Kids These Days

October 14, 2013
Perry’s uneven second novel (This Is Just Exactly Like You) plods aimlessly through a Florida landscape littered with narcissistic families whose lives are circling the drain. Walter and Alice’s marriage is on the ropes—he’s unemployed, she’s pregnant, both are unsure that they want the baby. They’ve moved to Florida to start over in the shadow of Alice’s sister, Carolyn, and her crooked husband, Mid, who is a master of the con, convincing Walter to work a shady job. Walter and Alice are suspicious of everything Mid says and does, but they are too weak to “just say no.” When Mid is arrested for drug offenses and tax evasion, the cops—agents Friendly and Helpful—lean on him to become a police informer, and Mid’s family life melts down in a puddle of self-pity, self-denial, and furious anger. Walter, Alice, Carolyn, and Mid make unbelievable, bad decisions, one after another, and they spend the rest of the time bickering. Surprisingly, Perry fails to resolve any of the conflicts, leaving the reader to wonder what just happened. The adults and kids in this disappointing story are corny caricatures of sad, shallow people.

December 1, 2013
Meet Walter and Alice. They're screwed. Perry (This Is Just Exactly Like You, 2010) follows up his poignant debut novel about a father and his autistic son with a lighter novel about impending fatherhood, Hiaasen-ian Floridians and the way life carries us forward whether we want it to or not. Walter and Alice used to have a fine life in North Carolina, stable enough that they began to tiptoe toward the idea of having children. "Yes, I told her, yes, which was not quite a lie: I could easily enough see us having a child, or children. I imagined we'd keep them fed and watered, that we'd find ways not to kill them, or ourselves," Walter muses. And then life carries them forward: Walter loses his job and Alice quits hers, and they move 500 miles south to a remote vacation condo south of Jacksonville owned by Alice's sister, Carolyn. Walter is soon drawn into working for Carolyn's husband, Mid, whose considerable wealth comes from owning things: real estate, sea kayak rentals, umbrella shops, a pizza place--all the strange accoutrements that adorn the beach to leech money away from tourists. Walter is talked into running the ice machine empire while he and Alice fumble their way through a difficult pregnancy. This is an interesting book with a slightly offbeat tone. Walter, who tells the story, makes for an amusing worrywart whose fish-out-of-water state becomes more and more obvious as Mid gets arrested and Walter begins to realize that he's become attached to a serious criminal. Even Mid feels bad: "I had something else pictured. Something calmer. Fewer police, fewer wayward children, you know?" There are some madcap elements here that recall the novels of Tim Dorsey or Laurence Shames, but the core story of Walter's family makes the enterprise feel closer to an Alexander Payne jaunt than anything else. A funny, frenzied tale of a terrified man plummeting helplessly into his own adulthood.

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October 1, 2013

Recently laid-off mortgage officer Walter (Walt) and pregnant wife Alice have moved into a Florida condo on loan from Alice's sister and brother-in-law, Mid. A job for Walt is part of the package as entrepreneur Mid begins grooming him to oversee his various operations--pizzeria, kayak rentals, ice-dispensing kiosks, and other ventures that may or may not be entirely "legit." Mid and wife Carolyn's teenage daughter, Olivia, bounces among her parents, her older boyfriend, and the condo as she "rebels" in her own rather surprisingly responsible way. As Walt begins to gain a clearer picture of the true nature and possible ramifications of Mid's business dealings and his growing apprehension at impending fatherhood, readers will feel his already shaky confidence giving way to an inertia that could lead to disaster. Perry's second novel (after This Is Just Exactly Like You) is a timely look at contemporary America, with its unexpected economic setbacks and the bargains made to surmount them. VERDICT Readers of Nick Hornby, Dave Eggers, and Jonathan Tropper should enjoy this compelling novel, the story of a man in transition that might also lure a few Florida fiction fans as well.--Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2013
In his lively sophomore novel, Perry (This Is Just Exactly Like You, 2010) recounts the misadventures of a former loan officer forced to confront the uncertainty of fatherhood in the wake of financial distress. Soon after he discovers that his wife, Alice, is pregnant with their first child, she subsequently quits her job, and Walter gets downsized from his. With no other options, the couple moves from Charlotte to a deceased relative's beachside condo in northern Florida, a transition Walter is as reluctant about as fatherhood. He hesitantly accepts a large check and vague employment from Alice's brother-in-law, Mid, a bon vivant and entrepreneur ready to leap at his next moneymaking endeavor. But what little structure Walter establishes topples when Mid briefly ends up behind bars, and Walter becomes the unlikely confidant of Mid's 15-year-old daughter, Olivia, who only baffles her parents as she comes of age. Perry's Florida is strange and intricate, as Walter obsesses over turtle hatchlings and a mysterious parachutist, and Perry's quick-witted observations and surprising plot twists unveil humor in adversity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)