The Thousands

There really aren’t enough laugh-out-loud-hilarious novels set in the smoldering aftermath of 9/11. So we must thank the Good Lord for Jess Walter’s THE ZERO.

Burned out New York copper Brian Remy, tours baseball players around Ground Zero, eats miso glazed duck in every restaurant, suffers alarming memory lapses after he shoots himself in the head, hangs out with 12-year-old Vietnamese girls in silk pyjamas and (maybe) gets drawn into an unsanctioned intergovernmental domestic spying mission to (maybe) catch members of a Islamic terrorist cell.**A bit of torture here, a big of monster truck there, Remy’s friends (definitely) advocate bombing every country mentioned on the front page of the NEW YORK TIMES (yok, yok, yok) and are signing life rights deals with the William Morris Agency. He’s (maybe) dating the beautiful, heartbroken sister of the missing Islamic woman he’s investigating and (definitely) sexing her middle aged/not terribly attractive boss (but only recovers consciousness AFTER they sex). Imagine a bit of Kafka’s THE TRIAL, a bit of Ishiguru’s THE UNCONSOLED, a bit of Brett Easton Ellis’ GLAMORAMA and passages you’re gonna read out loud and punish your housemates with. Thanks be.