Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory

I think this is the fifth of Daryl Gregory's books I've read. I absolutely adored Pandemonium and Raising Stony Mayhall. Both took interesting ideas and kept pushing them one step further, exploring ramifications far beyond where I would have expected the story to go. I quite enjoyed Unpossible, although I wanted a full-length book treatment of the short stories. Then came Afterparty, which sounded like it was going to do just that, taking the core idea of one of the short stories and pushing it to book length.

But I was a little disappointed. Afterparty ended up being more of a thriller than anything else, and it was a very good thriller, but it didn't keep pushing on the core idea to see where it would go, and that was really what I wanted. Still, Gregory's been one of my favourite authors over the last couple of years, so I was very excited to sit down and read Spoonbenders.

In this case, it is yet again a case where we're not continually pushing on a core idea to see where it goes, but the difference is that this time, I don't mind in the least. I may have gotten less philosophical speculation, but what I got instead was a really stellar, slightly sci-fi, family drama, with interesting characters and dilemmas. I'm fully on board for all of this one.

The story bounces around in time a bit, starting when conman Teddy Telemachus falls for beautiful psychic Maureen while both are in a CIA program for precognition, one which Teddy scams his way through, and Maureen does not. They marry, and many years later, have three children when an unfortunate television appearance scuppers the family career as psychic entertainers. Most of the action happens in much later the 1990s, when the children are grown and have kids of their own, their mother has passed on, and their father hovers in the background. 

Of the children, Irene can tell when someone is lying, which has made relationships extraordinarily difficult for her - until she discovers the internet and that she can't tell a lie from the truth when it's typed in a chatroom. Freddy can maybe move objects, maybe in games of chance, and his resentment that his life isn't bigger, flashier, and richer, has meant that he's gotten in debt to the mob for way more than anyone should be - but he can't ever stop trying to hustle, trying to be his father, without any of his father's smarts.

Youngest child, Buddy, seems to do strange thing for no reason, all the time. He lives with his father, barely speaks, and acts in ways that his family finds erratic - except that virtually all the time they're actions in response to what he can see of the future. He digs pits in the backyard and puts securable steel shades on the basement windows, and it's all ticking down to one day on which he knows everything hinges - and his power stops.

This is so good, folks. Like, so good. The family stuff is all amazingly well written, the characters feel like members of your own family, right down to the ones you kind of want to strangle because they never, ever, learn from their mistakes.

In the background lurks the CIA, who had promised Maureen to stay away from her children and grandchildren forever, but would be glad to break their promise to a dying woman if they found out that Irene's son, Matty, could astrally project. But only, you know, at...intense times. Like...teenage boy unexpected erection and aftermath times.

This book is funny, and it's warm, and it's heartfelt, and if the philosophical underpinnings don't get pushed, the characters do, as we see what unusual powers could do to people who are, at their core, just people.