Ratings6
Average rating3.2
Family Guy meets Election in this hilarious young adult debut!Twelve-year-old Oliver Watson's got the IQ of a grilled cheese sandwich. Or so everyone in Omaha thinks. In reality, Oliver's a mad evil genius on his way to world domination, and he's used his great brain to make himself the third-richest person on earth! Then Oliver's father—and archnemesis—makes a crack about the upcoming middle school election, and Oliver takes it as a personal challenge. He'll run, and he'll win! Turns out, though, that overthrowing foreign dictators is actually way easier than getting kids to like you. . . Can this evil genius win the class presidency and keep his true identity a secret, all in time to impress his dad?
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Blurbs about this book describe it as a Young Adult novel, and I generally don't read YA novels, but Greil Marcus mentioned it in his Real Life Rock Top 10, so I gave it a go. It's a funny novel, but it exists in a strange area between YA and real literature. The novel's plot focuses on Oliver Watson, a fat, stupid, and unpopular 7th grader, who is purposefully stupid and unpopular, as a cover for the fact that he is actually world's 3rd richest man. As a YA novel, there's a good bit about middle school drama, cliques, bullies, and the futile pointlessness of student government elections. As real literature, the novel features a variety of references to Captain Beefheart, Nabokov, Pynchon, Odysseus, A Clockwork Orange, which I think would bit a bit over the head of most young adult readers. Navigating in between these world of young adult zit jokes and bully angst and hipster pop culture references is a tough job, with Lieb managing to do decently enjoyable job of it.