I was trying to remember where I heard about this book because it is out of my usual realm....This is like a modern-day Hemingway: lots of fighting, booze, machismo, low opinion of women. Ugh. Supposedly there is a great love story here but it isn't one I'd want to be part of. Intelligent writing and some fascinating thoughts on technology, but as an audio book the crass content was getting to me and I ditched before I was halfway. ( )

If I wanted to read graphic sex in a book I would re-read the Outlander series; at least there I felt the intended romantic and loving sex was actually romantic and loving. Plus the story couldn't hold my attention enough to get over that blip.

3 stars because it kept me interested, but sometimes confused. I can't tie the title into anything in the book, so if someone can explain that, plus most of the book, that'd be great. Am I supposed to take anything from this other than it's a mock-memoir, a total navel gazing approach to fiction, if that's possible, but also has the complexity of Singularity? Am I just thinking too hard because it's the first postmodern novel I've ever read? ( )

While I liked the meta-ness of Ron Currie writing a novel about Ron Currie, and his clever, rueful, sad voice, by page 60 it felt a little claustrophobic being trapped inside Ron Currie's head. I liked his tangents on 'the Singularity', when the internet wakes up and computers become conscious and realize that there's no need for humans. Reminds me of what I liked so much about his first book 'Everything Matters!'. I will be on the lookout for his next book.

The author Ron Currie, Jr. is fictional. He may wish that he were mythical but for purposes of this novel he is fictional. And as such, he promises at the outset that everything he will tell us is capital-T True. What follows is a tale of suicidal infatuation, lust, hard drinking, fisticuffs, sex, misapprehension, deception, and self-absorption. All of which is counterpointed by a superficial exploration of the meaning and plausibility of the notion of the AI Singularity. The insights, such as they are, amount to little more than the platitude that the “lies” of fiction are all “true”. It’s a lengthy journey to get to such a banal observation, which is not, surprisingly, shortened by the fact that many or most of the pages in the novel have only a brief paragraph of text.

Ron Currie, the character (I can’t speculate about the author), is clearly enamoured of the hard men of 20th century literature. He seems to model himself on their behaviour of prodigious drinking, brawling, and the kind of sex that he proudly tells us brings his partner to epiphanies. It’s probably just as well that he is fictional. He’d be insufferable if he were real. Of course such narcissistic men are burdened by a self-love that they try desperately to disguise as self-loathing. But the egoism wins out. So even Ron Currie’s suicide (the fictional suicide, I mean) eventuates in an astounding surge in his popularity as a novelist, so much so that he is forced to return to “life” in order to face his adoring audience. A Huck Finn for the ages, surely.

Additionally, in what passes these days as seriously dealing with end of life issues, Currie (the character) recounts episodically the sad decline and death of his father due to cancer. Here it just seems like one more unconnected thread in the life of the character.

Not even a nicotine patch, the eponymous flimsy little plastic miracles, can breathe life into this “comic” novel. And thus, not recommended. ( )