Nothing else was said, but Reed and Smithy continued to lock eyes. If you tossed a raw chicken between the pair, it would have cooked before it hit the ground.
Well, this one was weird. Caimh McDonnell’s novels are all weird, marked as they are by Wodehouseian comic diction and bizarre character surprises. But Welcome to Nowhere takes it all to the next level.
The hero of Welcome to Nowhere is Smithy, a little person, what we used to call a m*dget (and don’t call him that, because he has strong feelings on the subject). If you’ve read McDonnell’s books about Bunny McGarry in America, you’ve already met him. Smithy works as a cab driver and sometimes an actor in New York City. He’s also sometimes a gambler. Recent losses in that quarter led him to take a demeaning job as a “leprechaun” in a stupid “leprechaun hunt” sponsored by a rich jerk named Reed. Some time later, he comes up with a “brilliant” plan to get his revenge on Reed. His plan goes spectacularly wrong when an apparent ninja assassin breaks into Reed’s apartment the same night Smithy sneaks in. Listening (under protest) to a voice in his head (possibly God’s, though he doubts it) which has been annoying him since he suffered a brain injury a while back, Smithy saves Reed’s life.
If you think that will earn him any gratitude, you don’t know Reed, who is about the worst person you can imagine. Except that even worse people will appear when Reed extorts Smithy and his friend Diller, a struggling, personable actor, into getting involved in an even crazier competition. And that competition turns out to be something out of a Mad Max movie, played out in a secret desert location. It will take a lot of creativity, and some luck, plus some unexpected allies, to get out of a post-apocalyptic fantasy come alive.
Welcome to Nowhere was a funny and creative book. I didn’t like it as much as I liked most of McDonnell’s others, because I don’t much care for this kind of story. But it had a lot of laughs, and was full of left-field surprises. Fair warning – it ends with a sort of a cliff-hanger.
Welcome to Nowhere is brilliant of its kind. I’ll probably even read the next one. Cautions for language and mature (and immature) themes.