Louse
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Book Overview
A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year
Herbert Horatio "Poppy" Blackwell was once a daring aviator, an illustrious movie producer, and a brilliant businessman. A Howard Hughes-like mogul, Poppy has become a recluse with paralyzing fears of infection. Cloistered in the penthouse high above his desert gambling empire, he is attended by a small army of maids and footmen and lawyers and physicians, who live in a state of constant surveillance as they cater to his eccentric, paranoid demands.Herman Q. Louse is Poppy's valet, one of the many indentured servants who have racked up an insurmountable debt in his casino (and whose long-term memories have subsequently been erased). Louse's primary duty is to administer Poppy's medication: near-lethal doses of benzodiazepines. But as he goes about his carefully monitored business, he becomes aware of a growing conspiracy against Poppy and becomes his unlikely protector--that is, until people start to point fingers at Louse.
Dark, disturbing, yet acerbically funny, Louse by David Grand is a vividly imagined tale, at once timely and unforgettable.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1250063639
ISBN13:9781250063632
Release Date:February 2015
Publisher:Picador USA
Length:272 Pages
Weight:0.70 lbs.
Dimensions:0.5" x 5.4" x 8.7"
Customer Reviews
5 ratings
A whole new class of fiction.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
Finally there is a book with vision, a book that stands out among the barrage of new writers that continue to sound alike, look alike. It is like a modern combination of Gogol and Kafka,and yet it is entirely new. The story is eerily funny, and the view as a whole is intelligent, brilliant. Grand is an author to watch, as he will become one of this genertions major writers.
Pure Brilliance
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
This is an absolutely amazing book, some sort of crazy progeny of Terry Gilliam & Joan Didion. With mesmerizing precision David Grand simultaneously constructs & unravels this fantastical nightmare-futuristic world and yet manages to ground it in reality: in delicate, emotional humanity & true if mind-boggling recent American history. Yes, twisted & grim & haunting, a little angry and perhaps a lot odd, but so refreshingly unique & mostly just pure brilliance.
A twisted, surreal, but utterly poignant novel
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
A novel dense with precise language, dark comedy, chilling atmosphere, and brimming with ideas, Louse dares create the world where the individual is sacrificed for the good of the coporation, where identity is the currency for survival. Not necessarily original themes, but Grand's unique and twisted handling of them makes Louse as addictive a novel I have read in a very long time.
Why *you* can relate...
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
...to this particular perversion of humanism.Trapped in a late-capitalist megalopolis, I am in touch with the feelings of alienation and schizophrenia that so many people seem to lament. In anonymity and depersonalization there seems a comfort and security that appeals to the destitute in all of us. Louse gave me an eye into the mind of the pyramid-builder, the servant so spiritually bankrupt that he vests his emotions in the dreams of a despot in order to achieve a sense of belonging, a justification for his fate. The narrative rolls along just past the fingertips of the protagonist's will, fate constantly upsetting his expectations as in a hardboiled-noir. But this is no nostalgia piece, no literary conceit - this is a well-told story, a vision of how a torturer can manipulate the tortured, regardless of the end or environment. Read in one sitting, it captivates in its honest treatment of soul's bleak horizons.
If Pynchon could still write a good book, this might be it
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
Louse reads like Don Delillo, James Ellroy, David Foster Wallace and Terry Gilliam all wrote a novel together--and it worked absolutely perfectly, allowing the best parts of each of them to shine. Louse is based loosely on the last days of Howard Hughes, when the man has completely lost himself to his obsession with hygiene and mania for absolute power, locked himself in the penthouse of his own casino and surrounded himself with troops of supposedly absolutely loyal servants. Louse is the most perfect combination of maverick originality, obvious intelligence, and entertaining storytelling in a novel in a long, long time.
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