Benjamin Parzybok

This book was such a joy to read. It was unlike anything else I have ever read. I’m not much of a person to read about quests, but this tale of three roommates who felt compelled to take their orange couch to its ultimate destination was so quirky, creative, and funny.

The story began when those three roommates, who did not know each other before and who were vastly different from each other, tried to get rid of their couch after a flood in their apartment caused by the leakage of an show more upstairs water bed. However, the couch had other ideas! By its weight and through some sort of reckoning by the hippie-like roommate Tree, the couch pressured the other two roommates, Thom and Erik, into having the three return it to its predestined spot.

If this sounds absurd, it is. However this is a rollicking good story and so delightful to read. The end of the book was riveting. As I got closer to the conclusion, I felt myself reading faster and faster. My only regret about this book at all is that I waited so long to read it. What an incredible debut novel it was! show less

Look, demagoguery isn't heroic, and unplanned pregnancies as symbols of hope are irresponsible, especially in dystopian fiction.

Secession leader Maid Marian's refusal to listen to advice that she doesn't like is in keeping with her egotistical, impatient, argumentative personality, and this is presented as mavericking. Why don't you like mavericking? Her choices prove very costly to the fledgling nation.

There's a kernel of truth here: Marginalized communities are further marginalized in a show more crisis. There are seeds of an interesting book, especially in the earlier part of the narrative, in which Maid Marian robs the rich of their illegally-purchased extra water rations. Once the focus shifts from doing this to seceding, the willfully naive libertarianism moves in and the charm wears off. show less

It won me over. Couch starts off as a typically Northwestern tale of woe: three underemployed guys - a laid-off programmer, a fey pie-baking hippie boy, and a smooth-talking con artist - share a dismal Portland apartment, down on their luck and starting to feel desperation creeping in around the edges. When they are forced out of their den of lethargy by a flood, they discover that their perniciously comfortable couch may, in fact, be evil, and certainly possesses a mind of its own. As they show more try to figure out what exactly the couch wants, they are drawn into an epic road trip involving secret societies, hobos, lost civilizations, space aliens, drunken fishermen, revolutionaries, and girls, lugging the couch the whole way. Awesomely ridiculous and strangely profound, a thoroughly worthwhile read. show less

A sneaky little book, it tricks you with its early depiction of roommates in Portland, skirting along the edges of poverty, but slowly grows into something stranger and more wonderful. The fantasy aspects of the story are grounded by well-observed details, so that the fantasy elements always seem to have something relatable in them.