Lord Vishnu's Love Handles: A Spy Novel (Sort Of)

"Lord Vishu's Love Handles," written in the present tense using a wacky first-person narrator whose every other word seems to be of the four-letter variety, springs from an utterly absurd premise, uses cliched phrases when it wants to, and resists any attempt to pigeonhole it into a particular genre. Will Clarke's complete disregard for literary convention goes along way toward explaining why this entertaining work was spurned by traditional publishers until it proved its marketability by developing a cult readership as a self-published novel under the aptly-named "Middlefinger Press."

Our hero is Travis Anderson, an alcoholic suburbanite whose obsession over his wife's possible infidelity and growing uneasiness with his psychic show more abilities drive him into financial ruin and make him easy prey for recruitment by a shadowy arm of the government that covets his unusual remote viewing skills. What follows is a series of darkly comical adventures in which Travis is forced to reexamine his comfortable, yuppie-fat-inducing lifestyle in the context of the Hindu religion, pit his talents against a rogue remote viewer who fancies himself as the second coming of Rasputin, and save the day in one of the most outrageous climax scenes imaginable.

This book made me laugh harder than anything I've read since Carl Hiaasen's "Skinny Dip," all the while reinforcing some good old fashioned values, like the sanctity of all living things, the evils of jealousy and materialism, and the importance of family. We can only hope that Paramount exercises its option rights and that the film remains true to Clarke's offbeat vision.

-Kevin Joseph, author of "The Champion Maker" show less

Lord Vishnu's Love Handles is unexpectedly fleshy and overly brash. Its protagonist spends so much time shooting his mouth off that I think the author may have forgotten that, as readers, we're probably more apt to enjoy his work if we don't hate its main character. There's no redemption here. There's barely a coherent plot. What there is, in spades, is a lot of unnecessary bawdiness.

The premise is simple, and then convoluted. Yuppie man leads charmed existence, with a side of psychic abilities and a drinking problem. His life is turned upside down and he ends up making a deal with the devil (in this case a super-secret government ESP organization). Enter the bad guy and a dozen or so plot mishaps magically healed by convenient show more sixth-sense-iness. Sprinkle with lots of excessive aggression and pseudo-sexy undertones and viola!

Don't get me wrong. I love a good silly yet dirty romp as much as the next girl, but this one left me feeling unfulfilled. Like I'd somehow just read a big mac and then wiped the grease off my hands onto a second-hand negligee. show less

Lord Vishnu's Love Handles is unexpectedly fleshy and overly brash. Its protagonist spends so much time shooting his mouth off that I think the author may have forgotten that, as readers, we're probably more apt to enjoy his work if we don't hate its main character. There's no redemption here. There's barely a coherent plot. What there is, in spades, is a lot of unnecessary bawdiness.

The premise is simple, and then convoluted. Yuppie man leads charmed existence, with a side of psychic abilities and a drinking problem. His life is turned upside down and he ends up making a deal with the devil (in this case a super-secret government ESP organization). Enter the bad guy and a dozen or so plot mishaps magically healed by convenient show more sixth-sense-iness. Sprinkle with lots of excessive aggression and pseudo-sexy undertones and viola!

Don't get me wrong. I love a good silly yet dirty romp as much as the next girl, but this one left me feeling unfulfilled. Like I'd somehow just read a big mac and then wiped the grease off my hands onto a second-hand negligee. show less

This is a funny book, a little sophomorish (genre bending some reviewers on Amazon said - big No to that.) But to his credit, Clarke takes on some existential questions.

The story veers sci-fi'ish - Travis Anderson can see into the future, random things like knowing before the phone rings that it is his mother-in-law calling or beating the computer all day long guessing the color of the cow's udders on PsychicCow.com (yes, they created the site as a promotional tool, and you can do it all day long too if you're so inclined).

So when he has dreams that his wife is doing his business partner, he believes it even though he's got no concrete proof something is going on. His wife it turns out is pregnant (is the child his or not, we never show more find out till the end). And if things can't get better, they really shouldn't get any get any worse - Travis' alcoholism gets out of hand and he starts seeing the blue skinned dude, the eponymous Vishnu of the title; his firm is audited and it is discovered that Reed Bindler, his partner has been swindling IRS of money and they collectively owe Uncle Sam something to the tune of 5 million dollars. IRS ropes in Travis to do psychic work for them in exchange for forgiving the 5 million debt. How he encounters enough dark forces for a lifetime and comes to love his wife and family in spite of her obvious promiscuity forms the rest of the book.

Part of the problem with the book is the use of dreams, visions and other such hooey as literary devices. It just stretches the imagination a little too tenuous, so I cannot imagine anyone other than a die-hard sci-fi fan actually enjoying the book. On the other hand, once I realized this book was more sci-fi and potty humor, I stopped expecting anything like religion or spirituality, so finding it was a pleasant surprise. The spirituality Travis Anderson ends up espousing is part Hindu, part mysticism. There're very Hindu concepts - for example both the dark forces, represented by the characters Ikshu and SageRat, and the light forces (Travis himself) work for the same master - the US government.

More interesting is the fact that this book was a breakout book on Amazon.com. Will Clarke went from being a self-publisher to having his book picked up by Simon and Schuster. Who says self-publishing has to be the ugly redheaded stepchild to traditional publishing? Not Will Clarke who's laughing all the way to the bank with the optioning of this book by Hollywood. (Refer the exclusive interview with Lord Vishnu - it gives a glimpse into Clarke's thinking) show less

This book is a lot of fun.

Travis, a website creator, has psychic abilities. For instance he knows his wife is unfaithful. Her DNA speaks to him. Says it’s not his wife’s fault, she’s just got slut DNA and by having that it enables her genes to spread widely.

By playing psychiccow.com and guessing the colour of the cow’s udders, Travis is picked up by the CIA to do psychic spy work. He owes five million in taxes so he agrees.

The plot is constantly engaging and quite a page turner.

I think someone could make a movie out of this book. Some of the characters really come to life. There’s a psychic duo SageRat. They are brother and sister who are in vampire get-up. And they work together in sync even winking as one.

Some really good show more moments when Travis takes Percodan and with psychic resonance makes everyone laugh.

Travis ends up saving the world by ODing on Perc while in Disneyland and thus making the evil psychic Ikshu have such a giggle fit he goes into a coma. (Ikshu had a heart monitor that was wired to an A-bomb set up.)

It’s a treasure to the end. I didn’t get bored one bit. Didn’t want to put it down. Yep. Will Clarke ‘doesn’t want you to know where he lives or what he’s doing next’, but I’d watch out for his next book, it might be a fun romp like this one. show less

A fun, light read. Compare to two other books I've just read, in a sort of synchronistical way: Breakfast with the Buddha (terrific) and the old classic Cat's Cradle (not as great as I remembered). This is obviously a book hoping to become a movie, and reminded me of Jennifer Government, which is going to be a movie, I think. A first-time book by a thirtysomething who seems unable to write outside of his own milieu (his protagonist is obviously a self-portrait, and that always makes me think less of a book, whether it should or not). If you share his worldview and demographic, you may find the book very funny. It kept me entertained while recovering from the flu, but I don't think I would've read it otherwise. It's full of plot holes, show more and is totally unbelievable, not to mention how he's distorted and mis-used the work of Rupert Sheldrake and others. So, in summary, if you're a shallow thirtysomething, living the high life in Dallas and know nothing about remote viewing or morphic resonance, this book should be just the ticket. Otherwise, read it when you're in a flu-induced fog, and you'll have a passable time. I shit you not, dude. ; ) show less

the publishing equivalent of an album made in teh basement on a four track. Part independent/ part polished / part pure pop culture. This was a fun read that thankfully the Author printed instead of selling to a script agent and turned it into a weak sci-fi series with an 8 episode run on the Lifetime channel.