The Unlounging

The Unlounging is Funny–Really Funny

This humorous novel is one I had one of my eyes on (the curious fun-loving eye) for a few months. It's an indie book that received starred reviews from both BlueInk Review and Kirkus Reviews, even landing on the Kirkus “Best Books of 2018” indie list. Color me impressed. Although, my other more cynical eye was skeptical, and here's why. Usually for me, if someone says a novel is very funny or laugh out loud, then it isn't. For me. I know that humor and what is considered funny is subjective and very different for everyone. But I rarely find books declared hysterical to actually be hysterical—until now. The Unlounging is funny—really funny. I burst out laughing often while reading it and—let me tell you, folks—that means something to me. It really does.

Selraybob—the main character and the author of this book—peaked in stature and popularity back in high school as a football tackle. Glory days now gone, his wife Joalene leaves his lazy ass in a plume of dust on his lounger, where he drinks beer and becomes perplexed by two out-of-sync clocks in his rundown house. He ruminates about Time, which propels his low life to new places: a job at the library (so he can read all about Time), local clock shops employed with conspiracy theorists, a road trip with his friend Herm and Herm's wife Susy Liu Anne to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado to see the atomic clock, and so much more. He also befriends a chubby high-schooler to help him get in shape for the football team, pines for a sexy, clock shop employee who seems to understand his fascination with Time like no one else in his life, and attempts to befriend the mangy mutt who barks all day down the street. This collision of couch philosophizing and easy-going storytelling is a surefire recipe for fun. I was chuckling, laughing, then cheering for Sel's exploits to pan out (his friends call him Sel for short).

There is an easy-goingness to Sel's storytelling that is fascinating and endearing. His ruminations about Time are interesting in that he seeks the simplest explanation possible—even creating an internal feud with Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein, two loonies whose explanations of Time are too complicated—and his kindheartedness endears the reader to him, making his penchant for oafishness easy to overlook. Sel the author puts a master-class on display for character development; Sel the main character is full-blooded and alive with pathos, humor, insightfulness, and humility. If there was one weakness in this novel, it's this: the plot is simply an armful of months in the life of Selraybob; Sel grows in wisdom through the duration of the story but the stakes and obstacles in his life aren't much higher than the hill he trudges up with Carl the wannabe footballer. But what a fun armful of months we readers get to experience.

So, I will now make the declaration I hate: to me, this novel is laugh-out-loud funny. But I will offer this further explanation to help coax your comedic sensibility. If you could imagine Kurt Vonnegut's sensibility filtered through Mark Twain's Southern-style congeniality, then you will find the place where this novel's humor lives. If you could watch The Dude from The Big Lebowski ruminate for hours about the mysteries in his life, then this novel is for you. The Unlounging fosters the absurd, the philosophical pondering, the beer-drinking, the classic car fixing, and the shit-talking yet loyal friendships we all yearn for in one fun novel.

Go buy this book right now! You'll be glad you did. And if you don't, well... then, Selraybob won't mind. He'll still be counting Time with a cold quart of beer in his hand whether you read his book or not. Thank God for that. It's rare for me to feel sadness when a novel ends, but that's how I felt when I turned to the last page. I didn't want my time with Selraybob to end. I think I'll go grab a beer and ruminate some more about it.