The Adventures of the Pisco Kid

Standaert's unconventional first novel follows Pisco, a disillusioned rodent exterminator and taxidermy enthusiast. The main thrust of Pisco's life is killing bats and rats, attempting to coexist with a ragtag assembly of neighbors, and lamenting the tragic death of his apartment building's handyman, Paul Putty. Pisco's unhinged, naturally suspicious mother (who calls him by his given name, Moses) is a black Jamaican woman who adopted him; she and her much younger boyfriend, “Fly Boy,” add little to his life of joyless annoyances, the zaniness of which is mind-bogglingly excessive: Pisco is bitten by a bat and develops rabies-like symptoms; he's fired, then beaten down after vomiting on his boss' shoes; he wrestles emotionally with being an adoptee, then finds his friend Father John dead after a night of drinking and winds up in jail accused of murder (and is then rescued by a great flood)—all while corresponding with a gal named Sarah Ellen Roberts, who may or may not be his niece. The author of Skipping Towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire (Soft Skull) and a blogger at the Huffington Post, Standaert targets the soulless options for 21st-century living in this frenetic, bitterly funny paean to defeat. (Sept.)