I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin

 

This is a weird novel, funny--occasionally hilariously so--with occasional glimpses of things it wants to say (mainly that things probably aren't as bad as you probably think they are) but oddly not a lot in the way of a story to tell. It's clear Pargin has One Weird Trick: Say what the ending is and improvise your way toward it. Whether that's a Weird Trick that works consistently and/or well is a debate I'm not going to wade into here, but this novel kinda maunders and meanders its way, jumping from POV to POV freely and almost randomly, there's a reasonable amount of tension, at least at points, but really not anything particularly like the payoff implied (if not necessarily promised). It's mostly just a bunch of not-really-intelligent people fumble-flailing their way through, which might be distressingly realistic but doesn't make for particularly satisfying fiction. Not a complete waste of the evening, but not all that great, either.