The Lazy Boys: A Novel

by Carl Shuker

Overview

Carl Shuker's protagonist, Richard Sauer, heads off to college for no reason other than to escape the stultifying normalcy of his middle–class family in Timaru, New Zealand. He may appear ordinary in his aimlessness, mangling his way through his first year in college, but his bonging and banging, his anger and rage, take a brutal turn at an out–of–control dorm party which lands Richey in front of the disciplinary committee with a sexual harassment charge. Dropping out of school before he's thrown out, Richey and his housemates Matt, Nick, and Ursula begin a freefall that forces Richey to face his most destructive desires.

Sex, violence, mutilation, and drugs fuel the despair and alienation of these disaffected youth — those once innocent but now struggle to find the right combination of alcohol and drugs to keep an all–night buzz. Like a punch in the stomach or a sustained cry, Carl Shuker's risky and harrowing first person narrative is as visceral as Fight Club and as brutal as A Clockwork Orange. On the surface Richey's actions are unforgivable, but his unformed and distorted world is immediate and recognizable to a generation brought up in a society indifferent to its own nihilism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593761233
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	08/23/2006
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.02(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Carl Shuker is the author of four novels, including The Method Actors, The Lazy Boys, and Anti Lebanon. The Method Actors won the 2006 Prize in Modern Letters. He works for the British Medical Journal, one of the oldest medical journals in the world. He lived in Tokyo and London for many years and now lives in his home country New Zealand with his wife, the novelist Anna Smaill, and their two children.

Editorial Reviews

Richard "Souse" Sauer, the 18-year-old antihero narrator of New Zealand writer Shuker's second novel (after Method Actors) is on a violent behavior jag that would make American Psycho's Patrick Bateman proud. Souse is a sensitive, self-destructive kid made uncomfortable by his first contact with independence as a marketing student at the University of Otago. Unofficially, he has switched to the more congenial discipline of beer guzzling, with a minor in bong hits; one beer-drenched night he does some awful, sexually abusive thing that he can't quite remember to "this blond chick" at a party. Early on, Souse is revealed to be both a sadist (he tortures Snoopy, the family dog, and reads serial killer stories for inspiration) and a sensitive soul (he has a Sylvia Plath poem tacked up in his dorm room). After he leaves college and moves in with some similarly disaffected friends, Souse's days are foggy with parties, bars, self-pity and introspection-the latter two being pretty much identical. Unfortunately, the numbing regularity of Souse's days and nights (party, stupor, self-loathing) diminish the reader's interest long before Souse's final plunge into mayhem. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

A novel that begins with epigrams from the Pixies, the Clash and Milton has good potential. Don't let it fool you. After a promising debut with The Method Actors (2005), a layered portrait of expats in Japan, Shuker takes an odd step backward, time-wise and otherwise, into the demimonde of collegiate underachievers on New Zealand's South Island. It's the aoristic modern age, and 18-year-old Richard Sauer, aka Souse, is a mess who thrives on video nasties, ganja, piss (that is, beer) and piss bongs. "Students are allowed, expected, even obliged to keep up the image-carry out new feats of bonging, drink the most, the quickest, for the longest duration." He has spent most of his grants and student allowances but has yet to attend a class, and, as the cancer-stricken angel who, one supposes, stands for all that is good-his opposite, that is-reminds him, it's April. Oh, yes, young master Sauer is possibly suicidal and certainly violent: Early on, he beats his parents' little dog, while even earlier on, he rapes a young woman. Given this r‚sum‚, it seems that his options are limited: He can join the army or the police, become a mechanic, go to tech school or stay at home "going insane on the dole." He does quite worse than all that. His parents aren't much help in Souse's decline and fall, though they try to be; think of Alex's mum and pop in A Clockwork Orange, and you're most of the way there. Souse is just as bad a piece of work. Shuker writes well, and the stream-of-consciousness weirdness coming out of Souse has moments. But the point of the exercise seems to be unclear, unless it's to report the dreariness of life in the postindustrial Antipodes or warn of what listening to one too manyCure songs can lead to. Absent clear guidance, take these lessons: Stay clear of beer bongs. And of this book, too.

Kirkus Reviews