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Finbar Dolan is lost and lonely. Except he doesn't know it. Despite escaping his blue-collar Boston upbringing to carve out a mildly successful career at a Madison Avenue ad agency, he's a bit of a mess and closing in on forty. He's recently called off his wedding. Now, a few days before Christmas, he's forced to cancel a long-postponed vacation in order to write, produce, and edit a Superbowl commercial for his diaper account in record time.
Fortunately, it gets worse. He learns that his long-estranged and once-abusive father has fallen ill. And that neither his brothers nor his sister intend to visit. It's a wake-up call for Fin to re-evaluate the choices he's made, admit that he's falling for his coworker Phoebe, question the importance of diapers in his life, and finally tell the truth about his life and his past.
In the spirit of Then We Came to the End and This Is Where I Leave You, novelist John Kenney, a regular New Yorker contributor, mines his own advertising background to creating this moving debut, nothing short of "a masterful blend of wit and seriousness, stunning in its honesty" (Booklist, starred review).
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 22, 2013 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781442358515
- File size: 335653 KB
- Duration: 11:39:16
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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October 8, 2012
The debut novel from New Yorker humorist and former advertising copywriter Kenney is a hilarious ad-world satire and a modest family drama. Finbar Dolan has a successful career in commercials, managing a diaper account for a big New York agency. Otherwise, Fin’s life is a mess: he broke up with his fiancée a month before their wedding, is infatuated with his office assistant, Phoebe, and is estranged from his entire family. When his workaholic boss drags him into the office over Christmas to craft a Super Bowl commercial for biodegradable diapers (one of the concepts involves attaching Al Gore’s head to a global parade of Earth-friendly babies) and his abusive, long-lost father turns up in the hospital, Fin’s universe is tipped on its ear. The advertising insider lore and commercial shoot set pieces are golden; the family drama is less successful. Although set up to seem high stakes, events outside Fin’s control guide his family crisis away from father-son conflict and toward less compelling internal struggles. As a satire, the novel is willing to bite off an ambitious chunk of popular culture, but as a human drama, it chooses to make safe choices. Even so, much is a comic tour de force; fans of Nick Hornby and Jonathan Tropper will have a new author to watch for. Agent: David Kuhn. -
March 25, 2013
“Can I say something else, now that I have your attention? Can I ask you to think about the fact that you got a three-ninety on your math SAT’s? Why do you leave the house in the morning?” These are the thoughts of one Finbar Dolan, whose life is in shambles as he attempts to write an extremely important Super Bowl commercial for his advertising agency. While it sounds as if he’s clearly done well for himself, Dolan is actually a fragile man in crisis. Narrator Robert Petkoff portrays Dolan with a slightly annoyed, somewhat oblivious tone. His narration is engaging and rife with underplayed emotion that builds as Kenney’s irreverent tale unfolds. This audio edition captures the book’s compelling mix of humor and drama and will keep listeners tuned in until the very end. A Touchstone hardcover.
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