Our Gang

"OUR GANG is a political satire that I found far-fetched, unfair, tasteless, disturbing, logical, coarse and very funny--I laughed out loud 16 times and giggled internally a statistically unverifiable amount. In short, a masterpiece. The most fantastic assumptions--fantasies we, alas, read daily in the papers and see nightly on TV--are worked out with the lunatic logic of Swift's "A Modest Proposal"....Roth has constructed a complete mini-novel, coherent in its plot line and full of recognizable characters whose speech mannerisms are expertly parodied. As his epigraphs from Swift and Orwell suggest, his theme is the abuse of words; Erect Severehead, the Rev. Billy Cupcake and the members of Trick E. Dixon's Cabinet are especially memorable abusers. Each jigsaw piece is fitted with esthetic precision (or lunatic, if you prefer and do let's quarrel over words) into the ingenious and sustained narrative structure. I can't think of anything like it.Roth, Philip is the author of 'Our Gang', published 2001 under ISBN 9780375726842 and ISBN 0375726845.