Once again, Dave Barry proves sometimes the best man for the job can be found in the mirror. As he has done with several books, newspaper columnist Barry narrates INSANE CITY with the skill of a seasoned performer. He's not big on accents or sound effects, but his faithful reading serves his novel well. This forces the listener to concentrate on the words themselves. The book is about the wedding of a spoiled socialite to Sean, the most principled man in the world, who insists on rescuing a homeless Haitian family on his wedding day. Assisted by his goofy friends and hangers-on, including an orangutan that just muddies the plot, the hapless bridegroom battles an insane city to give his fiancée her storybook wedding. M.S. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Lunatics
Narrated by Dave Barry, Alan Zweibel
Dave BarryUnabridged — 7 hours, 5 minutes
Lunatics
Narrated by Dave Barry, Alan Zweibel
Dave BarryUnabridged — 7 hours, 5 minutes
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Overview
Philip Horkman is a happy man-the owner of a pet store called The Wine Shop, and on Sundays a referee for kids' soccer. Jeffrey Peckerman is the sole sane person in a world filled with goddamned jerks and morons, and he's having a really bad day. The two of them are about to collide in a swiftly escalating series of events that will send them running for their lives, pursued by the police, soldiers, terrorists, subversives, bears, and a man dressed as Chuck E. Cheese.
Where that all takes them you can't begin to guess, but the literary journey there is a masterpiece of inspiration and mayhem. But what else would you expect from the League of Comic Justice?
AUTHOR BIOS: Dave Barry's recent bestselling books include his Peter Pan prequels, written with Ridley Pearson; Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far); and I'll Mature When I'm Dead. He lives in Coral Gables, Florida. To learn more about Dave Barry, please visit www.davebarry.com.Alan Zweibel is one of the original Saturday Night Live writer, the winner of multiple Emmy Awards for his television work and the Thurber Prize for his novel The Other Shulman, and collaborator with Billy Crystal on the Tony Award-winning play 700 Sundays. He lives in Short Hills, New Jersey. To learn more about Alan Zweibel, please visit www.alanzweibel.com.
Editorial Reviews
Humorists Barry (Tricky Business) and Zweibel (The Other Shulman) team up to spin the madcap adventure of Philip Horkman and Jeffrey A. Peckerman, who meet on the soccer pitch of a Fort Lee, N.J., girls’ 10-and-under league championship game, where Horkman calls Peckerman’s daughter offside. Alternating chapters of mutual loathing between Horkman, a coarse, “forensic plumber,” and Peckerman, the progressive owner of a pet store called the Wine Shop, chronicle a fight that escalates by accident and miscalculation to encompass high seas piracy and revolution. As unwitting as the characters in Woody Allen’s Without Feathers—or, better yet, as inept as Bananas’ Fielding Mellish—Horkman and Peckerman stumble over themselves trying to escape police, nudists, a lemur named Buddy, a tank in Tiananmen Square, fruit-wielding Somalis, Yemeni terrorists, Chuck E. Cheese, and Donald Trump. Energetic, scatological, and profoundly silly. Agents: (for Barry) Amy Berkower, Writers House; (for Zweibel) Laura Nolan, Paradigm. (Jan. 10)
An outrageously funny, irreverent, over-the-top comic mystery.”—Sun Sentinel
“A s**tload of hilarious fun.”—The Kentucky Democrat
“As bizarre as their adventures are, there's a strange sense of believability…That helps keep the story fresh and the pages turning…Creative, unusual and over the top.” —The Associated Press
“Rare political satire…With world affairs in the toilet, Barry and Zweibel bring us what we need: comic relief.”— The Boston Globe
Prizewinning humorists Barry and Zweibel poke fun at the post-9/11 paranoia that blankets our nation. After a minor squabble, a pet-shop owner and a forensic plumber are mistaken for international terrorists and stumble from one crazy episode to another while generating wider notoriety. The authors read their material themselves, perfectly embodying these two numskulls who are polar opposites. Both funny and poignant. (LJ 4/15/12)
(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Barry’s third humorous thriller, cowritten with Zweibel, follows two suburban New Jersey-ites, whose feud escalates into a globe-hopping series of mishaps that alter the world’s political landscape. Horkman (Zweibel) and Peckerman (Barry) each tell parts of the story, in succession. Zweibel is excellent as Horkman, decent, thoughtful, and long suffering. Barry’s reading is also fine, but he sounds too intelligent to fully convince as the boorish, knuckleheaded Peckerman. For those familiar with Barry’s reading of earlier books, Peckerman’s nastiness and foul mouth may be jarring, and the book starts out more unpleasant than entertaining. But when the gonzo slapstick and satire kick in, this blackly humorous farce is frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Interpolated “newscasts” with “Brian Williams” and “Tom Brokaw” are especially amusing. W.M. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
A novel for those who love one-liners, outrageous characters and loopy plots. Jeffrey Peckerman has a beef—plenty of them, in fact, but his initial one involves what he views as an unfair offsides call at his 11-year-old daughter's soccer game. The ref who makes the questionable call is Philip Horkman, owner of a pet store incongruously called The Wine Shop (because his in-laws, the Wines, funded his business venture). And thus begins one of the strangest buddy novels of this or any century. The hapless characters begin a hate-hate relationship that literally takes them around the globe, starting with an escaped lemur, an insulin pump and the misapprehension that Peckerman and Horkman are members of al-Qaeda trying to blow up the George Washington Bridge. To escape, they make their way onto a cruise ship about to leave New York harbor, only to discover that it's clothing optional. Horkman starts to fall in love with a nun (after all, she's not wearing her habit) and plunges overboard to save her when she's swept away in a storm. From here events get even goofier, as the two opponents land in Cuba (and co-lead a revolution), then go to Mozambique (and are captured by pirates), thence to Yemen (where they are rescued by the Mossad), afterwards to Beijing (and lead a protest in Tiananmen Square), and finally to California, where they meet Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention and where Horkman, despite being a Democrat, is nominated for president. (Later, Peckerman becomes the Democratic nominee, but his obscenity-laced speeches are the despair of his handlers.) Throughout their romp around the world they're constantly at each other's throats, either literally or metaphorically, Horkman's prissiness playing off of Peckerman's crude cynicism. An antidote, if one is needed, to gritty urban realism.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940172074912 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 01/10/2012 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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