The Awful Truth About The Sushing Prize - Marco Ocram - ★★★.¾
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AUTHOR: Marco Ocram
SERIES: The Awful Truth, #2
GENRE: Crime Thriller Parody
PUBLICATION DATE: June 4, 2019
RATING: 3.75 stars.
In a Nutshell: A spoof crime novel, the plot of which is nigh on impossible to explain in a line. Possibly the silliest book I have ever read! (I mean this as a compliment!) Enjoyed it to a great extent. Recommended, but only to those who read spoofs the way spoofs are meant to be read: by tossing out their thinking caps.
Plot Preview: (Honestly, I have no idea how to offer a preview to this crazy book! Trying my best!)
Marco Ocram (Yup, the “author”!) is a high-achieving, super-intelligent, uber-popular, humble writer who has a secret: whatever he writes happens immediately. As his natural affinity is towards writing crime, Marco writes crime novels, much to the chagrin of his book’s lead character DI Como Galahad, who is stuck solving the crime while Marco keeps penning impossible twists and getting them into dangerous situations. All of this would have been fine if Marco were a truly talented plotter. Unfortunately, he is more of a pantser, so even he doesn’t know how the crime he has written himself into can be resolved. With the latest murder he has written, Marco has set himself up for yet another challenge, and poor Como has to sacrifice his football match to solve the case.
The story comes to us in Marco’s first-person perspective.
I grab books for all kinds of reasons. In this case, it was the author’s palindromic pseudonym, the crazy-sounding blurb, and high praise by a fellow reviewer that stirred my curiosity in this mouthful of a title. However, what sealed the deal was the tagline: "When Idiots Fight Crime"! 😆
This is such a whimsical book! I’ve heard of some authors writing themselves into their books in minor appearances (often via a casual mention of their other novels as a promotional strategy.) But this is the first time I have read an author not only being a part of an active plot in his own avatar but also writing the plot as it is unfurling and also interacting with his characters while figuring out his next writing move as well as breaking the fourth wall and talking to his readers about his writing techniques. It is all so meta! I am still not sure how the book works, but surprise, surprise – it works!
(On an aside, this book repeatedly mentions another novel by Marco Ocram: “The Awful Truth About the Herbert Quarry Affair.” But here’s what's strange: “The Awful Truth About the Herbert Quarry Affair” wasn’t even written at the time this book was first published in 2019. However, the author did write it as a prequel in 2021, and hence The Sushing Prize is now the second book of the Awful Truth series. See? Everything about this series is unusual! 😁)
Books often begin with an epitaph or a foreword or a prologue. Not this one! It starts with the one section that is always found at the end of the book: “About the Author”. The content herein (the same as the author’s bio on Goodreads) is so ludicrous that it sets the right expectations about what to expect from the plot.
But what DO you expect from a plot where the writer is working out the story right in front of your eyes? Mayhem, that’s what! There’s absolutely nothing sane in this story, or even about the writer, who constantly swerves between self-congratulatory and self-recriminatory.
Marco Ocram, who is talent incarnate and humility personified *wink, wink!*, has a great on-page rapport with his character Como Galahad, the detective from the Clarkesville County Police Department who is absolutely fed up of his writer. These two are the main characters, with plenty of secondary characters coming and going as needed. Every chapter comes with a tagline that tells us what it contains; these are as hilarious as the plot.
I believe that humour is the toughest of all genres to write. People have different tastes when it comes to what’s funny; what’s hilarious to one might be offensive to another. Moreover, written jokes don’t hit the same way as spoken jokes do; humour writers don’t have the advantage of facial expressions or voice modulations to create an impact. As a satirical work however, this book seems to get most of its jokes on point. There’s also plenty of name-dropping, some of which is outright hilarious. I burst out laughing quite a few times, especially in the first half. Until the midpoint mark, I was quite sure this book would be a 4.25 stars read.
But the second half changed tone to some extent. The plot started feeling dragged, and the humour turned from consistently intelligent to sporadic and farfetched, making the reading journey a bit tedious. The ending and the epilogue helped somewhat, but the magic of the first half was mostly missing in the rest of the book. The eponymous Sushing Prize doesn’t even come up until almost the final quarter; the title is thus a bit misleading.
Just because the content is funny doesn’t mean that the book is a cushy read throughout. There are a couple of gruesome scenes that, though tackled lightly, are still a bit too brutal. There is also racism and misogyny, but both of these are tackled in a mostly satirical fashion, poking fun at how typical thrillers incorporate such stuff without qualms. I loved how the book made me question my own ingrained bias, when I jumped to conclusions about the gender of a character based on their career and was happy to be proven wrong.
Marco Ocram admits in the book that he isn't a great writer and that his plots often have non sequiturs and repetitions and loopholes. So whatever can be pointed out as a flaw of the plot can also be considered a genius writing move, the writer-of-the-book’s way of confirming the writer-in-the-book’s shortcomings. (I don’t even know if that sentence makes sense! 🤭)
All in all, this is the stupidest book I've ever read, and I had quite a jolly time reading it! Most of my friends know that I dearly love logic, so it was quite challenging for me to throw all rules of logic aside while reading this wacky indie novel. But I think I managed to do so to a great extent, thanks to the clear hints in the book blurb and the author’s bio. (The plot contains an Easter egg about the author's actual identity. Smart!)
Suspension of disbelief is anyway something most thriller readers these days are accustomed to doing. However, this isn't an ordinary thriller but a satirical thriller – it requires suspension of disbelief for the entire ride. Basically, when you read the utterly and unbelievably ridiculous events of this book, you will say “What nonsense” either while rolling your eyes or while bursting into laughter. No matter what, you will say “What nonsense!” The whole book is nonsensical! 😅
Recommended to those who would enjoy a parody crime thriller that breaks not just the fourth wall but every conceivable wall of logic and writing. Despite the dip in the second half, this is still a fun book and quite clever too, all the more if you remember that it is a debut work. Put away your thinking caps and enjoy the ride.
My thanks to Zooloo’s Book Tours, Tiny Fox Press LLC, and author "Marco Ocram" for a complimentary digital ARC of 'The Awful Truth About The Sushing Prize', and for allowing me to be a part of this blog tour. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.
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Blurb:
Should I tell him about Sushing or play dumb?
Sticking in my comfort zone, I played dumb.
Writer Marco Ocram has a secret superpower—whatever he writes actually happens, there and then. Hoping to win the million-dollar Sushing Prize, he uses his powers to write a true-crime thriller, quickly discovering a freakish murder. But Marco has a major problem—he's a total idiot who can't see beyond his next sentence. Losing control of his plot and his characters, and breaking all the rules of fiction, Marco writes himself into every kind of trouble, until only the world's most incredible ending can save his bacon.
Fast, funny, and utterly different, welcome to the weird world of The Awful Truth.
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Author "Marco Ocram":
Little is known of Marco Ocram’s earliest years. He was adopted at age nine, having been abandoned in a Detroit shopping mall—a note taped to his anorak said the boy was threatening the sanity of his parents. Re-abandoned in the same mall a year later, with a similar note from his foster parents, he was homed with his current Bronx mom—a woman with no sanity to threaten.
Ocram first gained public attention through his bold theories about a new fundamental particle, the Tao Muon, which he popularized in a best-selling book, The Tao Muon. He was introduced to the controversial literary theorist, Herbert Quarry, who coached Ocram in a radical approach to fiction, in which the author must write without thinking, a technique to which Ocram was naturally suited. His crime memoir, The Awful Truth about the Herbert Quarry Affair, became the fastest selling book of all time, making him a household name. It was translated into every known language, and at least three unknown ones, and made into an Oscar-winning film, a Pulitzer-winning play, a Tony-winning musical, and a Golden Joystick-winning computer game.
Ocram excelled at countless sports, until a middle-ear problem permanently impaired his balance. He has yet to win a Nobel Prize, but his agent, Barney, has been placing strategic back-handers; announcements from Stockholm are expected imminently (and, according to Barney, we're not just talking literature and physics). Unmarried, in spite of his Bronx mom’s unceasing efforts, he lives near his foster parents in New York.
Connect with him on:
Website: https://www.theawfulauthor.com/
X/Twitter: https://x.com/awfulmarcoocram
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Author Denis Shaughnessy:
Denis Shaughnessy is the author of the mold-breaking Awful Truth series, published under the name "Marco Ocram". His books, which break all of the rules of fiction, have been described as ‘a dazzling tour de force', 'mind-bending’, 'wildly inventive', 'an entirely new type of narrative' and 'utterly unique’. He has won two CIBA first prizes for Humor and Satire and was shortlisted for the prestigious Thurber Prize. He has a PhD in quantum theory and lives on a small-holding in the New Forest. He is currently working on a middle-grade novel featuring a junior Marco Ocram.
Connect with him on:
X/Twitter: https://x.com/denishaughnessy
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Check out this book:
Purchase from: https://mybook.to/sushingprize-zbt
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This has been a stop on the #TheAwfulTruthAboutTheSushingPrize blog tour conducted by Zooloo's Book Tours. (@ZooloosBookTours on Insta.) Thanks for stopping by!
Thank you so much for being a part of the tour x
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