Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie Jr.: If you like navel gazing, then have I got the book for you. Our narrator is living on an island (presumably somewhere in the Caribbean), obsessing over the woman he loves. He also talks a bit about his father who died of cancer, the idea of machines becoming sentient, and then more about the woman he loves and their often violent relationship. In between he does a whole hell of a lot of drinking and driving and fighting and moping. And, to be perfectly honest, it’s just not all that interesting. The plot doesn’t show up until about two thirds of the way through, and even that is disappointing in how little it affects the narrator. He doesn’t change in any meaningful way. The sentient machines bit is pointless and apparently unrelated to much of anything; the description of his father’s illness is painful and also not clearly related to the story of the woman he loves. Which, given the sheer volume of pages dedicated to her, I would assume is the main point of the story. But I don’t know. I do know that there was a whole lot of paper wasted in the printing of this thing, as each “chapter” is extremely short, most well under a single page. Replacing these page breaks with double line breaks would probably cut the page count by more than a third. In short, I’m sure there are plenty of people who would genuinely enjoy this book, but I found it pointless overall, something I would not have finished except for the dwindling hope that eventually the author would have something to say to make it all worth it, a story to tell or even a poignant bit of description. But alas, no.

Also posted on BookCrossing.