The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: naked photos, Jonathan Selwood, Mirabel Matamoros, Alex Tzu (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Isabel Raven should be aglow. Rare among painters, she has made it big in L.A. A major exhibition is set to open, and a billionaire racked by guilt over the 9/11 death of his business partner is avidly collecting Isabel's kitschy work (she inserts celebrity faces into masterpieces; picture Martha Stewart in The Scream) to please Cordelia, his raunchy-beyond-her-years 13-year-old adopted daughter. But instead of basking in her success, Isabel is a complete wreck along with her postearthquake apartment. Her chef-to-the-stars boyfriend has taken up with a Latina teenage diva, her sleazy gallery owner has posted nude photos of her on the Internet, her mother is "pathologically chatty," and her physicist father has done the math that proves that the planets in our solar system will start crashing into one another in 2049. Selwood's laugh-out-loud madcap debut mocks today's digitized, hard-sell, sex-obsessed world as it teeters "somewhere between carnival and riot." With high appeal for hip young readers attuned to "the bittersweet feeling of exhilarated alienation," Selwood should have a bright writing future. Seaman, Donna

Product Description

For years, painter Isabel Raven has made an almost-living forging Impressionist masterpieces to decorate the McMansions of the not-quite-Sotheby's-auction rich. But when she serendipitously hits on an idea that turns her into the "It Girl" of the L.A. art scene, her career takes off just as the rest of her life heads south. Her personal-chef boyfriend is having a wild sexual dalliance with the teenage self-styled "Latina Britney Spears." If Isabel refuses to participate in an excruciatingly humiliating ad campaign, her sociopathic art dealer is threatening to "gut her like an emu." And her reclusive physicist father has conclusively proven that the end of the world is just around the corner.

Now, with the Apocalypse looming—and with only a disaffected Dutch-Eskimo billionaire philanthropist and his dissolute thirteen-year-old adopted daughter to guide her—there's barely enough time remaining for Isabel to reexamine her fragile delusional existence . . . and the delusional reality of her schizophrenic native city.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (July 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061173878
• ISBN-13: 978-0061173875
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,000,683 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you like "Entourage," you will love this novel!, July 31, 2007

By	Typical Midwestern Housewife (Cleveland, Ohio) - See all my reviews

In "The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse," Jonathan Selwood creates an unforgettable portrayal of contemporary Hollywood. This hilarious debut novel evokes the absurd characters and apocalyptic imagery of "The Day of the Locust," the grotesque metaphors of "The Loved One," and the desperation of "Play It As It Lays." Selwood presents us with a city which has perfected the art of denial. The Angelenos ignore an accelerating rate of local disasters such as earthquakes, wildfires, and creeping tar, in favor of going about their daily business. At the same time, they manage to disregard the proof of imminent global apocalypse which has been documented by the main character's father. Why this is all so funny, I'm not sure, but it has something to do with the recurring references to "tapirlike" features, deviled eggs, and prehistoric mammals. If you are familiar with Los Angeles, you will laugh in recognition at the descriptions of Beverly Hills, Mulholland, Hollywood Hills, "south-of-Wilshire-east-of-La Brea," the Bourgeois Pig, Musso & Frank's, Cheremoya Ave. School, and especially the La Brea tar pits and the "Batcave". If you have never set foot in the city, you will finish the book feeling as if you've just been there. The technicolor imagery makes this perfect material for a screen adaptation. I hope someone turns "The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse" into a movie and I hope Selwood is already at work on a second novel.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars TOO FUNNY TO PUT DOWN, August 16, 2007

By	Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

Everyone loves a good laugh and there are tons of them in this uproarious story of artist Isabel Raven. Author Selwood gives new meaning to the word "absurd." You know that his characters are too far over the top to be real, yet you don't give a whit because they're so downright funny. You only keep flipping pages as fast as you can wondering what outrageous thing they'll say or do next.

Set in Los Angeles we first meet Isabel as she's "touching up the glint in Tom Cruise's eyes," and the hardwood floor is shifting beneath her. One more tremor which we learn is a bit similar to dropping a bowling ball off the Eiffel Tower. Actually, her apartment was pretty much of a mess any way as Isabel has had no time for such homespun duties as cleaning or washing dishes. She has been anointed by her "sociopathic art dealer," Juan Dahlman as the next "It Girl" artist with paintings that she had considered satiric going for fifty thousand a pop. After all, who could resist American Gothic redone with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes or Raphael's Madonna and Child with new faces - Britney Spears and her son Sean?

In addition to an earthquake, an apartment building that may soon collapse, and her upcoming opening, there is boyfriend Javier, handsome beyond belief and recently botoxed just around the eyes.

During Isabel's rise to fame she meets an eccentric billionaire philanthropist who has bought some of her paintings for his teenage daughter. She also discovers that Javier has been more than unfaithful, and that her father has definitely pinpointed the end of the world.

The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse is too funny to be believed and way too funny to put down.

Enjoy!

- Gail Cooke

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Smart, funny, and quick., September 17, 2007

By	Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Jonathan Selwood, The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse (Harper, 2007)

I love Mara Lander. Now, I should say, I've never actually met Mara Lander, but I know she's a publicist at Harper, and she sends me books. As if that's not enough, she sends me good books, the kind that I am pleased as punch to read and review, even if they're in a genre I'm not usually that big on-- comedy. This is the second that she's dropped in the mail for me (Nicholas Kulish's fantastic Last One In was the first), and I have to say, I liked this one almost as much, and for most of the same reasons.

Selwood gives us Isabel Raven, no-longer-struggling LA artist, and her entourage: a neurotic mother, a geeky landlord, an insane agent (who may or may not be the mother's boyfriend), a stoner dad, a boyfriend who's signed on to be the personal chef of "the Latina Britney Spears", a dot-com billionaire who's crazy about her work, the billionaire's juvenile-delinquent daughter, a beat-up but seemingly magic old car, and, of course, the occasional earthquake, along with a smattering of others. All of these factors combine to make Isabel's life, which seemed as if it was just starting to go right, turn itself upside down and start shaking out its pockets. There's not really much of a plot to this puppy, just a lot of characters moving in and out of one another's lives in the funniest ways possible. (And if you think the book's a hoot, check out Selwood's spurious "book club discussion guide" in the back, which actually had me burst out laughing in inappropriate public places a few times.) Selwood claims he wrote it to be read in one sitting, and it probably can be, if you're not in the middle of moving house and adopting a kid at the same time you're reading the book (I got a mental image, while reading his afterword, of Selwood imitating John Sayles writing Alligator on a plane from LA to New York back in the seventies...). The only thing about the book that really drove me nuts was the absence of the second "the" in the title. Everything else, though? Grand. ****