You wouldn't think a novel about the daughter of a scientist who kills himself after the super‐virus he created is stolen and unleashed on the world, bringing about the collapse of society, would be so hilarious. But it is. Honestly. First novel by a young author with a flair for deadpan wit and insight into the modern American mindset ( )

Unfortunately, I had to abandon this. I just couldn’t take the writing style — it was all over the place. And that was just in the first chapter. There just wasn’t enough that was believable. That doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t like it… It just didn’t click for me.

Fiona Maazel's 'Last Last Chance' deals primarily with broken people and broken families in a society that is turning on itself. The foremost catalyst for all the shattering taking place in the main characters' family is drug addiction; wonderfully, Maazel manages to write in such a way that I myself felt as though I were on drugs. Breathless, at times fractured prose and stream-of-consciousness digressions are combined with a wonderful sense of irony (or, you know, snark...YMMV), making the dialogue snappy and witty and funny even as you recognize the tragedy of these broken relationships.

I tore through the book in no time flat, and wasn't able to pick up another until Last Last Chance was finished (an unusual occurrence). It is sort of the happier, more manic younger sibling of drug-centered novels I have read recently. For a REAL downer, read "Random Family" by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. I may have enjoyed LLC as much as I did because I read it right after finishing RF, and it was such a lighthearted (on the surface) book in comparison to RF's excellent (but unrelentingly depressing), pull-no-punches description of 1980s' gang and drug culture in NYC.

Four out of five stars. ( )

Still reading this, but it's kind of odd. The description of the book certainly doesn't cover it. There are some chapters where I'm not even sure who's speaking! I've only read about 80 pages so far, but I'm mightily confused!

I requested this tragicomedy from the LibraryThing ER program because it promised to be bizarre and apocalyptic – an irresistible combination. Lucy narrates in first person, and most of the crazy comes from seeing the world through her unfocused eyes, though most of the other characters know how to bring it too.

It’s a dense novel – reading it is akin to picking your way through the underbrush of a wild, virgin forest – and after having spent most of my literary escapades lately careening through vast expanses of open meadows – it took quite a bit of patience to get through. But if you can summon up the patience, it is richly rewarding. Even with a zany, preposterous (one hopes at least) plot, at the sentence level, the writing is breathtaking. And Debut Author Fiona Maazel juggles the trippy narrative arcs of the characters with ease, even giving past lives a chance to tell their story.

And the end? Well, it’s not wrapped neatly in a bow, but it does fit the title. Because what is a last last chance anyway? Infinite chances really. Which is the perfect theme to tie all the disparate threads of this novel together – the addict trying to get clean, reincarnation, and even a slate-wiping mega disaster like a plague or the flood that killed everyone but Noah’s family on the ark. ( )