Posts Tagged ‘Othmer’

Holy Water by James Othmer

June 9th, 2010

A riotous novel about spiritual enlightenment, motivational videos, hashish, vasectomies and…bottled water.

“If you’ve been looking for Kurt Vonnegut’s successor, look no further.”     –John McNally, author of  After the Workshop and The Book of Ralph

Read the review in the Washington Post.

Henry Tuhoe is the quintessential twenty-first-century man. He has a vague, well-compensated job working for a multinational  conglomerate—but everyone around him is getting laid off as the company outsources everything it can to third-world countries. 

He has a beautiful wife—his college  sweetheart—and an idyllic new home in the leafy suburbs, complete with pool. But his wife won’t let him touch her, even though she demanded he get a vasectomy; he’s seriously overleveraged on the mortgage; and no matter what chemicals he tries the pool remains a corpselike shade of ghastly green. 

Then Henry’s boss offers him a choice: go to the tiny, magical, about-to-be-globalized Kingdom of Galado to oversee the launch of a new customer-service call center for a boutique bottled water company the conglomerate has just acquired, or lose the job with no severance. Henry takes the transfer, more out of fecklessness than a sense of adventure. 

In Galado, a land both spiritual and corrupt, Henry wrestles with first-world moral conundrums, the life he left behind, the attention of a steroid-abusing, megalomaniacal monarch, and a woman intent on redeeming both his soul and her country. The result is a riveting piece of fiction of and for our times, blackly satirical, moving, and profound.

Connect with Jim Othmer:  On Facebook, on Twitter, on the Web.  

Read the Fast Company review.