This book had some good ideas in it, but it was painful to read. My first petty complaint was that the author didn't use any quotation marks around speech. Then there are just weird turns of phrase everywhere, as if she's trying to show off her vocabulary... but it's like, why would you say "fossicked for lucre" when you could say "scrabbled for cash"? Or why would a society supposedly set in the future use cubits as a standard unit of measurement, and "versts" (which I had to look up, it's a long-obsolete Russian unit) instead of kilometres?

I dunno, as I say there were a few interesting things in it, but for those and other reasons the whole thing just felt like reading someone's fever dream. Also, the title is so undescriptive it's annoying. ( )

Hegemonic fast-food entities, 13h century luminaries, and Jewish mysticism are key ingredients in Cantor's humorous melange of a debut that initially resembles nothing so much as a [a:Mark Leyner|4414|Mark Leyner|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1274163994p2/4414.jpg] novel, with its stab at high-concept, postmodern humor. Alas, the humor falls short of the mark and Cantor's writing and her characters aren't enough to unify the ambitious subject matter. My full review is here. ( )

Loved it. ( )

Loved it, loved every single mystical second of it. I had to stop folding down corners of pages I loved because I'd folded nearly every page down. I love the Neo-Maoist book group/rebel fighters. I loved the wise man Abulafia and his almost petulant demands for his aleph towards the end.
Leonard sort of bumbles along this romp in the future in which the world is ruled by fast food franchises, but Rachel Cantor writes so snappily that you enjoy being in his company as his world is turned upside down by a call from the distant past.
I feel like I would have been happy to read this book forever, had Ms. Cantor kept going, I was so disappointed that the book had ended.
I can imagine people getting frustrated with the book, as it might seem a bit self-indulgent, staring down the old belly button, but, I don't know, I enjoyed the trips back to the 13th century, Marco Polo, Roger Bacon, and the crowd. But I felt the future world in which the book is set was pretty well-realized and that she didn't need to explain things in great detail: she gives the reader some credit to make those leaps, and sometimes the leaps land nowhere in particular, maybe like an adult coloring book, letting you fill in your own colors, within the lines or without. ( )

A Highly Unlikely Scenario is a Recommended highly imaginative comical adventure that veers into time traveling, mysticism, and saving the world. And definitely watch the Neetsa Pizza movie that should be made from A Highly Unlikely Scenario.

In A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World by Rachel Cantor we meet Neetsa Pizza employee Leonard who is employed as a listener. A listener listens to complaints over the phone and follows the proscribed script. He knows that "Clients must be relieved of their pain. It is a sacred calling to restore clients to optimal satisfaction. Pain is relieved through compassion. Compassion is best achieved in a White Room, and delivered through concentrated Listening, use of time-tested Listener algorithms, and liberal use of Neetsa Pizza coupons."

Leonard, who lives with his sister and cares for his nephew while working from home, is adapt at Listening, using the approved responses and nicknames, freely offering coupons, and meditating on the Pythagorean theory and Neetsa training material. The current world is run by fast food conglomerates. Leonard hasn't been out of a very limited area by his home for three years so even while his sister tries to tell him that there are problems out there, Leonard is in denial, thinking he can fix things while working for Neetsa Pizza from his white room. Listening is the perfect job for him, or rather it was until the day when his calls stopped coming in and instead of complaints he found himself talking to a strange man who is imprisoned, somewhere, and all of Leonard's training isn't working.

While there were parts of A Highly Unlikely Scenario that I enjoyed and found humorous, I began to lose interest in it half way into the novel. I'm sure that I'm likely not the target audience. Even though it is being compared to A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I wouldn't have made that comparison after reading it. But what I can really see happening with A Highly Unlikely Scenario is a movie. This could be a very funny, entertaining movie.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Melville House via Edelweiss for review purposes.

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