To top it off, poor Odell is a little slow. He’s not impaired or even Forrest Gump-level innocent, but “[he has] to think awhile before [he talks,] but in the meantime the conversation has moved on, as they say, so forget that.” He’s well intentioned but simply can’t keep up with the maelstrom of events swirling around him. Odell is not a particularly attractive or likeable character, but the author writes him funny and startlingly astute in his own placid observations.
There’s not a lot that Krol doesn’t skewer in this snapshot of the American Heartland in 2007: sleazy televangelism, the interminable Presidential campaigning, the media’s short-lived obsessive feeding frenzy over news items, Homeland Security’s determined pursuit of evil doers. With its large cast of characters, the twisty-turny plot holds together impressively well, although I was turning the pages pretty quickly to get through the side trip to Guantanamo Bay at the end of the book.
Genre-wise, Callisto will remind readers of Catch-22 and Catcher In the Rye; historically, it will serve as a well-written, darkly comic marker against the Bush administration’s war on terror. Quite frankly, I look forward to reading what Torsten Krol has to say about America next.
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