Boomsday: A Novel (Unabridged)
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In
Boomsday, Christopher Buckley envisions the nation's next brouhaha: generational warfare between Baby Boomers and younger Americans who don't want to be stuck paying the Social Security bill - a conflict that provokes the most outlandish presidential campaign ever.
Cassandra Devine, a straight-A student, was like any other 17-year-old Yale hopeful, until she was forced to join the Army because her father spent her tuition money on a dotcom start-up. Years later, Cassandra has become a Washington spin doctor and blogger who rails against the "Un-greatest" generation's mishandling of Social Security debt. When she learns that her father remarried and bought his dim-witted son's way into Yale, she suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75.
This proposal catches on with outraged citizens and a senator seeking the youth vote for his presidential bid. With the help of Washington's greatest PR strategist, Cassandra and the senator try to ride the issue of euthanasia to the White House. Their opposition includes the president, who's running for reelection; a pro-life preacher, who may have killed his mother; and of course, Baby Boomers.
Customer Reviews
Spit in Social Security's Eye with Tongue-N-Cheek
On occasion when a marquee name actor decides to read a book there is a certain sense of compromise and lowering-the-bar allowance made. they often don;t go as far with the characters as a professional narrator would. Fortunately, no such adjustment has to be for Janeane Garofalo. She does a beautiful job reading this thoughtful and absurdist treatise on the future of the Boomers and the X-Generation and Y-Generation response to the debt the Boomer retirement will cause.
From the complications of politics and religion to the overall congressional political process, Buckley attacks anything that's pompous with a satiric zeal that would have made Jonathan Swift and Will Rogers proud. This is not true politics, but a morality tale spun striaght from the fairy tale world of spin!
Mediocre
The narration is mildly irritating. Characters are given different voices, most of which are annoying, all of which are unnecessary.
The actual novel itself has moments of being funny, but overall long, drawn out, and boring. Characters are one-dimensional and the dialogue doesn't resemble real dialogue, but instead the kind of dialogue that somebody imagines would sound funny if taken seriously.