Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie Jr.
My rating: 4/5 cats
if you like your love stories unconventional and ultimately sad (ach, don’t wave that spoiler-finger at me – that is a page-19 spoiler), then this is probably a good match for you.
it is about the frailty of human romantic love, the power of the written word, the difficulties that “truth” faces in our works of fiction, how to leave someone for their own good, what the living have to witness in the slow death of another, and the possibilities of the singularity.
i know, right?
this is my first ron currie, but now i know i am going to backtrack and get on his earlier works. his writing is that perfect blend of storytelling and delightful meta-humor that those gregs and mfsos like so much.
and it’s got that mainline-to-tragedy that reads my mail.
so everyone wins.
at its root, this is indeed a love story, but this story shifts between the past and the present, the death of the ron-currie-named writer-narrator’s father, ray kurzweil’s predictions about the machiiiiiines
and the blurry boundaries of truth.
the love bits are the operatic, all-consuming, violent-bedroom kinds of love. two people who cannot live without each other, but who most often find themselves apart. and the painful but necessary realities of this kind of explosive love. the selfless giving everything up for another. and the aftermath – not a finding-of-self in the absence of the love-object, but a conscious negation of self – up to and including an attempt at the ultimate negation.
is that vague enough?
because i want you people to read this, so i don’t want to broadcast its secrets and its journey. but i also don’t want to be so vague that you will just goggle-eye me.
it’s sad and lovely, and you might be surprised by the reversals of what-is-sad and what-is-lovely.
that’s all you get for now.
bide your time…
