Tag Archives: recession

Early Review: Mule

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Mule: A Novel of Moving Weight by Tony D’Souza (pub date 9/27/11)

“And what about myself? Didn’t I hate myself too? To risk my freedom? To think I was so worthless only money could make me better?”

I’ve always found stories of “good guys gone bad” to be extremely compelling. It’s probably why “Breaking Bad” is such a popular show. In the same vein, Mule is a novel about an average man who chooses a life of crime out of desperation, and the consequences that follow.

James and Kate were successful young adults who had everything going for them, until life dealt them the triple-whammy of an unplanned pregnancy and both of them losing their jobs in the Great Recession. After several months of living in poverty in a cabin in rural California, James finds an opportunity to make some real money. A friend of Kate’s has been growing top-grade marijuana, and James offers to transport the product to Texas where another friend can sell it for a profit. It all starts out so simply, just one pound of pot. But when James meets a man in Florida who deals in bulk, James soon finds himself making regular cross-country runs with large quantities of the drug. And he soon finds that all the money he makes comes with a price: buyers who won’t pay, friends who abandon him, and drug dealers who turn on him.

What surprised me the most about this book was the amount of information about drug smuggling and money laundering in it. Pages and pages are dedicated to describing what to say to a cop if you get pulled over with drugs in the car, how to best avoid attracting police attention, and how to hide money from the bank. As someone who worked in retail banking for two years, I can say that the information about bank practices was frighteningly accurate. It was interesting to read how James’s new profession affected his marriage to Kate, and how his character changed throughout the story. I would like to have seen Kate’s character fleshed out a little more. She struck me as unlikeable even at the beginning of the book and didn’t seem to change much later.

Still Mule is an interesting novel. It certainly reflects the time period it was written in. The plight of average Americans who lost their jobs in the recession is still a very real and relatable phenomenon. It’s a very realistic story and I think it could become popular upon its release.

Early Review: My American Unhappiness

New Release Reviews, , ,

My American Unhappiness by Dean Bakopoulos (pub date June 2011)

My American Unhappiness

This is a novel that I was very excited to read, because it deals with a very relatable issue for people my age, the “Gen Y” crowd.  That is the issue of our collective unhappiness, our dissatisfaction with life in general.  In recent years I’ve personally dealt with this issue, mainly stemming from job frustration and having a BA degree that I’ve never really used.  My friends and family have all at one point expressed a similar feeling of general malaise, whether it be related to jobs, relationships, money, or living situations.  So why are Americans so unhappy?

In My American Unhappiness, Zeke Pappas tries to find the answer to that very question.  As the head of a project called “The Inventory of American Unhappiness,” he collects interviews with people across the nation in an attempt to distill a singular answer to why, despite greater (relative) wealth and opportunity than people of other countries,  Americans are generally unhappy.  While working on this project, Zeke finds himself entering a dark period of his own life.  He is trying to come to terms with being a young widower, while taking care of his sick mother and fighting for custody of his orphaned nieces.

This is a very deep and meaningful story, with an unexpected plot twist and a surprisingly uplifting ending.  Well written and thought-provoking, the book is filled with poignant comments on the hopes of young Americans:

“…that life will offer you much, that you will have choices upon choices set out before you like a feast, and all you have to do is choose the kind of happiness you would like to pursue.”

And the reality when they grow up:

“…you don’t care how somebody’s novel, thesis, art, job, marriage, life is going…because you simply don’t have the energy to hear about other people’s struggles and triumphs.  Your own joys and woes are exhausting enough, aren’t they?”

The characters are interesting and complex, especially the character of Minn.  On the surface she is a typical “girl who majored in Humanities but now works at Starbucks,” but her positivity provides a nice contrast to Zeke’s cynicism.

The only thing that detracted from the book was the political commentary.  For me the intermittent side remarks about Bush, Obama, and 9/11 did little to help me understand Zeke’s character, and struck me as self-indulgent on the part of the author.  They bordered on obnoxious and did nothing to advance the story.

That being said, My American Unhappiness is a valuable novel to read, because it speaks to the sentiments of many modern Americans.  If you’ve ever woken up one day and thought “this isn’t what my life was supposed to be like,” you can get something out of this book.