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Title: Holy Water

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: James P. Othmer

Narrator: William Dufris

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-15-10

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Henry Tuhoe is the quintessential 21st-century man. He has a vague, well-compensated job working for a multinational conglomerate - but everyone around him is getting laid off as the company outsources everything it can to third-world countries. Henry has a beautiful wife - his college sweetheart - and an idyllic new home in the leafy suburbs, complete with a pool. But his wife won't let him touch her, even though she demanded he get a vasectomy; he's seriously overleveraged on the mortgage; and no matter what chemicals he tries, the pool remains a corpselike shade of ghastly green.

Then Henry's boss offers him a choice: go to the tiny, magical, about-to-be-globalized Kingdom of Galado to oversee the launch of a new customer-service call center for a boutique bottled water company the conglomerate has just acquired, or lose the job with no severance. Henry takes the transfer, more out of fecklessness than a sense of adventure.

In Galado, a land both spiritual and corrupt, Henry wrestles with first-world moral conundrums, the life he left behind, the attention of a steroid-abusing, megalomaniacal monarch, and a woman intent on redeeming both his soul and her country. The result is a riveting piece of fiction of and for our times, blackly satirical, moving, and profound.

Critic Reviews:

"Othmer wrings humor from nearly every facet of contemporary culture.... It's well-done satiredark, but not too." (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

"Continuous Partial Attention Syndrome"

Henry Tuhoe is vice president of under-arm research in a Proctor and Gamble-like multi-national consumer conglomerate; an exile from Manhattan suffering through the boredom of suburban "Meat Nights" and a self-absorbed wife whose latest kick is witchcraft. When Tuhoe fakes the vasectomy his wife pressures him to endure, he throws his old life aside, and heads to the fictitious third world mountain kingdom of Galado to set up a call center for the New Age bottled water company subsidiary of his corporation.

Former adman and author of "The Futurist" James P. Othmer strikes a number of chords in both hemispheres in this dark farce; a novel packed with crusades and messages that never feel forced or belligerent; the author staying faithful entertainment over proselytization. This is part Tom Wolfe and part Cory Doctorow, and while Othmer leaves Doctorow's attitude behind, his biting satire is more effective in corporate cube farms and the manicured lawns of Westchester subdivisions than it is in the third world. Notwithstanding, Othmer gathers a quirky and convincing cast that is clever enough to miss the stereotype branding, from the EEE-cup porn star TS Elliot-quoting secretary to the Aussie ex-pat businessman in Galado that knows all the wrong people in the right places. His irony and delicious cynicism have few bounds and fewer prisoners, skewerings with equal delight the easy targets (corporate greed and pollution, and spa resorts) and the more risky (same-sex marriage and the green movement) while shining some light on the very real global shortage of clean water.

Like Wolfe and the more hip Max Berry, Othmer has a keen eye for American culture as diffused through a lens of corporate bureaucracy and politics.