You Comma Idiot’s author Doug Harris is not Atlantic Canadian, nor does he live here, but, Goose Lane, one of my favourite publishers, are based here and this book is so worth being the first one I break the rules for. (Just this once.)
You Comma Idiot, a novel in second-person, puts the fun back in books and is sure to be one of the fall’s most entertaining reads. You’ll bust your guts laughing and you might even crack a rib. More importantly, all humour aside, Harris is great writer. There is a praise-worthy attention to detail here, and that’s what makes it the pageturning accomplishment it is.
In stores September 17th, 2010. Get it, trust me. And hats off to Julie Scriver for yet another top-notch bookcover.
Excerpt:
From the first two pages, “You are the kind of guy who falls in love after one date. You’re the kind of guy who rehearses a conversation fifty times in your head head and then blows it when it’s for real … You are not, it is fair to say, a good-looking guy. You were given a look too dreary and drawn … you are skinny and tall. Very Tall … Jackets hang off you like they’re sopping wet and sweatshirts engulf your laughable shoulders. The average tie covers half your chest. Clothes hate your guts. As soon as you step outside your apartment you feel as though you’re on display for all to cringe at … Strangely, you don’t do well with women. You are, more accurately, the kind of guy who gives other men the confidence to approach them.”
Backcover Summary:
Marginalized and alienated, perennial fuck-up Lee Goodstone is a resounding zero: a small-time hash-dealing slacker with no ambition about where his life isn’t going. One morning, Honey, his best friend’s girlfriend, inexplicably jumps into bed with him. Then another friend, Henry, is accused of kidnapping a teenaged girl no one knew he was seeing. Lee gets embroiled in the mêlée, finds himself making flip remarks to the media, and his mediocre existence officially spirals out of control.
Told in the second person, YOU comma Idiot is a cringeworthy, laugh-out-loud flight on the wings of the protagonist. The roller-coaster ride of a plot leads at breakneck speed to places even Lee can’t anticipate.
Great Trailer:
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