A novel that blends science fiction, satire, farce, and literary mystery. A mind-reading nursing assistant who moonlights as a superhero wakes up from an alcohol-induced stupor to photographs which seem to show him assaulting an unknown woman.
...[Maazel is] a dazzling prose stylist with a gift for creating characters caught in extraordinary situations that defy credulity. Imagine a situation comedy written by Phillip K. Dick or a telenovela penned by Thomas Pynchon ... At times this kitchen sink approach threatens to smother the story, but Maazel propels the narrative forward with her knack for evoking empathy out of the improbable and transforming coincidence into conspiracy. A Little More Human is a character-driven work of literary fiction that also happens to be a thriller guided by a web of intrigue with an ending that not even a mind reader could see coming.
A Little More Human, in its spiraling, fast-paced, witty prose, is stylistically reminiscent of the best of Vonnegut and Pynchon, and its humor, combined with an exploration and critique of technology, sets the story squarely in the realm of contemporary novels such as Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story and Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe ... Though such a multiplicity of plot elements may have suffered at the hands of a less-talented writer — the equivalent of an over-confident juggler dropping six or seven plates and then treading on their shards — Maazel succeeds by mapping a variety of generic concerns onto the relatively simple through-line of a mystery.
...more often [than not] the writing is bright and shiny, as fun to follow as that bouncing ball ... Occasionally we dip into the shallow consciousness of Maazel’s characters, who think and talk like this: '?"I can’t make it without you," he said. "I know it hasn’t seemed like it for a while, but you are my life."?' But mostly we skate on that bright surface, which in this novel’s terms makes a certain sense. If consciousness and experience are so suspect and subject to distortion, forgetting and loss, perhaps it’s better not to go too deep. If only we can remember that.
