Product Description
Meet Phil Snyder: new father, nursing assistant at a cutting-edge biotech facility on Staten Island, and all-around decent guy. Trouble is, his life is falling apart. His wife has betrayed him, his job involves experimental surgeries with strange side effects, and his father is hiding early-onset dementia. Phil also has a special talent he doesn’t want to publicize―he’s a mind reader and moonlights as Brainstorm, a costumed superhero. But when Phil wakes up from a blackout drunk and is confronted with photos that seem to show him assaulting an unknown woman, even superpowers won’t help him. Try as he might, Phil can’t remember that night, and so, haunted by the need to know, he mind-reads his way through the lab techs at work, adoring fans at Toy Polloi, and anyone else who gets in his way, in an attempt to determine whether he’s capable of such violence. A Little More Human, rife with layers of paranoia and conspiracy, questions how well we really know ourselves, showcasing Fiona Maazel at her tragicomic, freewheeling best.
Reviews/Praise
"A powerful, twisting story evolves, with no clear course of resolution, which will delight listeners looking for satisfying twists of plot." —Donovan's Literary Services
"A literary-pop crossover to watch." -Library Journal
"[A Little More Human] blends science fiction, satire, farce, literary mystery, and comic book adventure that probes the humanheart. . . [with] clever, incisive prose." —Publishers Weekly
"Maazel takes a dark, inventive look at the cost of pushing humansto their limits." —Booklist
"Read as a novel about reading, A Little More Human is more interesting than a merely entertaining addition to brainiac fiction." —New York Times
"Mazel is . . . a dazzling prose stylist with a gift for creating characters caught in extraordinary situations that defy credulity. Imagine a situation comedy written by Phillip K. Dick or a telenovela penned by Thomas Pynchon." —Los Angeles Times
"A Little More Human, in its spiraling, fast-paced, witty prose, is stylistically reminiscent of the best of Vonnegut and Pynchon, and its humor, combined with an exploration and critique of technology, sets the story squarely in the realm of contemporary novels such as Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story and Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe." —Washington Independent Review of Books
"Maazel’s willingness to bring in almost any subject and filter it through her characters gives the writing the exhilarating rush of a roller coaster; sometimes disorienting, but mostly fast and exciting." —PopMatters