Knowledgik

So, yesterday, my inner voracious reader got a good workout while i was waiting to get my hair done at the beauty salon. The basic premise of the novel: an ordinary “Beta Male” loses his wife and is left with a newborn baby. Then he discovers that he is a “Death Merchant,” thanks to the guidance of a man who wears mint green suits. With the help of his lesbian sister, insane Chinese and Russian widow neighbors and his off-the-wall employees (a goth chef and online-dating-obsessed ex-cop), he raises his daughter while basically managing to keep the whole “I collect dead people’s souls” thing to himself. I mean, sure, there’s a whole creepy shadow-minions-talking-to-you-from-the-sewers thing that good ol’ Charlie Asher (the protagonist) has to deal with, but all in all, he maintains a relatively even-keel as he’s faced with the end of the world and the possible overthrow of all humanity by, well, Hell.

This book was maniacally comical. I judge a good novel to have humorous content when I find myself laughing so hard that I genuflect. I doubled over about forty times while sitting in the waiting area. And THAT was just based on the first hundred pages or so. Trust me, the last three hundred pages are even more hysterical, I just wasn’t in a position to bend, given that there was a squat Dominican woman attacking my head. Pick this one up, it’s totally worth it.