[.ca] Red Meat Cures Cancer (ISBN 0972162453)

beef and porn amok!:
Sky Thorne is a few months away from retiring from Tailburger, a lesser hamburger chain, when he has to up the market share to 5% in order to even collect his pension. He thus throws himself into the "Torture Your Body!" campaign and links it to his best friend's adult entertainment website (secret from his family.) Sky's two grown children (including an annoying daughter) take many a handout from him, and his deceased ex-wife's second husband is salivating at collecting half of Sky's pension, which would have gone to her anyway. The depiction of Sky is awesome -- he is so sarcastic, funny, hating his job (especially his moron underhanded boss who renamed himself "Fanoflincoln" in honor of Abraham, and his golf-crazy triplet sons). He comes up with some very true sayings "Guys would rather have their friends find their bodies at the bottom of a ravine with a note rather than tell them their problems -- it's just less trouble that way." If you ever read "Fast Food Nation", this is extra gruesome to read. But Sky is quite an entertaining train wreck -- even he knows it. It's great!

Laughter is the Best Medicine:
Outrageous and smart humor makes this book an enjoyable read. The story starts so far from reality and coherently spins out of control, I found myself searching for real-world parallels. This is an effective technique making the story work and the characters memorable. Like a recurring, well done Saturday Night Live sketch (Will Ferrell as George W. Bush or Darrell Hammond as Chris Matthews "Hardball") the caricatures follow the subject and continue to entertain far into the future. Red Meat will no doubt have the same result for the many stereotypes O'Dwyer weaves into the book. I love stories set in familiar places and I think this is the first book I have ever read set in Rochester NY, where I grew up. The many popular landmarks from upstate NY added to the story md Michael Duranko www.bootism.com

Culture of Meat:
This review from NadaMucho.com, which features book reviews focusing on contemporary fiction... "Red Meat Cures Cancer" tackles the world of fast food corporate culture - although not quite the way we'd expect - with the story of Schuyler "Sky" Thorne, a sort of everyman executive hoping to coast through his last year of work so that he can collect retirement. A threat from his grossly obese, good ol' boy boss to raise market share "or else" triggers a series of outrageous events that threaten Sky's chances of finishing off his career in peace. As Senior V.P. of Tailburger, an underdog burger chain whose target audience is convicts and other assorted lowlifes, Sky's life takes a turn from bad to worse as he realizes his morals are slipping away in a wash of increasingly desperate marketing ploys, most of which have gone horribly awry. The books shines in this aspect - by presenting the story from an intimate, first person point of view, "RMCC" puts a personal spin on the otherwise terribly inhumane world of corporations. Additionally, this angle allows O'Dwyer to tackle the many gray areas and personal conflicts that are all part of survival for people in positions of power. Successfully balancing an insane boss, political alliances that shift with the daily news, and a personal life gone terribly awry, Sky becomes an improbably sympathetic character. It's refreshing to read about an executive-type who is portrayed as much more human than the stock, heartless "The Man" (read: aging white guy) character, which would be the obvious choice for a story such as this. This is O'Dwyer's greatest strength. He understands that competent satire requires a blend of absurdity and subtlety, and that the obvious choice (which in this case would've been a McDonald's executive) is not always the funniest. He deftly walks the fine line between archetype and stereotype, delicately balancing an outrageous cast of familiar characters that might have come across as stale in lesser hands. A penchant for silly names (a Texas beef council member named Traylor Hitch, for example) and superfluous characters, a tendency to throw in a few too many absurd and unnecessary situations, and an all-too-abrupt and poorly conceived ending are the few missteps in an otherwise purely American satire. Super mad props to the author for self-publishing the hardcopy edition before Vintage picked it up for larger distribution in paperback. It may not be the benchmark for contemporary corporate satire, but "RMCC" is a double bacon burger with extra cheese: delicious and enough to satisfy.

Are you kidding?:
I do not understand the positive reviews of this book. I saw it on display in a bookstore, the first couple of pages made me laugh, and so I picked it up. It was all downhill from there. There isn't much humor, the characters are too much, the silly names are distracting, and the main character's attack of conscience was painful.

A first-rate comic effort, RED MEAT will have you laughing:
If your job has you down and you find yourself constantly ridden by an overbearing, obnoxious blowhard of a boss, spare a thought for Sky Thorne, protagonist and corporate whipping boy in Starbuck O'Dwyer's first novel, "Red Meat Cures Cancer" (originally published by a small press in 2002, the novel is being reissued by Vintage). A raucous and frenzied tale, "Red Meat" is the story of Thorne, a 46-year- old senior vice president of Tailburger, a renegade fast-food establishment known for its deep-fried, cheese-smothered burgers and the Tailfrap, a beef- flavored shake. Thorne has problems, and they go beyond his dealings with his boss, Tailburger President Frank Fanoflincoln, a reprehensible sort who changed his name as a young man to reflect his fanaticism for Abraham Lincoln. The rabid anti-meat group SERMON -- a.k.a. Stop Eating Red Meat Now -- has Tailburger in its crosshairs. The company's celebrity spokesman, the Belgian basketball wonder Jelloteous Junderstack, has a heart condition made worse by the product he's endorsing. Tailburger's latest ad campaign -- with its slogan "Why just abuse your body when you can torture it?" -- is going over as well as a burger at a tofu convention. On his quest for personal and professional fulfillment, Thorne finds himself kicked in the groin by love, dealing with a daughter who wants her chest enhanced and fighting accusations that he's part of a porn ring preying on disabled kids. Things only get more surreal from there. In the book's opening chapters, it seems that O'Dwyer is working hard to pack a punch line into every sentence. As the story progresses, however, the humor becomes more understated and, as a result, a lot more effective. A first-rate comic effort, "Red Meat" will have you laughing cover to cover. -- Simon Read - San Francisco Chronicle February 8, 2004