Just Desserts
By Carl Reiner
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Published September 1, 2009 (Hardcover) Phoenix Books
I’ve never been one for slapstick, but maybe Carl Reiner is convincing me. His heart is in the right place. Mostly.
In Just Desserts, Reiner magically creates a world where sinners and other cruel people are instantly punished. In this world, is a novelist, influenced by an author whose name is unnervingly similar to Carl Reiner’s — try Rhyne Karlner. And that novelist, Nat Noland, is a plagiarist. Yeah, that part I don’t like. I wouldn’t even open a Cliff’s Notes in school, so opposed was I to unoriginality and what I thought was cheating.
Nat — an avowed atheist — begins this adventure by writing to God in an email. He was goofing. But, he is stunned when he gets an immediate reply. He is further stunned when the GodGod emails, as he calls them, begin answering questions Nat has posed in his mind.
At the point when the romance author Nat Noland shows up — with a New York Times press pass — at the UN, I finally throw in the towel of my resistance. And I roll with Reiner’s Novellelah. Good timing, because this is about the point when the noses of world leaders at the UN grow, Pinocchio-like, with their lies. Including George W.
Just Desserts is a deliciously funny book — with lessons and depth if you enjoy its profoundness. And its slapstick, if you don’t.
