Funny, entertaining, surreal, dreaming, philosophic, exactly like any other books by Daniel Wallace his latest work: Extraordinary Adventures.I won't never get bored by Wallace. The creator of Big Fish is back with a tender, fantastic (in both senses) novel.
I also love a lot the words he uses, and the mental situations in which sometimes his characters live in, with considerations about life, and death wonderfully well-structured.
The story is the one of Edsel Bronfman 34 years, still women inexperienced, without too much luck in his life.
The author will write somewhere that the failure of many is the success of someone else. If not, why should "someone else" be successful?
His mom suffers of dementia, she lives all alone in her little house talking with the ghost of Edsel's dad, never known by him. Edsel visits her mom discovering in an afternoon much more about his dad, a complete stranger to him since at that moment than in the rest of his life.
The book starts with a call from a certain Carla D'Angelo at Edsel.
He has won a vacation from Extraordinary Adventures.
He won a weekend in Destin, Florida, the name is all a promise, but the woman adds, he should bring with him a girl. He has 79 days of time to find the proper person before this expiration date, this deadline.
And now what to do?
There is still a lot of time: 79 days a long time for picking up the best choice, although the man is single.
This situation is paradoxically lived by Bronfman like a sort of count down.
He wants to find someone, he wants to go somewhere with someone, although he doesn't know what to do. He tried sex once when he was in the teenage age but it was devastatingly embarrassing.
Then time passed by and here he is.
His mom thinks he has never learned to live.
He doesn't want to invite the first girl he finds but what to do?
He has a friend, he suspects he stole his house's things, discovering he isn't surrounded at all by gentle people.
There are his memories about his past girls, because after all, bloody hell he had had someone during his teenage age and so all his mistakes and the reasons why it didn't work out return in his mind.
In the book many other surprises! A corpse as well and an investigation.
At the end Bronfman will pick up the perfect woman for him? Well you know the location is Destin, so maybe the end positive. Who knows?
;-)
What I found hilarious were these escalation of events, started thanks to the call of Sant' Angelo.
There is always in our life an episode in grade to generate a reaction in our life and that will keep us more alive.
De fact, Bronfman is more alive, where possible, he is a calm boy, determined to spend some days relaxed, considering that he hasn't never won anything in his life.
As I told before, I fall in love for the writing-style of Wallace.
Poetic, surreal, suspended all the time between reality and dream, between irrational and rational.
His characters are immersed all the time in peculiar, wonderful, tender and absorbing dialogues with themselves and the other ones without any simplistic approach but going directly into that weird, sweet, hidden chords of our life that not all the time we explore.
Highly recommended for sure!
I thank NetGalley and St.Martin's Press for this ebook!
Anna Maria Polidori
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