Boomsday

I have to tell you about the novel I’m currently reading – Boomsday by Christopher Buckley. I told you about Florence of Arabia by the same author (though Jamie provides a better review of that book here), and you may have seen the fantastic movie Thank You for Smoking, which is based on the novel by Buckley.

Buckley’s genre is political satire, and he’s a master. Boomsday is a story crafted around the Social Security fiasco that is waiting to happen in the United States – namely that as the Baby Boom generation begins to retire, there will be a decreasing number of workers to pay into an inadequately-supplied fund that will have more and more dependents. Doesn’t sound funny? Buckley manages to do it with a heroine who, as a member of the younger generation, politically agitates to have responsible government spending or a tax revolt by her peers. The writing in this novel has been a bit uneven when compared with Florence of Arabia, but there are still some great laughs:

Minturn was sent off to a Swiss sanatorium for a cure consisting of aggressive colonic irrigation and primal screaming. (The two therapies rather complemented each other.)

He took her to a place on Pennsylvania Avenue named Carnivore, owned by a lawyer who had made $15 million from a class-action suit against the Salvation Army for dispensing sugar doughnuts to a half a dozen diabetic disaster victims. It’s a great country.

“Have the four-pound lobster,” Terry said from behind a menu thick as sheetrock and the size of an open newspaper. “It’s scary.”

“Four pounds? That’s not a lobster, that’s an ecosystem.”

“Who was it who told me, a long time ago, ‘Anger is the best motivator’? Wasn’t it your generation that started the whole youth movement thing? Come on, Terry. Forgotten what it’s like to be young and angry?”

Terry shrugged. “I’m middle-aged and angry. With good Scotch, I can deal with the anger.”

“So we’ve gone from ‘Don’t trust anyone over thirty’ to ‘Don’t drink any Scotch under thirty’? Is this what’s become of your revolution?”

There are so many more … but you will have to read the novel yourself. Not that that’s a bad thing! :)