Product Description

Dwight Wilmerding, twenty-eight, is having a midlife crisis. And there’s an even bigger problem: his chronic inability to make up his mind.

Encouraged to try a drug meant to banish indecision, he is all at once fired from his low-grade tech-support job in Manhattan and invited to a rendezvous in exotic Ecuador with the girl of his long-ago prep-school dreams. Unable to decide if the magic pills are working, he finds his would-be romantic escape becoming a journey into unbidden responsibility and – deep in the jungles of the Amazon – the foreign country of a changed outlook.

'Indecision manages to make the whole flailing, postadolescent, prelife crisis feel fresh and funny again . . . The funniest and smartest coming-of-age novel in years' Jay McInerney, New York Times Book Review

'He’s got this voice that just grabs your attention and won’t let go . . . Old Dwight’s book really knocked me out' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #248244 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 241 pages

Sunday Telegraph Summer Reading Choices
‘[Kunkel is] possible heir to Roth's and McInerney's crown [ . . .] whose debut won top marks for originality and style’

Sunday Telegraph
'This young author is following in the footsteps of Jay McInerney or Jonathan Franzen as a chronicler of contemporary America'

The Observer
'Kunkel's novel is enjoyable and witty, [and] its hero enjoyably realised'

Customer Reviews

Bo-ring
Dwight Wilmerding is in his late twenties and cannot really make up his mind what to do with his life: he dates a girl with whom he is not really in love, he has a job he does not really like, he uses drugs but not wholeheartedly and he still lives in the student apartment despite the fact that he has a job now. In fact he feels he cannot make up his mind on anything, that's why he is quite excited when a friend offers him a new experimental drug against indecision. Unfortunately, he starts taking it right at the moment that he also decides to visit an old classmate in Ecuador. The moment he arrives the classmate disappears and Dwight gets stuck with an anthropologist to be, Brigid, who is half Argentian, half Belgian and about as vague as Dwight. Naturally they fall in love and all is well that ends well.

What a totally predictable, not funny at all, boring book. I couldn't care less about the petty problems that Dwight entertains (such as his hairy buttocks, YUCK) and the rest is rather predictable as well.

yay. it's good
i thought this book was lovely. the style of writing did remind me slightly of dave eggers - although i read an interview saying that kunkel hasn't read any eggers, so there you go. there isn't much plot but that didn't bother me, as it's all about the characters mind anyway. i love the way kunkel writes, it's easy to read and funny in places and smart too (little bits of philosophy etc). it's about being 28 and working a crap job, and if you are roundabout the same age and doing the same thing, you'll definitely be able to relate to it.
i didn't want the book to end, and really want to read more of his work. also, look at the author picture on the back cover - he is very cute.

awful, just awful!
I forget why I decided to read this book but what a dreadful decision it was.

At times it seemed as if Kunkel was so desperate to impress that he went straight for the theasaurus so he could throw in a few words that no one would ever use just to appear extremely intelligent. Sorry buddy but that doesn't quite work.

This desire to impress can be seen in the way he writes - reading this book was truly excruciating. He simply could not come out and just say whatever he wanted to say. Instead he had to dress up every idea in a ridiculously pretentious way that meant it just did not work. There were a few good ideas in the book, mainly interesting little observations on modern urban life for generation X, but these were all lost in his awful prose.

As for the story itself - terrible. Is socialism really something so alien to Americans that Kunkel thinks he is the first young American to have encountered this brave new political ideology? And the pains he goes to to point out he favours democratic socialism - is he scared of a McCarthyesque witch hunt or something? Utter garbage.