Truth in Advertising
A Novel
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4.3 • 55 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives. I have no idea what that means but I believe that in quoting him I appear far more intelligent than I am. I don’t know about second acts, but I do think we get second chances, fifth chances, eighteenth chances. Every day we get a fresh chance to live the way we want.”
FINBAR DOLAN is lost and lonely. Except he doesn’t know it. Despite escaping his blue-collar Boston upbringing to carve out a mildly successful career at a Madison Avenue ad agency, he’s a bit of a mess and closing in on forty. He’s recently called off a wedding. Now, a few days before Christmas, he’s forced to cancel a long-postponed vacation in order to write, produce, and edit a Super Bowl commercial for his diaper account in record time.
Fortunately, it gets worse. Fin learns that his long-estranged and once-abusive father has fallen ill. And that neither of his brothers or his sister intend to visit. It’s a wake-up call for Fin to reevaluate the choices he’s made, admit that he’s falling for his coworker Phoebe, question the importance of diapers in his life, and finally tell the truth about his past.
Truth in Advertising is debut novelist John Kenney’s wickedly funny, honest, at times sardonic, and ultimately moving story about the absurdity of corporate life, the complications of love, and the meaning of family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The debut novel from New Yorker humorist and former advertising copywriter Kenney is a hilarious ad-world satire and a modest family drama. Finbar Dolan has a successful career in commercials, managing a diaper account for a big New York agency. Otherwise, Fin's life is a mess: he broke up with his fianc e a month before their wedding, is infatuated with his office assistant, Phoebe, and is estranged from his entire family. When his workaholic boss drags him into the office over Christmas to craft a Super Bowl commercial for biodegradable diapers (one of the concepts involves attaching Al Gore's head to a global parade of Earth-friendly babies) and his abusive, long-lost father turns up in the hospital, Fin's universe is tipped on its ear. The advertising insider lore and commercial shoot set pieces are golden; the family drama is less successful. Although set up to seem high stakes, events outside Fin's control guide his family crisis away from father-son conflict and toward less compelling internal struggles. As a satire, the novel is willing to bite off an ambitious chunk of popular culture, but as a human drama, it chooses to make safe choices. Even so, much is a comic tour de force; fans of Nick Hornby and Jonathan Tropper will have a new author to watch for.
Customer Reviews
Good read
Story was good, gets a little bogged down with all the advertising jargon. Would have liked more about Fin coming to terms with his Fathers death and forgiveness.
Two Thumbs Up
"Truth in Advertising" starts out as a sleek, entertaining, frothy sip of dazzle. I could tell immediately that the guy could write a ton, but (as with so many books) I thought "Clever... I think I could do that." (I never have, mind you. The terror of the empty page defeats me.)
But the book is slippery. I slid down a gentle slope of "Hey, this is pretty good" until I got to "Whoa - that was skillfully done" and then right over the cliff onto a big patch of "Okay - he's way beyond my league."
By the end of the book I had laughed loud enough to wake up my sleeping husband... and had wiped away the tears I hadn't meant to cry over broken, funny Finbar. Not to mention lost a night of sleep.
I give it a big Double Plus Good, and wish he'd spit out a few dozen more books immediately, please. Because really, don't you think that sleep is overrated?
Humorous
This is a good read with a humorous look at the world of advertising.