Simon Rich is still the freshest, funniest new writer today, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. He has written comedy for the New Yorker, Pixar, Saturday Night Live, the Believer, and various movie studios. He's the author of two collections, Free-Range Chickens and Ant Farm. His first novel, Elliot Allagash, was optioned for a film by Jason Reitman. Rich lives, predictably, in Brooklyn.
Hilarious and touching...Rich is crazy good at hysterical sharp dialogue. But the bonus here is that his head is matched by his heart. Rich lends the potentially gimmicky story real emotional heft and avoids condescending to his characters (or readers). --Entertainment Weekly Divinely funny. --Vanity Fair Simon Rich [is] one of the funniest writers in America... Rich evokes enough of the hellish qualities of Earth (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Walmart, a screenplay for Finnegans Wake) and of the little things that we'll miss (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Walmart, a screenplay for Finnegans Wake) that it feels like a little love letter to the world. Thanks, life. Good of you to let me drop by. --Daily Beast A divine satire --The Guardian Sweetly funny and even moving; love, in this case, is what makes the world keep spinning. --Boston Globe His imagined situations read like sketches he might have conceived at his old job as a writer for Saturday Night Live... Rich knows how to balance the smart with the funny. --New York Times Book Review One of the funniest books you'll read this year. --Publishers Weekly As unpredictable as it is funny, and one of the best American comic novels of the past few years... A near-perfect work of humor writing--strikingly original, edgy but compassionate, and most importantly, deeply hilarious. --Michael Schaub, NPR