Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas

Rick Moody
Little, Brown and Company (2007)
ISBN 9780316166348
Reviewed by Joanne Benham (6/07)


In the first story, “The Omega Force,” we meet Dr. Jaime Van Deusen, a retired civil servant living on the small island of South Beach, an isolated enclave of the wealthy.  He wakes up one morning on a neighbor’s loggia, a paperback book called ‘The Omega Force: Code One’ lying next to him.  With no memory of why he was sleeping on the loggia; indeed, he doesn’t even know on whose loggia he’s sleeping, his keen brain makes an immediate leap to espionage.  After all, the clues are all in the book and he gets other clues from a U.S. spy, cleverly disguised as a fisherman.  Realizing that certain ‘dark-complected’ foreign nationals are planning to overrun his island home, Jaime sets out to single-handedly save it from that terrible fate. 

Told in the ramblings of a drunken man, I kept waiting for Jaime to be vindicated, hoping that he would find his ‘dark-complected’ foreign nationals and save his home and family.  

The second story is “K & K,” a thoroughly boring read about the goings-on of a small insurance company.   With only eleven employees on the payroll of Kolodny and Kolodny, Ellie Knight-Cameron figured it wouldn’t take much effort to track down the writer of the totally inappropriate suggestions placed in the company suggestion box.  The story follows her as she tracks down lead after lead, even going so far as to stake out the home of one of the employees, as she stubbornly pursues her quest.  The parallels to Jamie Van Deusen’s story are obvious; although Ellie’s mental instability is not caused by drinking.

The third installment in the book is “The Albertine Notes,” a story about the aftermath of a catastrophe that has leveled fifty square blocks of Manhattan, and left four million dead.  Albertine is a mind-altering drug, capable of producing enhanced memory, where you not only remember past events, you actually relive them down to the smallest detail.  Albertine was also capable of giving certain select individuals the ability to see into the future. 

The story follows Kevin Lee, a magazine reporter assigned to write a story about the history of Albertine, as he tracks down leads, interviews people and tries desperately to understand and explain the power of Albertine.  In this story, the mental instability is of course caused by the drug. 

Again, I was disappointed with the story, literally forcing myself to finish it. 

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