Customer Reviews

The Most Amazing Thing

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4 star:		(1)
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This is a wonderful book. The most amazing thing about it is the author's imagination. It concerns the adventures of one Desmond Ruck, a man bigger than most physically and larger than most morally. He stumbles upon a Bill-Gates-size fortune in negotiable bonds and a beautiful South American bookkeeper somehow connected to it, who keeps disappearing into the clutches of assorted nefarious groups from whom he keeps trying to rescue her. If I found a trillion dollars, I don't know what I'd do with it. But Desmond Ruck knows what to do with it. No futile attempts to reform campaign finance or to enjoy himself kicking up his heels in Cannes. He is a rescuer. At the same time, he is a practical man (actually a carpenter), so, once he gets past some pretty awful situations and figures out how to cash in some of those bonds, he goes in for practical rescues. He rescues people. First, a paraplegic old geezer, then a pair of brutally isolated and abused teenagers, and then -- working his way up -- the inhabitants of a bawdy house (he provides them with college scholarships) and an orphanage (he provides it with a luxurious boarding-school ranch in the Southwest), and so on. At the end, after putting Desmond through an incredible series of misadventures, the author manages to wrap up every single solitary detail, every surreptitious subtext and sidelong glance, into a smashing conclusion that kept me smiling optimistically for days.

This book immediately captures your attention and makes you smile. The hero is just so darned likable. I thought it was going to be the story of how the initial grabber resolves itself, but no such predictability here. It soon becomes clear that this is as much saga as story, as much fable as fiction, and the odyssey just won't stop. It's a ripping good yarn that works on myriad levels. I recommend it with enthusiasm to anyone needing an escape, an excuse, a hero, a redemption, a purpose, or a good laugh.

This most amazing novel guides you through a colorful world that captures the imagination. Before you begin reading about Desmond Ruck's adventures, find a comfortable chair because your mind will ignore your body. Like some spiritual master with a bottle of Wharton's, you'll be transported into a new dimension. It's a wheel squealing ride across America's Highway to Heaven.
Think the fast pace of the Da Vinci Code, only more intense, as if Hunter S. Thompson wrote this adventure while still in Vegas, then Gunter Grass added his Rabelaisian sauce, and Mark Twain polished it up while in a good mood.

(...). Imagine a combination of Candide and "Forrest Gump" except with a lucid and intelligent narrator/protagonist and you'll be close. Add in an author inspired by Rabelais and possessing a strong humanist spine and you can start to smack the taste in your mouth. Combine these with a lean over to one side and slightly to the back at the strained pop and contemporary culture references and you'll get its overall sense. The main nuisance was the faintly antiseptic feeling of one who wants to write about being in the mud, but hasn't ever quite dipped in. Many will find it a riot, others who have led a riotous life will find it charming, but not ever quite "there". It's provocative and fantastic as it aspires to much while never standing still, like many ambitious books, waving its hands in your face demanding: "I am an important book!" This novel wants to entertain, and does copiously, but may evoke chuckles and smirks when it aspires for comedic gasps and release.

This book immediately captures your attention and makes you smile. The hero is just so darned likable. I thought it was going to be the story of how the initial grabber resolves itself, but no such predictability here. It soon becomes clear that this is as much saga as story, as much fable as fiction, and the odyssey just won't stop. It's a ripping good yarn that works on myriad levels. I recommend it with enthusiasm to anyone needing an escape, an excuse, a hero, a redemption, a purpose, or a good laugh.

Robert Grudin is both a prolific and intelligent writer. Most of his work rquires careful reading and thought, a more cerebral approach. In The Most Amazing Thing, Grudin reached a new level as an author. Every reader wishes the implied intimacy associated with the notion that this book was written for him or her. Few writers, of course, ever achieve this intimacy with the reader. I believed that Grudin was writing this book to and for me and further that many other readers will believe the same. Great writers, like Mark Twain, routinely write or wrote on this level. This appears to be a new Grudin and one that I hope will continue to serve us tasty morsels. I recemmned this book to anyone since it seems to communicate feelings of fun without any effort by the reader.