David Whitton

I love the twisty-turny, unreliable-narrators, multiple-POV thrills of this book! Just as the investigators in the book are trying to figure out what happened ex post facto, so are you. I loved that the book kept giving me more questions as I read: who are these people? What were they supposed to do? Is this person telling the truth about their involvement? Who is behind all this, and most importantly: What went wrong?

A great thriller in a neat, compact book, you'll love this book if you show more enjoy unwrapping and piecing together a story, but don't mind if you never truly figure it all out. show less

David Whitton's stories fall somewhere on the continuum between off-kilter edginess and playful whimsy. His aesthetic is clearly subversive and the world he creates is one in which just about anything can happen and often does. These are stories that thumb their nose at narrative convention and reader expectations, but also charm with their audacious plotlines and absurdist flourishes. They are wildly inventive and do not settle for straining credibility when they can blast it out of the show more water. His characters come from various backgrounds, but tend to be young and at odds with or indifferent to conventional social values. Some are involved in enterprises of a dubious nature or emotional relationships that are in the process of breaking down. There are casual drug users who suffer blackouts that result in memory gaps. Lust is ubiquitous. Sex is frequent, even when (or especially when) the participants hardly know each other. In "Gargoyles" a girl who suffered a freak head injury finds herself able to see how peoples' lives will turn out. In "The Lee Marvins" a couple of cocky young guys working for a towing service are unexpectedly stymied by a girl who prevents them towing her car. In "Where Did You Come From?" a husky construction worker registers as a student at the Evelyn G. Ameli School of Beauty and drives the director of admissions over the edge. These are stories of the recognizable here and now. But Whitton has no reservations about shifting his settings elsewhere. "Twilight of the Gods" takes place on some sort of vessel that is under siege in a futuristic and vaguely Nordic landscape, and the Paris of the title story is one in which bursting bubbles cause time to warp and people to dissolve into muck. These are stories that will challenge the reader to keep up with an imagination in overdrive. Whitton obviously does not care that some readers will give up on him (and to be sure, some will). But for those of us who persist, the rewards and delights of "The Reverse Cowgirl" are abundant. show less

A character study composed of unhappy, unlikable sleeper agents, formatted as a debriefing after an equally disastrous operation. The debriefing format means it's told retrospectively, first person, to a more-or-less impartial interviewer under more-or-less impartial situations, following a stream-of-consciousness but removed experience. Although retrospective, there is a little attention to the immediacy of the interview experience, but, at the risk of spoilers, I don't think it adds up to show more anything significant, except one of those absurdist conclusions. Some of the 'assets' are 'disposed' of, some forgotten, some relocated. The conclusions are not always clear.

There's occasional flashes of humor, done to better effect in Committee Members, as it is mostly parenthetical-type asides. I also found moments of brilliant writing. However, it very, very much falls under the 'not-for-me' shelving, as it is 97% literary fiction and 3% mystery. I stayed with it largely for the promised payoff, hoping the gestalt would make it somehow more transcendent. I see why others might be more impressed, but for me, it was too little, too late. As I mentioned in my review of [b:Sisters of the Forsaken Stars|56179337|Sisters of the Forsaken Stars (Our Lady of Endless Worlds #2)|Lina Rather|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1628601117l/56179337._SY75_.jpg|87513133], I'd rather take the character meanderings of people who weren't abandoning their families to make ethically questionable choices in a rather uninteresting city (oh, yes--I went there, Canada).

Reminds me of [a:Bret Easton Ellis|2751|Bret Easton Ellis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1638490234p2/2751.jpg] crossed with [b:Dear Committee Members|19288259|Dear Committee Members|Julie Schumacher|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1432245100l/19288259._SY75_.jpg|27336530]. Recommended more for fans of nihilistic lit-fic with scant character redemption.

A sampling:

Character one:
"--You were saying. The stress you were under.
--Stress, yes, sure. Naturally. But something else, too, something somewhat harder to explain. A part of me, I guess, just a small part, had been looking forward to yesterday. If I'm being honest. I knew I'd lose all of it, everything, my whole world, but this tiny little part of me didn't even care, for real. Wanted it even."

Character two:
"--Unless you feel there's something of significance, I think we can skip forward.
--Sure. Skip forward. I'm not sure how far. Cocaine, you know? Not one of my finer moments. So okay. We're what, post-coital, post-whatever-it-was, and maybe we did another post-whatever-it-was line, and we're sitting on the floor, our backs against the freezer. We had no reason to talk, and nothing to talk about, but talk we did, in an energized, possibly delirious way about the influence of Jamaican dub on eighties British post-punk bands, when she says, 'Wait, what time is it?'"

Character three:
--[Inaudible]
--And you? All right, okay, he nods. He doesn't speak, he just nods. That's all right, I like them strong and silent. Okay, another round, please. And could I get, do you do nachos here? I'd like some veggie nachos, please. I used to eat meat, but I couldn't handle it anymore, the hypocrisy, factory farming, the nonstop genocide. Where was I?
--Your morning
--Right. I saw you looking at her by the way. Our server. It's okay. She's cute. And you're a young, strapping boy. Not a boy, sorry. I don't know why you're hanging out with an old broad like me, but I'll take it. Old or not, I still have talent. Just saying. Don't mind me, I'm ridiculous at the best of times, and I'm super ridiculous after I've dropped shrooms. Where was I?

You get the drift. Not my cuppa. show less