In Barmack's glib, ironical debut, Joseph Braun, a lost, unemployed slacker, transforms himself into Jeb Brown, a more confident and less ethnic version of himself, in order to weasel his way onto a reality TV show. "The Camera loves honesty. The Camera seeks integrity," says one production assistant—and Jeb plans to deliver it. The show is called The Virgin, and on it our purported hero must compete against various stock characters—Shep, the cowboy; Favre, the football player; Cody, the "man-child"—for the right to woo and deflower a 26-year-old virgin. The story hews closely to the slow winnowing down of the show's contestants as Madison, aka the Virgin, chooses among her various suitors as they take her on staged dates in semiexotic locales. Aiming past a too-easy satire of reality television, Barmack reaches to make the book a parable of a generation looking for an identity. No one here is what he seems to be. By the end, "Fat Jack... is no longer fat," teetotaling Greg the Christian is washing "greasy chicken bits down with beer," and, in the ultimate twist, the Virgin is something else entirely. Though the story moves quickly and the prose can be wryly comic, the book, like its main characters, is a bit confused as to what it wants to be.
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From Booklist
New Yorker Jeb Brown relinquishes control of life as he knows it when he becomes a contestant on The Virgin, a reality TV show in which 20 libidinous lads vie for the chance to deflower a ravishing young woman. Among those competing for the coveted "G" spot: a dot-commer, a Bible thumper, a cowboy poet, and a jock. In scenes that bear a striking resemblance to the ABC-TV hit The Bachelor, the eager bachelors embark on a series of dream dates with blonde-haired, blue-eyed Madison--not her real name, of course. While Jeb is instantly smitten (What red-blooded male could resist the camera-ready beauty?), he suspects there is more to the young woman than meets the eye. But in the carefully orchestrated world of reality TV, it's difficult to distinguish between fiction and fact. The novel's most memorable chapters feature snarky episode "summaries" rendered by a pair of single women hopelessly addicted to the show. Readers who enjoy the snap and crackle of pop culture will revel in Barmack's acerbic debut. Allison Block
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