XYZ - William Knight #LoveBooksTours

I'm so pleased to be on the #LoveBooksTours for this book today.

Blurb

From a former Guardian and BBC writer, and author of The Donated, comes a hilarious story of mid-life crisis, family, technology, and coping with the modern workplace.

Jack Cooper is a depressed, analogue throwback; a cynical, alcoholic Gen-Xer whose glory days are behind him. He's unemployed, his marriage has broken down, he's addicted to internet hook-ups, and is deeply ashamed of his son Geronimo, who lives life dressed as a bear.

When Jack's daughter engineers a job for him at totally-lit tech firm Sweet, he's confronted by a Millennial and Zoomer culture he can't relate to. He loathes every detail - every IM, gif and emoji - apart from Freya, twenty years his junior and addicted to broadcasting her life on social media.

Can Jack evolve to fit in at Sweet, or will he remain a dinosaur stuck in the 1980s? And will he halt his slide into loneliness and repair his family relationships?

Review  

Move over Victor Meldrew there's a new guy in town called Jack Cooper. If you don't know who VM is then maybe this isn't the book for you. Probably best enjoyed by those over 40, but everyone could learn something from this book.

Jack Cooper is a Gen-Xer born 1964 and this book is his take on the modern world, particularly Milennials and Zoomers. He's in IT but really anyone of a similar age who has worked in an office can certainly relate to the world he's found himself in. A world where no one gets up and talks to the person across the room. Instead they IM (instant message) and he's a Manager who doesn't manage, instead he's a Squad Master. Upsetting his staff by daring to ask them what they are working on - doesn't he trust them.

I found this laugh out loud funny and so true to life. Jack himself is a bit of a sad character at times. Bringing some of his misfortunes upon himself, especially with his inability to stay sober and get out of bed in a morning. Yet, he does seem to recover a few of them without effort, and maybe some of his dinosaur thinking is still relevant.....

His hook up with a Millennial sees him in a "relationship" on social media after only one night! He's a little bewildered as he doesn't really know her yet, he might not even like her! While he seems able to form a relationship with a Millennial and go along with their ideals in the office his own son is more of a trial for him. Why should that be though?

I found this book hilarious and yet thought provoking at the same time. I loved the ending - just brilliant. 

I'm giving this book 5 out of 5 stars. My thanks to #LoveBooksTours for the ARC to review.

Author Info

William Knight has written for the Guardian, the Financial Times and the BBC, among many other publishers. He is a journalist and technologist currently living and working in Wellington, New Zealand.


A graduate engineer, he's chased a varying career starting in acting, progressing to music, enjoyed a brief flirtation with handbag design, and was eventually wired into technology in 1989.


By 2003 his non-fiction was being regularly published in Computing newspaper in the UK, and he has since written about the many successes and failings of high-technology


The Donated (formerly, Generation), his first novel, was conceived from a New Scientist article in 2001 and was ten years in development. Subsequent novels, XYZ, Foretold, The Fractured, will be available, he says, "Sometime in the future. Hopefully not as long as ten years."



Buy Link
https://amzn.to/2ZWuO7O


Twitter
@_William_Knight