Joe Kilgore

After a long and successful career, Brice Lanning sees himself as the consummate advertising man. When an insensitive boss, years his junior, tactlessly reassigns his major account, Lanning takes it as a personal insult. Retreating to his favorite watering hole, he embarks on a monumental bender and a particularly ill-conceived revenge. It's a snafu that triggers an inexorable chain of life-changing events.The Blunder is a modern cautionary tale that makes each of us question whether we are captives or architects of that elusive thing called fate.

The Blunder

Sarah Sammis

Brice Lanning has worked at the same advertising agency for thirty years. When the big presentation is taken away from him he goes on a bender. The Blunder by Joe Kilgore chronicles the fallout from that long day of drinking at his favorite watering hole.

The Blunder is written in a style reminiscent of The Graduate by Charles Webb. Imagine Benjamin Braddock twenty years older and working and living in New York City. Kilgore describes Lanning's thoughts and actions with an air of detachment. He's more like a bystander in Lanning's head rather than actually being Lanning.

The book starts slowly. It took me a while to get used to Kilgore's writing style. It takes until chapter 9, "Persona Non Grata" for the novel to hit its stride. If you follow the fifty-page rule, hold out for page fifty-six.

Once Lanning was left to deal with the fallout of his actions, cut off from his family, his job, his friends and his identity, I was reminded favorably of The Twenty Dollar Bill by Elmore Hammes. Brice Lanning takes the place of the bill and like it, does end up back where he started very much a changed man. His journey also affects the people he leaves behind and the people he meets along the way. Unlike The Twenty Dollar Bill we actually get to see the results of his presence play out.

The Blunder

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