Joe Canzano Says Hello

This is the follow-up book to Graham Parke’s absurd novel, “No Hope For Gomez.”

The book has three sections (all of them short). Part 1 and Part 2 take place before “No Hope for Gomez,” while part 3 takes place after that book. Does this sound unusual? It’s not any more unusual than the books themselves.

A lot of the humor in this book comes from Gomez incorrectly interpreting everything around him. Sometimes this ongoing joke gets infuriating—at times I wanted to reach into my Kindle and smack some sense into the guy. But most of the time it’s just funny, and there’s other humor going on as well that makes this more than a one trick kind of carnival. There’s a lot of subtle commentary that’s quite well done. The dialogue is also very good.

The Part 2 section narrated by Gomez’s love interest, Gretchen, (who has the exact same voice as Gomez), is really funny. I was laughing during her job interview scenes.

I do find the lack of sexuality in both books to be odd. For a guy who is obsessed with every detail of “boy meets girl,” this seems like a big detail to leave out. I’m not looking for a blow-by-blow account (no pun intended—or only slightly intended) of every sexcapade - I just want to know, ARE THEY DOING IT OR NOT? It’s never clear. In the first book, it’s somewhat implied, but again, it’s a bit of a puzzle.

NOTE: Talk about Gretchen’s “freakishly large boobies” does not answer my question.

The ending in this book was even more odd that the rest of it. There’s a point where absurdity can be too absurd. Looking back on it, this whole book was pretty messed up – but the bottom line is that I definitely enjoyed reading it, and I plan to read the next Gomez book, too. It’s got a certain kind of craziness I can’t keep away from.