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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The best of Shulman's early novels., June 12, 2002
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Four shots ripped into my groin and I was off on the greatest adventure of my life!"Yes that's actually the first line of this insanely funny novel. The second line being "But first let me tell you a little about myself." And then you have to wade through a hilarious series of increasingly convoluted flashbacks that take up most of the book before he finally gets back to the four groin shots and the great adventure. This was the last of what I call Shulman's four "zany" novels - the first three being "Barefoot Boy With Cheek", "The Feather Merchants" and "The Zebra Derby". In these early novels Shulman cared little about conventional narrative and exposition. They were carefree flights of fancy that weren't bound by ordinary rules. (In "The Zebra Derby" 24 different male characters are all named "Max".) But by "Sleep Til Noon" Shulman was starting to settle down (just a little) and tell a real story. In this case its the story of a young idealistic lawyer who would like nothing more than to actually help people, but he's so ridiculously incompetent that he might as well be trying to hurt them! First time I read it I was on a flight and I burst out laughing so hard that the person next to me asked what I was reading. Turned out he was a judge who had also read it and enjoyed it greatly! I highly recommend "Sleep Til Noon". It came just before Shulman wrote his masterpiece "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis". "Sleep Til Noon" is in many ways, a warmup for "Dobie" and some of its characters and situations eventually made their way onto the "Dobie" tv series.
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