Review: Extraordinary Adventures by Daniel Wallace
Extraordinary Adventures by Daniel Wallace
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
“She sat as if alone in the darkness of a movie theater, watching a movie of her own life…If you could remember every moment of your life, every person you ever met, every tear you ever shed, every time you made somebody laugh, or cry, would the end of your life be more meaningful?”
Edsel Bronfman is a 34-year old man living in Birmingham, Alabama. He is awkward, shy, an over-apologizer, and never fails to stick to his routine of going to work, often visiting his dementia-ridden mother, and otherwise staying hidden inside his bleak apartment. Have you ever apologized for bumping into an inanimate object? If so, you’re probably a lot like Mr. B and I. Ultimately, like myself, he is a dreamer; though, unlike myself, he seems pretty satisfied with his uncommonly mundane existence.
Slowly, though, throughout Extraordinary Adventures, our beloved Edsel begins to change. He blossoms. His unfolding is graceless, and to the reader, far from extraordinary.
It all starts with a phone call from a timeshare company, who joylessly announce that Bronfman is the “lucky” winner of a short stay in one of their new condominiums in Florida. The catch – because there always is one – is that Bronfman, eternally single and incapable of even communicating with the female sex, must bring a companion to the required presentation. He has two and a half months to find someone willing (and worthy) to accompany him on his once-in-a-lifetime beach vacation. With encouragement from his eccentric mother and some Took-ish blood inside him, so begins our character’s transformation.
Do not let the title deceive you – this is not a plot-driven thriller. “Extraordinary Adventures” as a title is more of an overdramatic wink than an accurate description of the book. In his mind, Edsel might as well be an infamous pirate captain exploring new shoals or even the first man on the moon. To us, he is simply a man coming out of his shell. But that’s part of what makes this story unique: it is told in such a way that every small event is indeed an adventure to our MC.
Once I grasped the concept, reading each chapter (told in days, counting down to when the beach trip expires) became a treasure hunt. Edsel sees the most ordinary things in relation to a science fiction novel ( “’Maybe we are [robots] and we just don’t know it.’ ‘I don’t think so,’ Bronfman said – which was exactly, he realized, what a robot that’s unaware of being a robot would say,” ) or even a scene from a horror film ( “Her lipstick was so red against her fair white skin that she looked like a lady vampire who’d just finished her dinner.” ) Once you recognize these patterns, the novel becomes a delightful Easter egg hunt.
The action that does happen within the book is not so glamorous. Bronfman discovers his next door neighbors are a crystal meth-cooking group of scoundrels, befriends a police officer he is hopeless attracted to, and continuously has to deal with his aging mother, who is rapidly losing her mind. Near the end of the novel, things start to spin out of control for Edsel, and eventually he is forced to choose between several different women – a grappling choice that is something we would have never expected from our cripplingly shy anti-hero. It is not a romance novel per se, but I found myself cheering for “the right girl”.
What makes Extraordinary Adventures such a charming read is the attention to detail in which Wallace arms our main character with. Through his eyes, we see the tiniest things in new ways. From eyelashes ( "Her lips were pink and wet; her cheeks were freckle-scattered. Her eyelashes were long and thick enough to catch raindrops -- eye awnings,” ) to the feeling of your heart beating just before a first kiss ( "He felt his heart evolving into that thing that was more than a heart, that was just an idea of the heart, different but performing the same basic function: keeping him alive." ), the author does a spectacular job of making us care about the fragile and extremely good-hearted Edsel Bronfman.
While not the most exciting novel, nor the most romantic, it made me chuckle more than a few times. Edsel Bronfman makes a great addition to the trend of awkward, loveable main characters, and I would love to read more of his future misadventures.
((3.5 stars, rounded up to 4))
Many thanks for the e-ARC provided by St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley, which I have received in exchange for an honest review.
View all my reviews on Goodreads
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
“She sat as if alone in the darkness of a movie theater, watching a movie of her own life…If you could remember every moment of your life, every person you ever met, every tear you ever shed, every time you made somebody laugh, or cry, would the end of your life be more meaningful?”
Edsel Bronfman is a 34-year old man living in Birmingham, Alabama. He is awkward, shy, an over-apologizer, and never fails to stick to his routine of going to work, often visiting his dementia-ridden mother, and otherwise staying hidden inside his bleak apartment. Have you ever apologized for bumping into an inanimate object? If so, you’re probably a lot like Mr. B and I. Ultimately, like myself, he is a dreamer; though, unlike myself, he seems pretty satisfied with his uncommonly mundane existence.
Slowly, though, throughout Extraordinary Adventures, our beloved Edsel begins to change. He blossoms. His unfolding is graceless, and to the reader, far from extraordinary.
It all starts with a phone call from a timeshare company, who joylessly announce that Bronfman is the “lucky” winner of a short stay in one of their new condominiums in Florida. The catch – because there always is one – is that Bronfman, eternally single and incapable of even communicating with the female sex, must bring a companion to the required presentation. He has two and a half months to find someone willing (and worthy) to accompany him on his once-in-a-lifetime beach vacation. With encouragement from his eccentric mother and some Took-ish blood inside him, so begins our character’s transformation.
Do not let the title deceive you – this is not a plot-driven thriller. “Extraordinary Adventures” as a title is more of an overdramatic wink than an accurate description of the book. In his mind, Edsel might as well be an infamous pirate captain exploring new shoals or even the first man on the moon. To us, he is simply a man coming out of his shell. But that’s part of what makes this story unique: it is told in such a way that every small event is indeed an adventure to our MC.
Once I grasped the concept, reading each chapter (told in days, counting down to when the beach trip expires) became a treasure hunt. Edsel sees the most ordinary things in relation to a science fiction novel ( “’Maybe we are [robots] and we just don’t know it.’ ‘I don’t think so,’ Bronfman said – which was exactly, he realized, what a robot that’s unaware of being a robot would say,” ) or even a scene from a horror film ( “Her lipstick was so red against her fair white skin that she looked like a lady vampire who’d just finished her dinner.” ) Once you recognize these patterns, the novel becomes a delightful Easter egg hunt.
The action that does happen within the book is not so glamorous. Bronfman discovers his next door neighbors are a crystal meth-cooking group of scoundrels, befriends a police officer he is hopeless attracted to, and continuously has to deal with his aging mother, who is rapidly losing her mind. Near the end of the novel, things start to spin out of control for Edsel, and eventually he is forced to choose between several different women – a grappling choice that is something we would have never expected from our cripplingly shy anti-hero. It is not a romance novel per se, but I found myself cheering for “the right girl”.
What makes Extraordinary Adventures such a charming read is the attention to detail in which Wallace arms our main character with. Through his eyes, we see the tiniest things in new ways. From eyelashes ( "Her lips were pink and wet; her cheeks were freckle-scattered. Her eyelashes were long and thick enough to catch raindrops -- eye awnings,” ) to the feeling of your heart beating just before a first kiss ( "He felt his heart evolving into that thing that was more than a heart, that was just an idea of the heart, different but performing the same basic function: keeping him alive." ), the author does a spectacular job of making us care about the fragile and extremely good-hearted Edsel Bronfman.
While not the most exciting novel, nor the most romantic, it made me chuckle more than a few times. Edsel Bronfman makes a great addition to the trend of awkward, loveable main characters, and I would love to read more of his future misadventures.
((3.5 stars, rounded up to 4))
Many thanks for the e-ARC provided by St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley, which I have received in exchange for an honest review.
View all my reviews on Goodreads
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