**spoiler alert** Free ARC in exchange for honest review.
The Shithead is a little hard to categorize. The best I can describe it is that it's a charac**spoiler alert** Free ARC in exchange for honest review.
The Shithead is a little hard to categorize. The best I can describe it is that it's a character study of a man named Eric, related in first person via flashbacks during a meeting in a coffee shop with another character who turns out to be his daughter-in-law, with a tiny bit of a supernatural/metaphysical element (there are two characters that you're not quite sure who/what they are - are they really there, are they figments of Eric's imagination, are they some kind of guardian angels - who/what are they, are they even really there? It's left to the reader's imagination to fill in the blank).
Basically, The Shithead is about a guy sent into a tailspin when several events converge at once and he can no longer 'fake it, till he makes it'. His business is failing, he's in debt up to his eyeballs, the IRS is after him for nearly 6 figures in unpaid taxes, and his wife has had it with him - and she doesn't even know about the IRS or the failing business yet - but when she finds out the extent of the mess he's made, his marriage implodes. He thinks he can fix everything if only he can get THE JOB - an opportunity to run a political Super PAC. But to get the job, is he going to have to sell his soul and everything else he cares about?
It's a well-paced, easy read - by easy I mean, 'readability' - I read it in a few hours in a straight shot, but the story itself is a masterclass in progressive complications, it was giving ME anxiety wondering how and if Eric was going to dig his way out of the mess that was his life because all through the story, he just kept digging himself in so much deeper, I felt like he was going to pop out in China any minute. I couldn't see how he was going to fix anything.
But he does fix things, and in doing so offers both a cautionary tale and a life lesson about finding and embracing the broken parts of yourself in order to gain freedom from the lies you've told yourself about who you really are, about all the walls you build to protect yourself from the truth that they're lies, and the destructive things you'll do to keep those walls intact at all costs - even when it costs you everything you care about.
I 'get' that some reviewers were put off by the way the story is presented because it doesn't really follow the more ubiquitous novel format people are used to - but I read any and everything, so I didn't have any issues with the format and method of storytelling, and really, you won't either - especially, if you're looking for something that's not the 'same-old'. It's well written and well worth the read....more
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