved, there is something to be said for originality. This book created a premise I've never before seen and really enjoyed.

Tim Scott tries to channel Douglas Adams and fails spectacularly. His protagonist is a cipher whose emotional journey of accepting the random death of his wife happens almost entirely off-stage. His narration is a disjointed mess of odd statements and observations that do not deliver the intended humor, and Scott's humor is not helped by its frequent repetition.

Despite what other reviewers have written, there is no biting satire here. There is really barely any irony, despite the presence of an "irony virus" floating through Scott's Seattle setting. This is also not an SF book. It is an indulgent and juvenile screed against an overly governed society littered around a skeletal boy-meets-girl fantasy.

I strongly recommend giving this book a miss. You want absurdist fantasy? Try some John Barth or Italo Calvino or, heck, Terry Pratchett. Lord, Piers Anthony's Xanth pablum stands head and shoulders over this. In a more SF vein, maybe Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy (Public Works Trilogy) or Zodiac.

I sloughed through this dull, pointless, repetitive book to the bitter end, and felt no better for it. After endless scenes of getting into vehicles, getting out of vehicles, be captured by the police, escaping from the police, finding rogue refrigerators, losing rogue refrigerators I was glad to see the last page of this miserable hunk of shredded tree. Perhaps the pointlessness was part of the author's point, but when I buy a book that touts itself as being about feral appliances I want to be amused. I wasn't.