The Jewish Messiah by Arnon Grunberg

"It's a fascinating book. It's got pace, it's got momentum, it's full of humor, and I think the writer has a story to tell. We've struck gold."

This is as good a review as I can give right now. That the above is one of the two main characters talking about Mein Kampf, which they are translating into Yiddish, gives you an idea of the tone. Biting satire, but satire kept in a disturbingly real, grounded reality. (Well grounded for the majority of the book. Grunberg slowly wound his characters up and in the final section of the book everything is fast and unbelievable.)

Grunberg is the most awesome writer than probably 97% of the reading public would not touch with a ten foot pole. But if you like your lit straight up, fearless and difficult he is the dude for you. If you want to scare a friend or relative go up to them with big puppy dog eyes, hand them the novel and say softly, "I love this book..."*


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*(I would never do this in real life, but on the internet I'm okay with scaring the crap out of all you imaginary people.)

Have Space Suit Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein

I probably would have rated this Heinlein juvenile higher except I felt after the active first half, climaxing on Luna, the book turns more speechifying with long discursions on Vega and the trial scenes (which seems always to be an authors excuse to pile on long monologues). The whole HUMANITY ON TRIAL scenario of the second half feels rather tritely pulpy after the hard sf of the first part. Loved Heinlein's descriptions of Kip's spacesuit and how he improves it and the soap contest is a nice exposé on advertising gimmickry.

Usually I roll my eyes when Heinlein goes on a rant about whatever, but I have to confess really loving his tear on crappy high school education - a rare case of my opinion actually matching his. Of course I didn't go on to teach myself calculus and Latin like Kip.

RAH is the prototypical engineer sf writer and is great at describing closed systems and how to manipulate them -- the problem for his adult fiction is that he tries to apply the same closed system thinking (libertarianism in his case) to the real world.