I'll be honest, I haven't thought of Drew Magary in years, since reading his Deadspin columns kept me entertained at my first adult job. But I really enjoyed his writing then, so seeing that he had written some books made me curious to give them a try.
Warning: There will be spoilers I'm not blocking out or anything because I need to get this off my chest.
The premise itself is incredibly interesting: people are able to get The Cure and live forever. Well, at least not age. They'd forever stay the age they were when they got The Cure and wouldn't become elderly, but they could still die from gunshots, illnesses, etc. I think if he took it to a literary sci-fi place from there, it would have been fascinating. Or focused on a few key characters and had it turn out to be something like The Measure by Nikki Erlick. But he created the most unlikeable character and, in my opinion, shot his own idea in the foot.
I want to start with a disclaimer: it's okay for a character to be unlikeable. Humans are unlikeable. And it's possible many people (especially men, let's be honest) love John in this book.
I didn't dislike him initially. I was neutral until he became so whiny and narcissistic after his roommate died and he obsessed that HE was the whole reason she was dead. Which was true in a way, but get over it.
There was him knocking up a woman but not wanting to marry her because now "til death do us part" could mean hundreds of years, and he couldn't promise that. Which, I get. I'm not a marriage person either. But if you feel that way, wrap it up or get a vasectomy. Instead, he brought this kid David into the world and thought about him lovingly, very randomly, whenever he needed to feel like a good person. Or maybe whenever Magary wanted us to think the narrator was a good person. As someone raising a kid with an absent father, it was infuriating and made John incredibly unlikable for me. He seriously ONLY thought of his kid in moments when he was going to die or needed to pull out something emotional, and it got old.
I guess the fact that it riles me so much shows that it's a realistic characteristic! But what made my eyes roll out of my head was the part after a near-death experience when he said "I counted my fingers, one through ten, as I did with David when he was born." (p249 Kindle edition).
EXCEPT!!! I remembered that scene and flipped back to find it because I was like, no way in hell is this deadbeat dad LYING about counting his own kid's fingers! BUT HE DID!
"I handed him to Nate. He counted all of the baby's fingers and toes." (p125 Kindle edition)
Nate was the man who married John's pregnant ex and raised David as though the boy was his own child. NATE was the one who was smart enough to count the baby's fingers and toes AFTER the sperm donor held the baby. Yet 125 pages later, this asshole character was convinced he was the one who had done it? Okay.
Then there was Alison, his middle school crush, coming back into his life. Cue paragraphs and paragraphs of how beautiful and perfect she was back then, and how much he loved her. How much he did for her hoping she'd like him instead of wanting to be friends. How much he asked her out even when she politely rejected him. Yeah, I get it, he was in middle school, he didn't know better. But then there's his daydream of wanting to save her from RAPE so she'd have to like him?
They get together, of course, because somehow this guy charms people. But he STILL wasn't sure he could marry her and stay with her for hundreds of years, because he's trash.
Then he's randomly trying to be incredibly macho but not realizing how he comes off? He chases a man and bashes his teeth in with a gun, and Alison sees what he does and is scared, clearly, because she's realizing he's insanely violent and she doesn't really know John at all, so John CHASES after her to reassure her everything is fine!!! And she runs into the path of a bus and dies.
At this point, I'm wishing someone would just take John out. Because now it's like when he lost his roommate and is moping over how regretful he is that he caused someone else to die. I was really wishing the evil "Greenies" in the book (who try to kill people who have gotten the Cure and therefore rarely naturally die) would just gang up on John and kill him to end all of our suffering.
There are also random instances of insane description. About a wound: "blood rose from the opening like the head of a small animal." WHAT? "The bulb of plasma broke like a bubble and ran down his side in thick streaks, like the legs inside an expensive glass of wine."
Then.... THEN!!! He gets lonely one night and contacts a hooker. Oh, but our narrator is a good guy! He just wants to talk! Until the hooker finds out John now has a job helping people with The Cure die if they want to die. She wants to die. He agrees to help her, but she insists they have sex first, so of course John does - it's her dying wish! And he kills her as she orgasms! WHAT?! I felt like I was reading some trashy Chad Kultgen/Bret Easton Ellis mashup and wanted to stop right there. But I was close to the end and felt like I had to see how things wrapped up.
I wish I had stopped there. The book just fell apart from there.
I don't want to rip it all apart, because I do genuinely like the concept and how it was done: told in blog entries and "headline roundups" and stuff that really gave a broad picture of what was going on throughout the expansive timeline of the book. I liked that storytelling style very much. And you know what? I used to blog and YES bloggers are full of themselves, so it makes sense that John is writing about his days and his emotions like that, so maybe I should lay off. But he's just insufferable. He tries to be macho and pithy at times but just comes off as clueless and ignorant, the type of creep most women (though clearly not a few in this book...) know to avoid. He's naive at best, but acts like he knows it all. One of those confidently incorrect dudes.
But if I ignore John, though he's the narrator and the main character, there are some great quotes here that really resonate. I think some of Magary's commentary on armies defecting after decades of service was interesting: "When you've served in the army for as long as I have, it becomes clear that you are not really serving your country, but that you are serving the very small group of men who control that country." That feels especially relevant today.
I also thought the Church of Man was interesting overall, and this comes from an atheist. "We believe that we can become better people if we recognize that the forces of good in this world---kindness, forgiveness, generosity, love---are inherently within us, within our control."
And there was a moment when I thought things might turn around, when a Church of Man representative literally called him on his bullshit and said "Any man who says he has no choice in life is just too lazy to make his own way." (AMEN!) But by the end of the book, John is forcing himself on yet another incredibly hot woman (did I mention that every woman he snagged in this book was unbelievably physically attractive? Did a 14-year-old write this?!), "I moved to her and began kissing her. Engulfing her. I wanted to squeeze her until her brain popped out of her head."
Yikes. I'll give you that this book was written in 2011, but... yikes.
(He then tears open her shirt, kisses her nipples, and licks her belly. Wow, satisfying. Again, was this written by a 14-year-old?!)
It may be a long shot, but have you read this book? Did you used to like Drew Magary's column?! Sound off in the comments, because I clearly have a lot of thoughts!