How To Break Bad News
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Dumped by his activist girlfriend when he won’t commit to her brand of idealism, reporter Scott Thomas sets out to prove his own dedication to do-gooding. He goes undercover at a fast-food Mexican restaurant where he hopes to lay blame for workplace abuses on the chain’s owner, the next secretary of labor.
But instead of revealing corporate wrongdoing, Scott’s hidden camera captures his own ineptitude – and his confused flirtation with Maria, a single mom who works the counter. Not sure if he’s out to do good or just impress, Scott vows to save Maria from their boss’s sexual harassment. But Maria may not be the one who needs saving.
Darkly funny and deeply entertaining, How to Break Bad News looks at a man trying to change the world without changing himself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Molloy's debut stages a bittersweet love story against the backdrop of television news, and while it builds into a diatribe against the dumbing down of news, the book itself is about as sophisticated as a goofy prime-time sitcom. Scott Thomas, a 29-year-old field producer at an unnamed network, is recovering from a breakup when he's sent on an undercover assignment to a fast-food restaurant called Gringo's Southwestern Mexican Grille. Much of the novel is wasted on the tedium of uncovering the story, whether it's debating the linguistics of sanitation manuals with his fast-food boss or having sex with his boss from the network. Scott is not an easy character to spend time with; his do-goodery is incredibly annoying (as when he argues with a rental car agency employee for not giving him a Prius), and his transformation late in the story comes across as temporary and false. Many of the plot points that bring about the novel's close are as implausible as they are confusing.
