- Book Topics
- Midlife crisis
- Aging men
- Tuba player
- Brock Clark
- Words With Friends
- Bill Roorbach
- Marine sniper
- Marching Bands
- Cryptozoology
- Ron Currie Jr.
- Sasquatch
- Marine sniper
- Piano tuning
- RAD
- John Philip Sousa
- Snapchat
- David Carkeet
- Piano movers
The Futility Experts
Margaret Broucek’s debut novel, The Futility Experts, is a wickedly funny examination of how not to age gracefully. Feeling trapped in a stagnant marriage, working a dead-end job, and desperately coveting the last good parking spot, Tim Turner decides to reinvent himself as a 21 year-old Marine sniper named Rusty. At the same time, Davis Beardsley, a professor of zoology obsessed with imaginary creatures, watches his chances for tenure circle the drain when a new department head takes a dim view of his teaching methods. Delivered with deadpan wit and keen insight, not to mention a decrepit Sasquatch, a Romanian adoptee hell-bent on destruction, and a trio of incontinent lapdogs, The Futility Experts will appeal to fans of Jami Attenberg, Gary Schteyngart, and anyone who likes their comedy with a little chaos.
Links to Reviews
Lit Hub, 5 Great Books You May Have Missed in June
- Book Topics
- Midlife crisis
- Aging men
- Tuba player
- Brock Clark
- Words With Friends
- Bill Roorbach
- Marine sniper
- Marching Bands
- Cryptozoology
- Ron Currie Jr.
- Sasquatch
- Marine sniper
- Piano tuning
- RAD
- John Philip Sousa
- Snapchat
- David Carkeet
- Piano movers
Reviews and Comments
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The Futility Experts starts with a bang and only gets more explosive from there, laughs and satisfying plot twists, a kooky cast, including dogs that only a mother could love. I flipped pages till the night was dawn, dying to figure out how Margaret Brouc
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Margaret Broucek’s The Futility Experts makes hilarious art out of disaster. The characters herein might be failures, but they are inspired failures, and Broucek treats them so humanely that the reader can’t help but root for them. An extravagantly comic
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Broucek’s prose is stunning. Terrific turns of phrase, technicolor images, and a linguistic sensibility left-of-center enough to please and amuse without ever becoming gaudy or otherwise drawing undue attention to itself.
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What Kris Kristofferson said when he discovered John Prine is what comic writers are going to say about Margaret Broucek. She’s so good that we’ll have to break her thumbs.
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So glad to hear absurd was what you were going for, Dear.
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The Futility Experts is my pick this year for fans of A Confederacy of Dunces. I loved this book and hope others will, too.