From Publishers Weekly
Reading like Don DeLillo on acid, Bachelder's brilliant, bizarre debut is a futuristic one-joke novel about a whimsical confrontation between two unlikely predators. The premise is simple: "Bear v. Shark" is a monster pay-per-view event staged in Las Vegas in which a bear and a shark fight it out in a tank of water deep enough for the shark to maneuver efficiently, but shallow enough to give the bear an even chance to hold its own. Most of the novel consists of Bachelder examining the event via an acidic, over-the-top running commentary and skewering American culture and the consumer-driven media overload that dominates modern life. The plot, such as it is, covers the cross-country journey of the Normans, a numbed-out, statistically average family who acquire tickets to the show when one of the two sons wins a promotional essay contest about the significance of the event. The story line has some mildly entertaining moments like Bachelder's depiction of Mr. Norman's growing existential ennui as he rounds the bend into a midlife dominated by the advertising-driven acquisition of contemporary gadgets and possessions. What makes the novel work, though, is the author's thought-provoking commentary, alternately hysterical, penetrating and weird, as he discusses weather channels, breakfast cereals, ESP TV and some of the other flotsam and jetsam that appears over the airwaves. Bachelder paints himself into a corner with an anticlimactic ending that hinges on the outcome of the battle, and the paper-thin plot doesn't hold up. But there's plenty of meat in the satiric humor and over-the-top commentary, making this a wildly entertaining cultural roller-coaster ride. Agent, Lisa Bankoff. (Nov.)Forecast: Reviewers will relish this novel, and if they do a good job getting a buzz started, it should do reasonably well, though a flashier jacket might have helped sales.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
It's the near future (we still have SUVs, but now our TVs don't have "off" buttons), and the U.S. is obsessed by one question: given a water level that would allow a shark to swim without keeping a bear from deft maneuvering, which one would win if they had a fight--the bear or the shark? The answer lies in the sovereign nation of Las Vegas, where bear and shark will go fin to paw in a computer-animated--it's "realer than real"--rematch (the shark won the first time around). The story--written in short episodic chapters that are sometimes transcripts of commercials, including one for the world's best "ursine porn" Web site-- follows young Curtis Norman, who won tickets for his family with his essay "Bear v. Shark: A Reason to Live." The short chapters keep the pace quick and the book funny, and the attacks on technophilic America will appeal to fans of Chuck Palahniuk and Mark Leyner. In the end, though, this first novel is eerily similar to the cultural phenomena it so relentlessly satirizes: hugely entertaining but not particularly deep.
John GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
by Chris Bachelder
by Julianna Baggott
by Chris Offutt
by Jonathan Ames
by Brock Clarke
