Same Bed Different Dreams

Worth the wait. By that I mean both the time since I first read a preview copy of this novel (nine months or so ago) and the time since Ed Park last published one (fifteen years). A prolific magazine profile artist, he hasn't exactly been silent since his dark comedy of office life, Personal Days, appeared, but it's been longer than I'd like since he's allowed himself such an outpouring of fictional creativity. And what an outpouring it is. Over the course of over 500 pages, Park introduces a beleaguered everyman laboring for a corporate tech juggernaut called GLOAT (nobody is sure what that stands for, but it can't be good), and then introduces him to a secret manuscript that reveals either a bizarre conspiracy theory or an illuminating truth involving almost every politician and pop culture character of the last century. Abounding with Pynchonesque paranoia and possibility. Same Bed Different Dreams is a rollicking three-ring circus that brings past, present, and future together under one massive, multicolored tent. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter)