Not a Perfect Novel, But I Loved It
There were some issues with the book, including a rushed conclusion, but I loved it. It was funny, powerful, and provocative. The book manages to be horrifying and deeply funny. And the chapter in Donald Trump’s voice was worth the cost of the book all by itself.
Seven Essential Quotes
Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over a hundred years, no one notices. Where there are no mass graves, no one notices. American outrage is always for show. It has a shelf life.”
Babies are smarter than us. It seems they’re always trying to kill themselves. That’s why we have to watch them every second, so they don’t swallow nickels or drink weed killer or eat Tylenol like candy. Then we get stupid and want to live.”
Money, Mississippi, looks exactly like it sounds. Named in that persistent Southern tradition of irony and with the attendant tradition of nescience, the name becomes slightly sad, a marker of self-conscious ignorance that might as well be embraced because, let’s face it, it isn’t going away.
…the crime, the practice, the religion of it, was becoming more pernicious as he realised that the similarity of their deaths had caused these men and women to be at once erased and coalesced like one piece, like one body. They were all number and no number at all, many and one, a symptom, a sign.
No one was interviewed. No suspects were identified. No one was arrested. No one was charged. No one cared.”
“It’s just a motel. That’s what it is. That’s all it is,” Ed said. “People should rent out that very room and sleep in that very bed and step through that very door and stand on that balcony and realize what happened there. People should know, understand that not all Thursdays are the same.”
“You make it sound like we got numbers,” Rupter said. “Far as I can see, we got us and two other people. Where’s this war taking place? My boy’s got Little League this week.”
“Yeah,” Fester said. “We is scattered all over the country. The very thing that makes the FBI afraid of us is our weakness.”
