Louse

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.

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 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.

...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.

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.