Customer Reviews

The Repossession Mambo

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

 

 

I bought this book after i had seen the movie with my boyfriend, I liked the movie and typically books are always better so i knew it was a must read. The book was very interesting, it jumps around more between the main characters life now, and his past then the movie did but all and all it is written well. The main character is the narrator in the story and he plays his part well, i find it to be very descriptive, a tad dark, and filled with irony. If you liked the movie and are a reader then i would definatley check this book out.

I remember adding Eric Garcia to my authorial wishlist. Karin Slaughter was at the Melbourne Writers Festival, and talked of how she was more nitpicky of the locations in the Vincent Rubio series, when really she should've questioned the realism of a dinosaur going undercover in contemporary America. Dinosaurs, crime and humour? I was hooked. Those three books have been long out of print, though, so I've never acquired them.

I have, however, read MATCHSTICK MEN (which is okay) and CASSANDRA FRENCH'S FINISHING SCHOOL FOR BOYS (which is great). But Eric Garcia's crowning glory is this magnificent tome: THE REPOSSESSION MAMBO, later republished as REPO MEN. The premise is irresistible: people can have transplanted artificial organs, but if they don't keep up the payments, the artiforgs are repossessed.

Our unnamed narrator has been through five marriages and subsequent divorces, driven tanks in wartime Africa, and worked as a Bio-Repo man for the Credit Union. But now he's hiding out, writing his memoirs while he's still alive - which may not be for much longer.

Simply put, I adore this novel. I love the premise, the narrator's voice, the humour, the looping internal structure, the world-building, and even the romance. I'm not usually one for romance, but the ending totally made me coo, "Aw!" If I was a writer, I'd totally want to write something as awesome as this.

Be sure to stick around for the author's essay, THE TAMING OF THE MAMBO, which charts the twelve-year journey from idea to short story to novel to screenplay and back to novel. I haven't seen the film, REPO MEN, which unfortunately went straight to DVD in Australia, so I can't tell you how the book and film measure up against each other.

And no, I'm not familiar with REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA, so I can't talk comparisons, similarities and differences.

I couldn't decide wither to give this three or four stars. I finally decided on three. It starts of pretty slow and jumps around a lot. It leaves you hanging in places so that it can fill in the details later which take some getting used to. But after about the half way point it started to pick up and I started to enjoy it more and that's why I decided on four stars instead of three. If you're willing to stick out the first half and get used to all the jumping around it's a pretty decent read. However I did expect more from this book so don't set your sights to high or it'll probably let you down.

In the future, the implantation of artificial organs (artiforgs) is big business with corporations selling them in malls. Theoretically, a person can be almost totally man-made if you have the money to pay the exorbitant monthly fees. If one becomes delinquent, a Bio-Repro operative will tear into the person to take back the organ to be resold on the market.

One such person who does this for a living is the unnamed narrator who fell into the Bio-Repo job due to his lack of skills besides tank driving in the African theater of operation. He proves to be one of the best, but is weary and needs a change; his preference is a transfer to sales, which occurs. However, circumstances force him to need an artificial heart, but to pay for it he returns back to his former repo job. He is to retrieve the kidneys of a delinquent female, but he snaps and ends up on the lam and on his firm's most wanted list with his best friend assigned to the retrieval.

This book is going to be a movie and if it retains the ironic excitement of the novel, it should be a great film. The selling of artificial organs with a force to repossess the goods from the delinquent buyers is a satirical spin on several acceptable principles of current society. THE REPOSSESSION MAMBO is a fabulous science fiction noir starring a bone weary antihero who in some ways will remind the audience of Logan (Logan's Run). Readers who relish something different will appreciate this deep extrapolation of twenty-first century America's health industry's hypocritical corpocracy.

Harriet Klausner

What if artificial organs could be repossessed after someone falls behind on their payments, leaving the people dead on the floor? This book is the stream of consciousness story of a bio-repo man who rose to the top of the bio-repossession business, only to fall victim to the same business.

It outlines his time in the military, his marriages, various repossession jobs, the works! The first half of the book is almost entirely back story, and it's so random. One section our main character is talking about his second ex-wife; the next paragraph jumps back in time to his years in the military. The entire book reads this way; random jumps back and forth in time. Complete stream of consciousness. I'll admit the first half of the book is a little hard to get through because the sheer amount of back story is overwhelming and I kinda wanted something to *happen*. It was easy to put down when the main character was just rambling on about his past, but soon enough, something did happen, and with a little front story to balance the back story, the book picked up the pace.

I love the nonchalant way he views cutting people up, taking their liver, spleen, lungs or heart and leaving them dead...with a yellow repossession receipt on the body. I especially like the passage when he describes a time when he repossessed an organ, only to find out that the guy actually did make the payment; a screwup with the paperwork resulted in a false repossession. It's so ordinary to this guy that it's funny. Eric Garcia has this sense of humor, and it's so appropriate for a story like this. The last half of the book kept me turning the pages; I had to know how the hell this situation could possibility wrap up. It's a good ending, too. A very worthwhile read.

When the movie comes out, I hope it doesn't lose anything. Garcia's Anonymous Rex series is absolutely wonderful, but when it was turned into a low-budget sci-fi original movie it lost everything. Hopefully this one will stay true to the story...instead of rewriting it for budget constraints.

Doesn't matter; even if it gets ruined by hollywood the book is still great.

Some interviews by Eric Garcia suggest that this book took around ten years to finish. A book that long in the making should be a lot better in the presentation area. This "book" is obviously a poor adaptation of what was actually written as a screenplay. It jumps back and forth in time; and not smoothly. There is poor character development; which is essential in a book to be able to visualize and connect to characters. The fact that this book was not published before the movie was made, though supposedly done for a while, points to this being a cheap attempt to throw together a book out of a screenplay in order to try and make a buck. It is not a good read. This leads me to believe that the movie is not produced well either. I am skipping the movie all together. This project looks like a wipe.

Eric Garcia takes a cynically humorous idea, that in the future repo-men can take out artificial organs that customers have had installed and then fallen delinquent on, and never quite does anything cynically humorous with that idea. It's as though Garcia is trying to write for the silver screen...which is fine...but I wanted a novel, not a screenplay and the two are very different. Even so, I don't want to give away the ending becuase it is quite original.

The story of Repo men was first used in Repo! The Genetic Opera, which has been through various adaptations from 10 minutes short opera plays, to a full stage show, to a 10 minutes promo to pitch to movie execs, to a full on movie. Too bad noone knows about it due to the fact that the general populace has a stigma with musicals, especially operas, including areas containing gothic societies and campy, morbid humor. This specific adaptation of "In the future organs can be repossessed" was around I would say since 1999 / 2000 in the very small playhouses in California. Looking into this specific version of organ repossessions, it was started in 2003, and has a very close similarity to Repo!The Genetic Opera. This is also being made into a movie. I refuse to buy this book nor see the movie due to the fact that hollywood can't come up with their own ideas (it was being written specifically for a movie), yet alone start this thing in 2003 and not finish it for 6 years, considering this is a take off of an already made story.

Don't be a sheep, do your research on things.

In all fairness I haven't read The Repossession Mambo yet, I just ordered it today, but on the surface it would appear that the plot from Repo! The Genetic Opera has been repossessed.