Review: Boomer1 by Daniel Torday

Title: Boomer1 by Daniel Torday
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Genre: Contemporary, Satire
Length: 352 pages
Book Rating: C

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley

Summary:

Bluegrass musician, former journalist and editor, and now PhD in English, Mark Brumfeld has arrived at his thirties with significant debt and no steady prospects. His girlfriend Cassie—a punk bassist in an all-female band, who fled her Midwestern childhood for a new identity—finds work at a “new media” company. When Cassie refuses his marriage proposal, Mark leaves New York and returns to the basement of his childhood home in the Baltimore suburbs.

Desperate and humiliated, Mark begins to post a series of online video monologues that critique Baby Boomers and their powerful hold on the job market. But as his videos go viral, and while Cassie starts to build her career, Mark loses control of what he began—with consequences that ensnare them in a matter of national security.

Told through the perspectives of Mark, Cassie, and Mark’s mother, Julia, a child of the ’60s whose life is more conventional than she ever imagined, Boomer1 is timely, suspenseful, and in every line alert to the siren song of endless opportunity that beckons and beguiles all of us.

Review:

Boomer1 by Daniel Torday is a well-written satire about a millennial who inadvertently starts a revolution against baby boomers.

Mark Brumfeld feels like the world should be his oyster yet he has failed to achieve the career goals he set for himself. He’s a musician who puts his educational goals first and grows increasingly frustrated when he cannot land a job. Of course it does not help that he is entering the work force  in the midst of the fiscal crash but Mark feels like baby boomers should retire so young workers can take their place (!).  When he is unceremoniously dumped by his live-in girlfriend, Cassie Black, he eventually moves back in with his parents.  Now living in their basement, Mark begins filming anonymous rants against baby boomers that quickly go viral. These videos are co-opted by others who turn it into domestic terrorist organization. Mark’s life takes a sharply downward turn after he resumes his friendship with childhood buddy “Costco” Long.

Cassie is from the mid-west and she is thrilled to be out from under her conservative parents’ thumb. Unlike Mark, she does not want a traditional life and she is content with the status quo. When he tries to take their relationship in a more serious direction, Cassie quickly runs out on him. Her career takes an unexpectedly upward trajectory through a series of lucky breaks and hard work. Surprisingly happy with her job, Cassie is very much on the periphery of Mark’s life but they do have some contact and she is shocked by the direction his life takes.

Boomer1 has an intriguing premise but the pacing is extremely slow. The characters are unlikable, unsympathetic and excessively whiny. There is very little action since readers spend the most of their time inside the various characters’ heads (which in all honestly, is a somewhat dreary place to be).  The novel is a satire but the depressing storyline makes it difficult to find much to laugh about. Daniel Torday brings the novel to a twist-filled conclusion that is full of surprises.