The world is rapidly shrinking. As more satellites are launched and civilization continues to spread about the globe, it's getting harder to find any true mysteries left unsolved. The age of exploration and adventure seems dead and forgotten. Or is it?
In Benjamin Parzybok's debut novel, Couch, three twenty-somethings embark on an epic quest that takes them from their apartment in Portland, OR to the furthest reaches of myth and human experience. Along the way they meet attractive journalists, steampunk enthusiasts, nefarious collectors, helpful councils, drunken guerillas and many others. For it seems like the couch has a destination in mind, somewhere that it wants to go, and it's up to the three roommates to ensure it arrives there.
What makes the book interesting isn't it's seemingly unique premise - though the idea of an act of furniture moving expanding into an epic quest of identity is certainly intriguing. What makes the readers follow along in the story are the three main characters - Thom, Tree and Eric - each with something off about them, and each with a carefully formed personality that intensifies and/or undergoes some changes in the course of the journey.
Tree is the commune-raised hippy artisan of the group who seems most susceptible to going along with the possibility that this mystical trip is real, as are the various legends and myths surrounding the couch. Eric is the inept con-man with the suspiciously fast growing moustache who is much more interested in turning this adventure into money than learning anything about archetypes or the hero's journey. And lastly there is Thom, a giant (literally) computer hacker with gastrointestinal issues that seem less a like dietary problem than it is an expression of his own self-doubts and depression. If it would help matters to understand this trio in Star Wars terms (and when doesn't it?) Eric is Han Solo (cynical rogue), Tree is Princess Leia (altruistic true-believer) and Thom is mix between Luke & Chewie.
Benjamin Parzybok
So there's a very interesting central conceit of getting a mystical couch back to where it once belonged. And there is some great character work as all three have to grapple with the realities of their increasingly unreal situation. But what raises all of this to a great read is Parzybok is an excellent observer of the human condition, with plenty of great passages that will be quoted on Liberal Arts campuses and in high school yearbooks for years to come (I've even quoted one already). In addition to his excellent writing about larger themes prevalent in the world, with its diminishing sense of wonder, most of the book is filtered through Thom, and here Parzybok does a great job conveying how a person with depression and wracked with self-doubt processes the world. Constantly mentally squabbling with an entity he refers to as "Brain," Thom spends much of his time and energy attacking himself and pointing out every possible negative outcome that is on the horizon.
I think Couch will become a favorite of the indie set, much like Tom Robbins, Christopher Moore and Neil Gaiman's work. Just like those authors, Parzybok has a bigger question and larger issues he wishes to tackle, but he makes sure that the lens he views them through - his characters - are expertly and realistically created. Couch is an adventure that spans continents, oceans, realms both real and imagined - and in its long journey back to the beginning, readers are able to see a little bit of themselves along the way.