Love and Other Near-Death Experiences: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Villard
Category: EBooks
List Price: $9.95
Buy New: $7.96
You Save: $1.99 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 40409
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
ASIN: B000FCKPLM
Publication Date: February 14, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Hello. My name is Robert, and I haven’t been dead for sixty-three days now.
If he hadn’t bought those crummy towels, Rob would be six feet under. But his poor shopping sense accidentally set off a convoluted chain of events that meant he lived when all those others died in the pub explosion. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the ugly towels that saved his life. Perhaps it was some other random action, some other small movement that was the utterly trivial yet vitally important factor. And that’s the real problem.
Now, with his wedding fast approaching, Rob suddenly finds himself paralyzed with indecision–about Every. Little. Thing. He just can't be sure which seemingly innocuous choice will mean the difference between life and death: Should he wash the fork or the knife first? Should he step out of the shower with his left leg or his right leg? Red sweater or blue? One thing is certain: His fiancee, Jo, is at her wits’ end.
To save his relationship and his sanity, Rob embarks on a quest to find out why he’s still breathing. When he meets up with others who have had similar lifesaving near misses, he figures the answer must be close. But fate may just catch them yet, for Rob’s search to understand why he’s still alive might well turn out to be the very thing that kills them all.
Filled with the barbed and sparkling dialogue that made Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About a cult hit, Mil Millington’s Love and Other Near-Death Experiences is a hilarious existential romantic comedy about second guesses and second chances.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 An Exercise in Absurdity June 30, 2008
I came across Mil Millington through the praise lauded on him by author Christopher Moore on his personal website. Like Moore, Millington does what few writers are able to do; put humor into literature. Though lesser known because he is from across the pond, Millington has the potential to find an audience in the States.
The story finds Rob Garland, an indecisive 31 year old man, living with the reality of a near death experience. Fronting the graveyard shift of a jazz radio show, Rob spills his emotions on the air one night. This unites a cast of crazies that have shared similar experiences to Rob's experience on a quest without direction. Battling seemingly irrational bodily desires, the dreaded "fundos", and reconciling a mundane relationship, while mocking a sizable portion of the landscape of English literature, Millington's wit has a sharp point that rarely misses the mark on the first stab. But seeming to know he may have some misses, many quirks are replayed overexposing the joke.
I feel the need to give a word of caution to non-British readers. Millington is decidedly English in his writing. Thus, many Americans may not know what he is talking about or calling certain people. I do not suspect this would keep American readers from enjoying the book, but the internet provides word translation sites at no cost.
Most readers will see the twists in the plot coming before they happen. Yet if you purchase this book, it is unlikely you are hoping to be dazzled by the plot. To be blunt, the book is funny. It does not measure up to the work of Christopher Moore, but that is a difficult standard to meet. But in a niche of the industry where there is room for diversity and new talent, Mil Millington has made a name for himself.
Do not read this book in public! June 14, 2008
First, a Public Service Announcement: Do not read this in public. It will make you laugh aloud (so your boss will realize you're reading at work), and put you at risk of snorting coffee through your nose and/or spitting it all over anyone nearby. Not to mention all those strange looks you'll get.
Like Millington's previous two books, Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, and A Certain Chemistry, Love and Other Near-Death Experiences had me laughing aloud every other page, frequently laughing so hard I'd have tears running down my face and I'd feel compelled to quote funny bits aloud to whoever was handy at the time.
But that's where the similarity ends. If possible, I think this is even better than the first two, and I absolutely loved the first two.
Late-night disk jockey Rob Garland is losing it. Ever since... okay, it's not a spoiler because it's all right there on the cover, but since I make it a policy not to read the back covers of books because I want to get the full effect, it was a little bit of suspense you won't get if I tell. Still, if you're reading this about a book you haven't read yet, you'd likely read the back of the book anyway, right? Okay, then. I feel better now. On we go. Ever since returning some towels made him late for a lunch interview, thereby saving his life when a tanker truck crashes into the restaurant, killing everyone inside, he's been crippled by indecision: which decision was it that saved his life? Was it returning the towels? Or was it buying the towels in the first place? Or maybe it was whatever made him turn and see the towels in the shop window. Or something even more mundane. And what about the future? What if choosing black over blue ink sets in motion the events that will end up killing him? What if it's the blue ink that does it? How can he choose?
It finally gets to be too much for him one night, and instead of playing jazz, he blurts out the whole story on-air. Rather than losing his job, though, he becomes instantly popular, and his show turns into a freak-show talk show with Rob as the main attraction.
But this isn't a case of talking making things better, and his fiancee Jo finally tells him the wedding is off unless he gets his act together, and Rob goes off on a quest, accompanied by three people who also didn't die when they should have: a young American soldier who's appointed himself Rob's bodyguard, an acerbic and suicidal 40-year-old English teacher, and a gorgeous young Welsh Wiccan woman with warnings about a group trying to wight...er, right... the wrongs of unwarranted survival.
I've always loved the butterfly-effect concept anyway--the idea that some minuscule detail could have a huge effect, and the idea that this otherwise normal person is literally paralyzed by indecision is compelling. We get pretty thoroughly inside Rob's head, and it's fascinating how normal a place that is.
There's the mystery and suspense--is someone really after them, or is that just psychological, too? And the developing and changing relationships between the characters--love and friendship and romance. And the slightly askew way of viewing it all that marks Millington's writing and would make me snort tea out my nose if I didn't know better than to drink while reading his books.
Just a complete joy to read.
Excellent fun with some thought behind it January 6, 2008
Picked up this book in the library a few weeks ago, knowing nothing about the book or its author. What a great find! Faced with the decision of which book to choose, I'm glad I made the right choice (if you read the book, this is a (pretty poor) reference to part of the plot).
In any case, I was laughing so hard that even my husband came over to see what I was reading.
One caveat - the author is so British that apparently he can't even force himself to write in "American". Zach, the American character, didn't really sound like one of us. But this is just a tiny flaw in an otherwise very enjoyable read!
 I wasn't expecting much, and I was still disappointed. May 15, 2007
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I bought this book on a whim after laughing my way through parts of Mil Millington's website, www.thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com. When it arrived at my home two weeks later, I grimaced at the hasty purchase, put it on my shelf, and left it there for about a year.
A couple days ago, I picked it back up. How lovely, to now have wasted both my money and my time.
Millington's knack for spurts of hilarity is demonstrated by the anecdotes on his website. Unfortunately, his attempt to maintain this humor throughout a novel is strained, tense, unsuccessful. He delivers cheap one-liners that are generally followed by a hollow Ba Dum Cha! and little laughter, and his 'funny scenes' often evoke naught but the unpleasant aftertaste of dissatisfaction. Furthermore, although I can appreciate absurdity in plot (Shakespeare sure pulls it off), there is little to appreciate in Millington's random and apparently haphazard plot developments. At times he appears stymied by his own characters. 'What to do with them now? Aha, let's have Rob kiss Elizabeth! They'll have amazing sex! What a splendid turn in events! I bet my readers will never see it coming! Perhaps because I never saw it, either! Yes, it's all clear now. Rob fell in love with Elizabeth at some indeterminable point. Rob isn't sure when. I'm not sure when. My readers likely won't be sure when, either. That means they'll never expect this. Wonderful!' (This wouldn't be so frustrating if Elizabeth weren't such a brilliantly created and delivered character up to this point. Millington gets it so right, and then goes so, so, so wrong.)
Millington's plot developments often don't make sense. Rob suddenly loves Elizabeth. Elizabeth suddenly loves Rob. The characters are pursued and attacked by fundamentalists. No, a girl crazy with grief. No, she just hates the English.
Millington doesn't create one cohesive puzzle, where the pieces fit into a cohesive picture. Instead, he forces pieces to fit where they don't belong, and, what's more, he adds in pieces from entirely different puzzles at leisure.
The result is a below average book, successfully funny at times, unsuccessfully at others, with a plot that initially suggests potential, but ultimately flounders under the clumsy care of the author.
Highly recommended January 10, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you like a razor sharp British wit, then this is the book for you. I can't recommend it highly enough.
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