Business
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- 8,99 €
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- 8,99 €
Publisher Description
A dark coming-of-age comedy set in a world of scoundrels and misfits at the end of their tether.
Paul Wint quits his dead-end gig composing greeting cards and falls in with Hornsmith, an ailing con on his last score. Hornsmith is running a scam on Dr. Courtney, a cosmetic surgeon, and Simon Trang, a shadowy narc. He says it’s business, but it’s really more of a blackmail job.
And it’s not working out. While Hornsmith’s distracted by his intestinal cancer, Courtney’s gangsters plot to kill the deal. Soon, Paul can’t see his way for the complications in the swindle. His obsession with Marla, a singer with The Raging Socket, doesn’t help.
After a mysterious fire destroys his apartment building, Paul sets out on a road trip that is both terrifying and ridiculous, a trip through America that brings together immigrants, crooks, and seekers in the vast, unforgiving, inspiring spaces of the desert.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set primarily in Toronto, Meyboom's weak debut mixes humor with crime tropes, yet too often loses its way trying to lampoon consumerism. At its center is Paul Wint, a greeting card writer recruited by Albert Hornsmith as heir apparent of "the Business," a moneymaking scheme that strings wealthy entrepreneurial clients along with promises of book deals, real estate, and media coverage. As Paul learns the ropes, he falls for rock singer Marla, who's tangled up with a dangerous drug dealer. When one of the Business's clients catches wind of the scam and sends a pair of Russian thugs to rough up Paul and threaten his and Hornsmith's lives, Paul reconsiders his role. Then, Hornsmith dies in a freak accident, leaving Paul as the sole target for the client's ire. Meyboom effectively establishes the story, carving out funny characters and scenes of peril, yet a whiplash narrative shift tosses these elements aside as Paul spends the back half of the novel delivering Marla's drug-dealing acquaintance's 1968 Firebird from Toronto to California. Characters previously introduced vanish, never to return, and while the road trip is amusing, it relies on unbelievable coincidences (and ghosts). The novel feels like two stories stitched together, and neither fully satisfy.
