Mark Brumfeld is angry. At 31 he is jobless, jilted and deep in debt ... There, in the basement bedroom of his youth, he spawns the Boomer Boomers, a revolutionary group of unemployed millennials who accuse baby boomers of selfishly clinging to all the good jobs. 'They were meant to retire at the age of sixty-five,' Mark declares in the first of many homemade videos to go viral. 'And they have not retired. They have not' ... For a book animated by the gripes of young people, it is interesting that the most fully realized character here is Julia. Mark’s mother...Her story highlights some of the fatuousness of making broad generational generalizations, not least because most female boomers have had less agency than their daughters. She also poignantly illustrates the slow but steady creep of time, and the way 'old' age often arrives as a surprise. Mr. Torday has written this book with verve, but it would have been nice if he had slowed down a bit. Mark and Cassie’s relationship feels rushed, and some of their choices seem more convenient than plausible. Still, Boomer1 is a sharp, bright and often amusing snapshot of this unwieldy economic moment.
It’s hard to tell where the book’s sympathies lie—it reads as contemporary satire with Shakespearean echoes—but the baby boomers’ own verdict is 'meshugas.' Torday reveals the artificiality of all identity markers, from given names to generational monikers ... Many of the book’s best passages explore the collapsing of time—decaying leaves become 'a synaptic palimpsest'—and from the old songs [protagonist] Mark and [ex-girlfriend] Cassie cover to the new names they take, the hybridization of past and present permeates the novel, complicating any division between 'us' and 'them.'
Arriving almost exactly seven years after the first Occupy Wall Street protests, Boomer1 reimagines that movement as a decentralized, dark-web-conspired wave of 'generational domestic terrorism.' In this case, it’s not the 1 percent against the 99 percent, but baby boomers against millennials, the latter camp having been been radicalized by the video missives of angry, unemployed, and masked YouTuber 'Isaac Abramson,' who is actually not a millennial but identifies as one ... Torday’s book is eerily prescient of the America we’ve struggled to reckon with since Nov. 9, 2016, and all the more unsettling even in spite of its clever humor:...Only two years ago, social media was still vaguely and cheerfully 'democratizing' instead of undermining democracy itself, and 'leaning in' was what people were saying women had to do to be taken seriously. With or without the current situation, that former self-deceptive tech utopianism could have never lasted because nothing does, even for youth who’ve grown up with a sense of mastery over history. That’s the melancholy theme that runs through this book from beginning to end, which Torday focalizes through the sad character of Mark’s mother, Julia. Reflecting on her own childhood in suburban Philadelphia at the dawn of the postwar boom times, she recalls 'the beginning of a period, an era, that appeared then to have no limit.'
...so appealing ... The dialogue is stellar, and humor dances through everything like a countermelody. Cassie sparkles with observational sarcasm, and her journey into the strange start-up world and her relationship with 'on the spectrum' colleague Regan were my favorite parts of the novel. Mark is a bit dense ... In the end, Boomer1 isn’t about Baby Boomers and Millennials. It's about people trying to discover themselves, even if that means starting a revolution. Because we can always put on a mask and change our name, but we can't change who we really are.
...topical and relevant ... a thoughtful, taut, and engaging commentary on how social media can escalate personal angst into a terrorist act that turns deadly ... With admirable dexterity and a sharp eye for detail, Torday takes readers into the collapsing life of Mark Blumfield, a thirtysomething magazine fact-checker ... Boomer1's knowing take on identity politics and generational turmoil will make many people smile. The novel is artfully written and well worth reading.
[An] excellent new novel ... It may feel ludicrous and overblown, but when those other outraged twenty-somethings chime in on the dark web, the plot grows dark as well, and violence looms ... There’s a fluid line between comedy and satire, and Boomer1 blithely crosses in both directions ... the denouement is hilarious in its ironies.
Today constructs a...story about generational conflict brought to a boiling point. Mark Brumfeld...frustrated with the slow economy and job market, which he blames the baby boomers for. To allay his frustrations, Mark creates a web video series to encourage baby boomers to vacate their jobs, and for millennials to be ready to take them—by force, if necessary. But what started as catharsis quickly morphs into a domestic terrorist organization aimed at pushing boomers out of the workforce ... While the ending feels anticlimactic, Torday’s wry examination of those attempting to survive in postrecession America is particularly poignant.
Cassie and Mark, both bluegrass musicians, meet at a gig in Williamsburg, where 'maybe fifty bespectacled recent college grads milled around drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon from the can and Miller High Life from the bottle.' Cassie reflexively rebuffs Mark's friendly overtures, fearing that her girlfriend will notice and take umbrage. Despite Cassie's lack of enthusiasm, the two soon find themselves in a band, a relationship, and a shared apartment. But shortly after Mark gets her a fact-checking gig at the glossy magazine where he's on staff, their lives take starkly different turns. He loses his job, spends a year writing an essay on Emma Goldman that no one reads, then makes a financial and romantic mistake so serious he is forced to move home to Baltimore. There, he puts on a David Crosby mask, sets himself up in front of an upside-down poster of Jerry Garcia, and begins to issue YouTube screeds against baby boomers ... Stylishly written, cleverly observed, and boldly imagined.
