American Desert (Hardcover)

by Percival Everett (Author) "THAT THEODORE STREET WAS dead was not a matter open to debate..." (more)
Key Phrases: Big Daddy, Barbie Becker, Theodore Street (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
When UCLA professor Ted Street sits up in his coffin at his own funeral, mayhem ensues in this smart, satirical and engrossing novel by prolific Everett (Glyph; Erasure; etc.). Ted had been planning suicide, but a car accident conveniently sliced off his head. With reattached noggin, no pulse and a few strangely sharpened senses, Ted rejoins his stunned family, feeling "like a monster, a re-animated ghoul." But his wife, Gloria, takes him to bed for newly gratifying sex, and he has other heightened powers-of understanding and even telepathy. TV vans besiege their house, and preteen daughter Emily is briefly taken by Protective Services. Venturing out for groceries with his family, Ted is kidnapped by a religious cult led by menacing Big Daddy, who's convinced Ted's the anti-Christ. After being shot numerous times, Ted escapes into the desert, only to be caught by the Feds, who whisk him away to a reanimation laboratory outside Roswell, N.Mex., to study him (they remove his organs while he's awake and put them back "much as one might stuff a turkey"). These varied confinements give Ted time to reflect on his frustrating, untenured status at the university, the birth of his beloved children, his philandering ways and his troubled marriage. Escaping yet again, this time with help from a man who makes Jesus clones, Ted rescues a group of children held hostage by Big Daddy before returning home to a family that has been forever changed. Thoughtful, darkly comic and full of heart, the novel offers a wonderfully unusual story about retrospection and forgiveness.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
While on his way to commit suicide, Ted Street, an untenured English professor and philandering husband, is beheaded in a car accident. Worse, he wakes up at his own funeral, his head clumsily stitched on his neck and his mouth sewn closed. From there, Ted embarks on a wide-ranging cruise through the American landscape, as he is kidnapped by a cult convinced that he is a devil; picked up by the military to be experimented on as a prototype of the perfect soldier; and sheltered by another cult, which worships him as a messiah. While the outlandish premise imparts a good deal of comic energy, Everett's customary sarcastic and intelligent wit is oddly lacking. Much of his satire of fanaticism—the charismatic cult leader with a stockpile of weapons, secret government plots—feels worn, and, despite all the talk of resurrection, the stiff prose never perks up.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; First Edition edition (May 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786869178
• ISBN-13: 978-0786869176
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #996,633 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Keep your head up...., June 15, 2006

By	Keith G "I can not live without books.....Tho... (Garland, TX) - See all my reviews

Percival Everett startled me with this book. The first few pages jump out and grab you and haul you into what seems like what will be a sad story. A man on his way to committ suicide is accidently involved in a traffic collision with a truck and decapitated. All presume he is dead until he sits up at his funeral with his head crudely attached on to his shoulders by what seems almost like fishing line.

American Desert is more than just a modern day "Frankenstein" story. It is about a man who thought life was dead, only to find life in death. It is a novel about second chances and how our relationships can be anything we want them to be. In this book, we see the hurt that a family can go through because of choices a member of that family may make. Ultimately, we see that life is more than just the mundane everyday existence we know. We see that sometimes the purpose of our life can only be found when we see that we think we have no purpose.

Don't let the name fool you. American Desert is a well in the dry land of everyday reading. A good book from start to finish and an almost draw dropping ending make this book a solid form of entertainment.

5.0 out of 5 stars a brilliant satire, August 23, 2008

By	Nicola (Brussels, Belgium) - See all my reviews

Percival Everett's "American Desert" has one of the best first chapters ever written and it sets the tone for what's to come: a clever, and at times very funny, satire on contemporary American society and also a reflection on what it means to be alive.
After the protagonist's botched suicide attempt, he is endowed with special powers that allow him to "see" behind the facades that people put up to hide the things they don't like about themselves. "I used to be just like you and I guess that's how it is that I see so much of you. I didn't intend to be cruel, only truthful. This truth thing is new to me."
As Ted reflects on his life and as the outside world creates a phenomenon around his "return to life", Everett gives us wonderful insights on society, relationships and ultimately on the meaning of life.
A brilliant story, which introduced me to an exceptional writer. Other titles I would recommend by him are "Erasure", "Glyph", "Damned If I Do" (a collection of short stories, with a 5-star for "The Appropriation of Cultures") and "Wounded".

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars great premise but falls short of potential, June 29, 2005

By	B. Capossere (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

American Desert has at its no longer beating heart a great premise--the main character, UCLA professor Ted Street, beheaded in a gruesome car accident, sits up in his funeral three days later, no longer dead (though not exactly alive). What follows veers crazily between Street's attempts to come to grips with just what he is, his family's attempts to do the same, and the attempts by various groups (religious cults, the government, the media) to co-opt him for their own uses. The end result is somewhat mixed and admittedly somewhat disappointing as some of the stories work better than others.
The satirical sections have their darkly humorous moments, but are marred by their over-the-top nature, the sometimes obviousness of the satire, and the fact that the targets are so relatively easy.
The quieter sections focusing on Street's personal ruminations on his life and his death are much more successful--sometimes funny, sometimes moving, almost always achingly honest.
The best sections, and unfortunately the ones least explored, deal with his family (wife, daughter, son) and their views toward his "return", as well as his own shifting views toward them. In death, it turns out, is wisdom, though perhaps too lately gained. These moments of familial revelation are by far the most powerful and most moving and one wishes that Everett had spent far less time on the bizarre and much more time on the domestic.
Although it is a wholly enjoyable read almost from start to finish (lags a bit in some places) and the close is quite powerful, in the end, the book is disappointing mostly because it doesn't reach the promise of its premise and because it teases us with long moments of true brilliance. Happily recommended, but sadly as well.