#robert glancy

[therumpus]

Or maybe it was a nightmare for citizens cast in the dream of their dictator. For these perfectly orchestrated visits were studies in propaganda. And so as I grew older I came to appreciate that there were two Malawis—the utopia of my childhood and the dystopia of a dictatorship. The book is an attempt to marry those two contradictions.

THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW with Robert Glancy

[a-pitchfork-said-no]

I miss you and I'm sorry I rarely write but your emails are so full of life I fear if I send you an email that it will reveal how full of death my own life has become.

Terms and Conditions by Robert Glancy

“Why didn’t I reach back to him when he was reaching out to me?

Then I realized what it was. It was the dreariness: life’s dull days heaped upon me, each day no heavier than dust, yet piled high the weight became hopelessly heavy, and so, when someone said, ‘Hey, are you all right, Frank?’ all I could do was wave it away with impulsive politeness, saying, ‘Oh, yeah sure, I’m fine.’”

[litrant]

Forgetting can be funny

Terms & Conditions: A Novel* by Robert Glancy (Bloomsbury USA, $26).

In general, when the main character of a novel has amnesia, the book will be a tragedy, a melodrama, or something that belongs on the Lifetime Network.  

Frank Shaw wakes up in a hospital with a traumatic head injury and a case of near-total amnesia. He can remember his law--he's a specialist in that part of contract law from which the novel takes its title, also known as "the fine print that always screws you over"--but he doesn't remember the people in his life or how he feels about them.

It doesn't sound all that funny, but as Frank begins to reconstruct his life--and discovers that he was kind of an asshole--he also uncovers some facts about the people around him that he doesn't much care for, as well as some new uses for that contractual language that's his specialty.

Throughout, though, author Robert Glancy has left us will all sorts of fine print--the terms and conditions of Frank's life, if you will--that highlight just how smart he is as he skewers the hypocrisy, dishonesty, selfishness, etc. of which people are guilty. 

As Frank flexes his contract muscles and becomes a better man, his respect for the fine print makes it possible to deliver a comeuppance or two. This is, truly, a very funny book; Glancy's gift is all in the tone and in wise use of the novels controlling metaphor.

[laranoiastuff]

We are bound by delicate strings.

Frank, Terms & Conditions (Robert Glancy)

[thereadist]

Saturday Book Trailer Round-up

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUkWl6bHJ40&w=560&h=315] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyhCMcBxQ10&w=560&h=315] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVqkn4Fmpn0&w=560&h=315]…

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