God Jr.

May 16, 2005
Try making up a world where having killed someone you love isn't important." Cooper (Closer
, etc.) does just that—and it works, for a while. Pot-smoking, 40-something L.A. depressive Jim rammed his Lexus into a telephone pole, sending his son, Tommy, flying through the windshield and leaving himself crippled. He has subsequently lied about the cause of Tommy's death (Tommy lived long enough to wander from the scene) and begun working at a children's custom clothing company run by an all-handicapped crew. Upping his pot intake and drifting further from his wife, Bette, Jim has been obsessively constructing a monument to Tommy in his yard that has drawn media (and litigious) attention. Cooper's genius has always been for dialogue: the clipped marriage and workplace exchanges feature searing ironies and delicate nuances that are arresting. In the lyrical but muddled passages that dominate the book's second half, Jim loses himself in a video game of Tommy's, communicating mystically with the video game's flora and fauna while searching for a meaning to Tommy's life and death. Cooper leaves Jim and Bette stranded in their grief, and the various forms of sage-like solace he proffers fail to add up to much, either for Jim or for us. Agent, Ira Silverberg at Donadio and Olson
.

June 1, 2005
Jim, an avid dope smoker, is wheelchair-bound (as far as anyone knows) owing to a car accident that killed his son, Tommy, who also smoked a lot of dope, played video games, and drew pictures of a stronghold possibly plagiarized from one of those games. Jim, in a gesture of tribute, guilt, or madness, starts building a monument in his yard based on Tommy's drawings that overflows onto the yard of crusty beer-guzzling neighbor Fred. Expect the best yard-fancy in a novel since Anna Murdoch's "Coming to Terms". Though the plot line suggests a Christopher Moore -style madcap, the book is actually laid-back and spare, two Cooper ("Wrong") signatures, and the problems that arise from Jim's architectural obsession (especially as publicity about the project increases) are certainly real enough. While this small book isn't for everyone, it could grab a cult following. Recommended accordingly. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ "4/15/05.] -Robert E. Brown, Minoa Lib., NY

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2005
Jim has been an emotional mess ever since that terrible day a year ago when he got into a car accident that killed his teenage son, Tommy. Since then, Jim gets around in a wheelchair, but he has a secret: he can actually walk. He doesn't tell anyone because that would ruin a perfectly good punishment for himself: being disabled. He also smokes a lot of pot, which may explain why he is determined to turn one of his son's routine drawings into a huge monument in the backyard. When he discovers that Tommy made the sketch from a video game, Jim becomes obsessed with playing it--to the detriment of his job and marriage. The game--as well as the novel--takes on new dimensions when Jim feels he can actually communicate with aspects of the program, entering into an existential dialogue with a pixilated snowman on the nature of reality. Cooper lets the reader decided whether or not Jim has gone completely mad with grief in attempting to understand a son he knew only superficially in life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)