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Searching... Silver Falls Library | FIC CLARKE | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"Lord Vishnu's Love Handles" is the story of a man who is teetering on the edge of financial ruin and insanity until a couple of secret agents teach him what it really means to lose his mind.Travis Anderson has a psychic gift. Or so he thinks. So far he's milked his premonitions only to acquire an upper-middle-class lifestyle -- pretty wife, big house, and a shiny Range Rover -- without having to make any real effort. But recent visions threaten his yuppie contentment. Haunted by omens of impending cancers, stillborn babies, and personal train wrecks, he is compelled to make a series of inaccurate and horrifying prophecies that humiliate him in front of his fellow country club members. The IRS gets Travis's number, too, demanding an audit of his sloppy bookkeeping. Drowning in mounting financial problems and apparent mental illness, Travis tries booze, pills, even golf to stay afloat, but nothing works. His wife and friends are forced to stage an intervention. Travis is in danger of losing his family, his career, and ultimately, his sanity. That is, until he meets a Hindu holy man in rehab who claims to be the final incarnation of Lord Vishnu. Suddenly, the tragically shallow Travis is saddled with the responsibility of bettering mankind and saving the world.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Travis Anderson, the protagonist of Clark's intentionally kitschy debut, knows when someone will call on the telephone and he knows that his wife is cheating on him. A dream told him to get into the Web-site building business, and he's now quite comfortable. Following this early-pages setup (in another of the seemingly endless computer-oriented conceits by young male novelists), a bored Travis stumbles on a government Web site that stealthily head hunts psychics. Soon, he begins to help locate missing persons, but a crazed, power-mad co-worker kidnaps his wife and son, setting things in hectic motion. Travis's first-person narration is vivid and witty, and gives the dopey plot, which involves a man who claims to be an incarnation of the god Vishnu, nice nuance. But a tricked-out denouement, with Disney World wired to blow Atlanta Olympics-style, is overblown and finally pushes the book from campy and fun to silly and showy. Agent, Jenny Ben for Trident Media Group. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A nearly bankrupt Texas software mogul lets the CIA solve his tax troubles. The price for the service is access to his surprisingly versatile brain. Until recently, the Internet was very good for Travis Anderson, allowing him and his acquisitive wife Shelby to move in the slickest suburban Dallas social circles while leaving two-year-old son Noah in the capable hands of a Russian nanny. But the good life is collapsing. While Travis has been hitting the sauce during a fallow period of invention, his business partner, Reed, has been stuffing the company's cash flow up his nose and, quite possibly, boffing Shelby. Perhaps as a result of the booze, Travis keeps hallucinating all kinds of disasters, seeing dire futures for his acquaintances. His own future is as bleak as it gets. Much of the money that went for Reed's cocaine should have gone for taxes. Now there's a $5 million tax liability. Juggling his drinking binges with convoluted plots to expose Shelby and Reed's perfidy, Travis is teetering at the edge of panic and ruin when chirpy IRS agent Debra McFadden enters his life and offers a deal. Greater Governmental Powers have noticed Travis's exceptional proficiency at a fairly tricky computer game, and they would like to see whether his skills go beyond normal. They are so interested that they will make that tax problem go away if Travis proves useful. Posing as an alcohol-intervention facilitator, Agent McFadden spirits Travis off for detox and paranormal testing. Even as he's enduring the considerable discomforts of withdrawal, Travis proves, to his own surprise, that his particular abnormal skill is to locate missing individuals, a talent well worth erasure of his great big debt--which is replaced by such new problems as Shelby's dubious pregnancy, the recurring appearance of a blue god, an especially creepy vegan guide to the paranormal universe, a mysterious pair of Goth siblings and Travis's peskily growing morality. Chaotic but often amusing first novel. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Travis has traded up in life by relying on an unusual gift of foresight, but when his gift fails him big time and the IRS comes calling, he finds himself in rehab with a man who claims to be the final reincarnation of Lord Vishnu. Pay attention: that telling phrase, soon to be a major motion picture, comes with this book. With a nine-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.