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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lunatics, December 3, 2011
This review is from: Lunatics (Hardcover)
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I'm always suspicious when people offer variations on "I couldn't put this book down," but in small doses it's often true. I picked up Lunatics late one night, after spending several hours finishing another book I'd been trying to get through for days. I expected to read a couple pages, just enough to get a flavor of it and have a head start for the following day. But each chapter led so easily into the next, and I was having so much fun, that I read eighty pages before I was finally too tired to go on. The next evening I tore through the remaining 240 pages in a few hours. Really, it's no surprise: Lunatics is a wild, frivolous novel, a rollicking adults-only ramble that practically demands to be sped through. Philip Horkman is a nice guy: sensitive, thoughtful, reasonable, mild-mannered, maybe a little passive-aggressive. The type who says "pardon my language" before using the phrase "kick the bucket." Jeffrey Peckerman is a jerk: blunt, aggressive, bigoted, thoughtless, foul-mouthed. The type who says things I can't quote in this review without thoroughly censoring them. One day, Philip, who referees kids' soccer, rules Jeffrey's daughter was offside, making her tying goal in the championship game ineligible. There's a shouting match, but it all might have ended there, except that the next day Jeffrey's wife asks him to pick up some wine for her book club, and he stops at a business called The Wine Shop. But The Wine Shop is actually a pet shop (don't ask), and Philip is the owner. Their second meeting ends with a kidnapped lemur, which soon steals an insulin pump, and the effort to restore each to its rightful owner results in a high-speed car chase. Then the NYPD mistakes the insulin pump for a bomb... and that's where things ~really~ get complicated. Lunatics is a comic novel, a collaboration between humorists Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel. Like Barry's previous novels, Big Trouble and Risky Business, it takes ordinary characters and puts them, via a series of implausible but not utterly impossible coincidences, in dangerous, world-shaking situations. Without revealing too much about the course of the story: Jeffrey and Philip end up doing some major traveling, and inadvertently bringing about beneficial chaos wherever they find themselves. After a while, this starts to feel repetitive, too programmatic, and the madcap absurdism wears a little thin. By the final sequence, reality has been left so far behind that it's hard to be involved enough even to appreciate the craziness of it all. But, for those who relate to this kind of humor, there are enough hilarious asides to make the overall experience a consistent pleasure. That humor is broad, explicit, sometimes crude and a little sophomoric; if refined, subtle wit is your thing, look elsewhere. There are exaggerated observational details familiar to readers of Barry's columns ("I've used enough [whitening] strips to wallpaper my living room, and my teeth are still more or less the color of the margins of the Declaration of Independence"), satires of media hysteria (the coincidental calamities in which Philip and Jeffrey find themselves are interpreted as a cunning terrorist plot), and a certain amount of what an elementary school teacher would call bathroom humor. But a lot of the fun comes from the ongoing conflict between the two narrators, who thoroughly hate each other and have such different worldviews that they can't agree on anything, not even how best to flee the police. The book is made up of short chapters switching between their perspectives; the contrast between Jeffrey's profane rants about how everyone else is a moron and Philip's scrupulous attempts to be polite and helpful is entertaining, and the brevity of the chapters makes for a fast, easy read, as comic novels should be, especially those that depend on following ridiculous turns of plot. The temptation when reviewing any form of comedy is to quote some of the best jokes, but I'll resist that, and instead mention some of the elements that lend the book its particular peculiar flavor: a nudist cruise, a pair of hungry bears, an awful lot of bananas, two scheming lawyers, the unspeakable fate of a rare baseball card, and Donald Trump. I would say that this kind of humor is an acquired taste, except that I've never yet met a type of humor that wasn't. If this sounds like your cup of tea, then Lunatics comes highly recommended. For myself, I laughed out loud so often that I started to get a headache. Which is pretty much what I look for in a comic novel.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unrelenting Comic Mayhem Escalates Beyond All Reason And Rationale In This Adult Fairytale, December 30, 2011
This review is from: Lunatics (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
It's been a long while since I've read anything as unapologetically and wonderfully silly as "Lunatics." The collaboration of Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel certainly plays as a game of one-upmanship with plot points of this comic misadventure escalating beyond all reason and rationale. Hyperactive and unrelenting, this swift and enjoyable read is not meant to be taken with any degree of seriousness. It is simply and purely outlandish nonsense, and as such, it is wildly successful. I literally read "Lunatics" in two sittings which, for me, is exceedingly rare. It is that entertaining and paced like a runaway locomotive. As it barrels forward from one improbable situation to the next even bigger catastrophe, I was simply compelled to push forward to see what would come next. This element of surprise and humor coupled with complete ridiculousness is something that I enjoy mightily. But if you aren't into slapstick comic mayhem (and really, this plays as a big adult cartoon), "Lunatics" might not be for you. In fact, to fully enjoy the craziness, it probably helps to be slightly unhinged yourself! Not a lot should be revealed about "Lunatics." Anyone that divulges details of the comic exploits is taking away the book's strongest asset--the wonder of what will happen next. The narrative is exceedingly straightforward in concept. Two suburban fathers take an instant dislike to one another at a weekend soccer game. After the initial unpleasantness, though, the two are forced together into additional confrontations that immediately start to spiral out of control. Before long, everything that they've known will become upended as their situation goes from bad, to worse, to impossible, to worse than impossible. The alternating chapters are told from each man's vantage point, and much of the humor stems from their inherent and inescapable hatred of one another. This is an adult fairytale in which nothing remains sacred and political correctness is not a primary concern. Again, I'm sure the frantic and subversively silly nature of "Lunatics" will not appeal to everyone. But if you set your expectations aside and sign up for the ride, the novel will take you to the most unexpected and hilarious of places. It lacks a subtlety and slyness and just bludgeons you with outrageous situations. But that's what I liked about "Lunatics." It is exactly what it intends to be. There is no moralizing or deep contemplation, just comic mischief told in a serialized cliffhanger format. And if you don't like a particular plot point or development, hold on a few pages and the story will surely shift gears into an even more ridiculous avenue. I had a lot of fun with "Lunatics." It's exceedingly lightweight, but eminently enjoyable. A quick fix of sheer entertainment. KGHarris, 12/11.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Caution: Reading Lunatics Can Be Exhausting, December 7, 2011
This review is from: Lunatics (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
If you like Jerry Lewis you will probably enjoy "Lunatics." If you are the type of person who laughs out loud when reading funny books, you will probably like "Lunatics." If you are that type of person, do not read this while eating because you are likely to spew food all over the book and your dining companions. Getting the idea? Without giving away any of the "plot," you can get a sense of "Lunatics" by this list of words, in no particular order, taken from the story: clothing optional cruise, compost, lawyers, scrotum, Zumba, Pez, lemur, pirates, Jeffrey Dahmer, bananas, Amway, Mary Kay, naked, diarrhea, nun, "Dildo of Doom," bears escaped from the zoo, Chuck E. Cheese, Charo, laser hair removal, Spaghetti O's, Sarah Palin, insulin pump, yodel and Donald Trump. Hats off to authors Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel. I was really impressed that they could keep this story going for 330 pages. What a remarkable achievement!
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