Rating: Summary: Bill...you're great Review: Pest Control was one of my favorite books....too funny. OK, now we have "Cross Dressing" as another favorite book. Brothers, church, prostitute, what a wonderful scenario. I love hysterical reads...Fitzhugh provides me with this. Laugh and love the characters. The rich vs. poor, sainted vs. slutty, moviedom vs. churchdom. Hey, I am having a wonderful time with Fitzhugh's book. It all makes for a wonderful ending.
Rating: Summary: Bill...you're great Review: Pest Control was one of my favorite books....too funny. OK, now we have "Cross Dressing" as another favorite book. Brothers, church, prostitute, what a wonderful scenario. I love hysterical reads...Fitzhugh provides me with this. Laugh and love the characters. The rich vs. poor, sainted vs. slutty, moviedom vs. churchdom. Hey, I am having a wonderful time with Fitzhugh's book. It all makes for a wonderful ending.
Rating: Summary: I'd give it 4 1/2, but.... Review: This book is good. It's "laugh-out-loud" funny. I did not like "The Organ Grinders" one single bit (well, okay, maybe a single bit). Pest Control is one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. Cross Dressing harkens back to Pest Control. At time, Cross Dressing was a little too "preachy" for me, especially the flashbacks. All-in-all, though, a definite must read!
Rating: Summary: Interesting, a quick and entertaining read Review: This book was great! It was a very funny (laugh out loud funny) and quick read. Extrememly enjoyable. I couldn't wait to get home to read more. Bill Fitzhugh at his best!
Rating: Summary: A Royal Scam? Review: This is a very funny and inventive novel, skewering both Madison Avenue and religious institutions with the same gleeful tone.As a Steely Dan fan, though, I found it a double pleasure. Not only do names come straight from SD song lyrics (Josie, Peg, Third World Man, Razor Boy and Charlie Freak), but complete lines from songs are woven into the narrative. Fitzhugh even manages to have the band appear in an oblique cameo. And who's the main character? Dan Steele!
Rating: Summary: Identity Switch Brings More Than A Bargain Review: This is a wonderful blend of comedy, strange fiction, satire and good old fine commentary on life. Bill Fitzburg presents the unlikely scenario of an advertising executive who adopts his twin brother's identity as a Catholic Priest. Well crafted characters make the story more and more comical, yet touching. A fast and funny read! Highly recommended.
Rating: Summary: A fun, great read! Review: This is my second Fitzhugh novel and boy, am I glad I stumbled across this irreverant novelist. This sometimes sad, sometimes slapstick novel was an absolute joy to read. Was the ending a bit too 'Hollywood?' Sure - what else would you expect out of this L.A. story?
Other reviewers have expressed concern over the perceived 'anti-church' bias in the book. While I am not a Catholic, I am a devout Christian and I had no problem with the jabs and pokes at the Church bureaucracy. Every denomination and organization has people that forget what the goal is and are more concerned with maintaining power and status and control than with the mission. I have no problem with anyone gently reminding (or in this case, not-so-gently reminding) everyone to keep themselves focused.
Rating: Summary: One of the best books of the year! Review: This is the first book I've read of Mr. Fitzhugh and it won't be my last! Being that I work in a church and used to work in the television industry - the subject matter was just too good to pass up! From the get go this book was both real and outrageous (in a funny way). It's zanyness, characters and message - woven in this fast moving tale makes this one of the best books I've read this year (note: I am an avid reader and am always reading something). I recommend this book to anyone who likes a good, well told story as well as someone who wants to have some good laughs (and which of us couldn't use some of those these days). I can't wait to read the author's other works!
Rating: Summary: Another winner from Fitzhugh Review: This was Fitzhugh's first book, although it came out after Pest Control and Organ Grinders. That's because it was actually written as a screenplay when Bill was taking a writer's workshop in LA, I think, and he had to go back and do some rewriting to convert it into a book. It's not quite as funny as the other two books, but then, it's still damn good as a first effort, and it shows Fitzhugh's great nascent talent which would come to full fruition in Pest Control and Organ Grinders. Sister Peg and Dan Steele are interesting characters, and the obvious chemistry between two people who in normal life would be unlikely friends, is a nice touch. One reviewer objected to the occasional preachy passage and some off-the-cuff theologizing, but I didn't mind it. I've read a lot of theology myself, including many of the most important western writers on religion (such as Tillich, Niebuhr, Barth, Rosenzweig, Buber, Marcel, Berdyaef, and Bultmann, to give a partial list), and, notwithstanding the respect I have for the above writers, nobody can say their theology is any better than anybody else's, since there's no way to prove any of it, as much as I would like to believe otherwise. But to get back to the book, Fitzhugh has another winner in this novel. I only give it four stars since the other two were so exceptional and deserved more like 8 stars. But if this were any other writer than Fitzhugh, it would rate five stars.
Rating: Summary: Good, but not as good as Pest Control & Organ Grinders Review: This would have made a good premise for a screenplay. There is a lot of promise in all the puns and role-reversal, but ending was unsatisfying and the story never got funny. The author instead chooses to repeatedly slam the Catholic church by making all of the orthodox Catholics either pedophiles, [trail]-coverers, or thiefs, and all the "nice" characters fail to disguise their intolerance of the church. I found the bitter whining tiresome. The author obviously has some issues with Catholics, but only poorly disguised this as a comedy.
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