Welcome to the world of blogging. Anonymous Lawyer, hiring partner for a large California law firm, is making a bid for chairman of the firm and has found blogging to be the perfect vent for the frustrations that he is dealing with in his daily life. And what better way to spew his satyrical musings than anonymously via the Internet.
He has taken all the precautions to be sure that his associates will not be able to nail him as the author by creating pseudonyms for the people he encounters every day and changing location names, but he is still apprehensive about being caught. After all, the content of the blog could ruin his career.
Enter Anonymous Niece. While Anonymous Lawyer has no hopes for Anonymous Son or Anonymous Daughter, he has high hopes for Anonymous Niece as she readies herself for Yale Law School to follow in her uncle’s footsteps. Throughout his foray into the blogging realm, she acts as his crutch and gives him pointers on the fine art of remaining anonymous on the Internet.
This entire book is presented to the reader through the blog and e-mails that are transmitted between Anonymous Lawyer, his niece, lovers and haters of his blog, and the few associates who have figured out that he's the writer. With the way that the Internet has changed today's society, it was only a matter of time before blogging, chat and e-mail was implemented into literature. To be truthful, I have mixed feelings about this whole deal. I give praise to the author for the modernistic approach to relaying the story, however, at the same time, we are inundated with the Internet everywhere we look and I esteem literature as a sacred commodity that I would rather not see infiltrated by modern methods of communication. With most of today's children composing chat-speak better than good old fashioned English grammar, I'm afraid to peek into the future to see upcoming novels filled with "lol"s, "brb"s, and "a/s/l"s. I will quit reading altogether if a novel is ever published that is based on people texting each other on their cell phones.
Ok, so I've gotten a bit off track. I love Anonymous Lawyer's sarcasm. It's Grade A, top notch stuff, and I love nothing better than to find a sense of humor matching my own (I laughed out loud at more than a few excerpts). Alternately, I did find it hard to connect and sympathize with him as he represents the self-centered, egomaniacal, cutthroat businessman that we all love to hate. While we were given a good look at the driving force behind his attitude, I still couldn't wait to see him get what he had coming to him. Which brings me to the plot development. I had the storyline pegged from the start. There were no surprises, no twists and turns to keep me turning the pages to see what happened next. All in all, it was worth the time to read for the humor, but if your looking for a plot that draws you into its grasp, you'd better pass on this one.
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Publisher: Henry Holt & Company (July 25, 2006)
ISBN: 0805079815
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