Lo Mein

Rating:
Summary: A complete surprise
Review: A quirky read from an author new to me, but not for long. I read this whole book on a flight from Chicago to San Francisco. My laughing out loud had passangers & flight crew looking at me like I was some crazy woman.

I've been going aroung for days saying "Lo mein" out loud and laughing to my self. My husband read it as soon as I finished, and he's also "lo mein-ing all over the place.

If you've even thought about what makes a person creative or a genius, this book will give you plenty of food for thought.

I don't want to give away the plot, but let me say the premise, as clever as it is, will offend some people. Suspend belief and enjoy it for the good story it is.

And if you guess the ending, I'll eat this review. It sure caught me by surprise.

Rating:
Summary: Shooting spree in Disney World!!
Review: Lo Mein: Like Crime and Punishment, but with more crime, less punishment and the untimely death of Mickey Mouse.

There are certain types of entertainment that seem to revel in the bizarre, sick and twisted. Surely Lo Mein, a new novel by Robert Eringer, falls into this category.

Lo Mein seems reminiscent of the movie Very Bad Things, which starred Cameron Diaz and Christian Slater. In the movie, people are killed without regard to the death's role in the plot, with each gruesome death played up as supposedly "funny."

In this same vein of humor lies Lo Mein.

Willard Stukey is an artist who has never sold a single painting. Making comparisons between himself and van Gogh, who also never sold any paintings during his lifetime, only soothes his discontent for a short time.

Stukey plots his way to fame with the theory that it would be better to be famous behind bars than to never be famous at all. He purchases a gun and goes to Disney World, where he plans to murder many people, as this will surely attract the recognition he needs.

Upon arriving in Disney World, Stukey goes to the rides with the longest lines, but decides that a murder based only on the amount of people present is not inspired enough. Instead, he waits until the parade goes down Main Street before he lets loose a shower of bullets and then flees to Kentucky.

Mickey and Minnie Mouse lie among the dead, and the "Mickey Murder Manhunt," as the story comes to be known on CNN, is the leading story of the day. However, newscasters report that Stukey is a failed artist on the run from authorities. Stukey thus calls in and says that if the station doesn't refer to him as a successful artist, he will go on another killing rampage- first with Donald Duck and then with a multitude of other Disney characters.

As can be expected, Disney chief Michael Eisner is not pleased with the death toll mounting at his amusement parks, and he calls his own personal investigator, Jef Dalkin, onto the case. Dalkin looks exactly like Bruce Willis and suffers from Tourette Syndrome. This combination gets Dalkin in trouble repeatedly and lands Willis' name in the tabloids more than once.

The whole Tourette Syndrome subplot is supposed to be funny, but frankly, it's not - it comes off as a weak ploy to get laughs rather than an attempt at well-developed jokes or legitimate humor.

Still, the deaths in Disney World do have a twinge of twisted humor; the murder spree exacts the ultimate revenge on the Disneyfication of the world.

If any greater lesson is to be derived from Lo Mein (and that seems unlikely), it's Eringer's denouncement of the irrational litigation rampant in American society compiled with the large amounts of power in the hands of such entities as Walt Disney and CNN.

Otherwise, the book only offers some very bad artists doing very bad things.