Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking, takes a darkly comic look at Social Security in this brilliant, funny, and disturbing novel.
Cassandra Devine is a 20-something blogger who works for Terry Tucker, PR specialist and owner of Tucker Strategic Communications. The company specializes in industries with serious PR problems, from mink ranchers to politicians. Terry apprenticed with Nick Naylor, the hero of Thank You for Smoking, and is now grooming Cassandra to take the same route.
But Cassandra is concerned about Boomsday, the date when the Baby Boomers begin to collect Social Security and — she’s convinced — set off “the perfect economic storm.” When she blogs (at 4:00 a.m., after a few too many Red Bulls) about “Boomsday Rage,” she finds that she has touched a chord with her generation.
She has also come up with a plan to solve the economic problems Boomsday will touch off. It’s a chilling plan, reminiscent of Jonathon Swift’s “Modest Proposal,” but Buckley takes the idea and makes it into a wild ride of a story, filled with an insider’s satiric view of the U.S. Government, the generation gap, and modern journalism.
This is an excellent novel, but not a cozy one. Think of it for your book club.