In The Wall Street Journal today (Friday the 13th), my new favorite writer Kyle Smith gave The Coup what can only be called a rave review. “The Coup,” writes Smith, film critic of The New York Post, “out-Buckleys Christopher Buckley with its foul-mouthed honchos, twisted strivers and snaky reporters, all of them slightly less deserving of respect than their counterparts in real life (or so one hopes).” After a synopsis of the plot and main characters, Smith continues “The one-man coup is so fiendishly plausible that explaining it would give away the central pleasure of Mr. Malanowski’s fast-paced and entertaining fable. But even if The Coup didn’t offer such machine-tooled plotting, it would be a delight for its punchy dialogue and such cheerfully sordid characters.”
Wow! I’m woozy. Thanks, Kyle. To read the review in its entirity, click here.
JULY 11
Received a thoughtful review in The New York Observer on July 11. Under the delightful headline `A Romp Through the D.C. Underbrush’, Ana Marie Cox–who could cure cancer and open the first discoteque on the moon and still be forever known as the woman who used write Wonkette–writes “Jamie Malanowski’s debut novel [*] about a palace coup in the White House has some sizable flaws, but for all the preposterousness of the plot . . . The Coup still manages to excavate an ugly and hilarious truth about Washington: For a city of egotists and nation-builders, we’re far too easily, absurdly, tragically pleased.” Luckily, prepsterousness isn’t a fatal flaw in Cox’s mind. You can read the whole thing here, but trust us: you could stop at “A Romp Through the D.C. Underbrush” and still lead a fulfilling life.
[*] For what it’s worth, my debut novel was and always shall be Mr. Stupid Goes to Washington (Birch Lane, 1992).