Foster's Depression

Extracts from a review by the playwright M C Gardner:

"This novel is a delight. It is relatively short and its plot and characters easily apprehended in a single sitting. Its themes, however, are more disquieting and will resonate with the thoughtful reader for a much more extended traversal of time.

"Aside from the depression of the title numerous social maladies are observed and commented upon. Our culture’s obsession with celebrity begins the novel. Foster who has not spoken to anyone for a year and a half awakens from his catatonia and becomes a hit on the national talk show circuit. As each show limits the discussion to sound bites and the sensational, he decides to tell his story in a more illuminating media — he decides to write a novel — Foster’s Depression.

"The novel is steeped aplenty with candidly humorus observations...

"One of the delights of the novel is a commentary from the peanut gallery of the normal that separtes each chapter of Foster’s observations. Its a device that also separtates the the first person narration of Foster from the author and one that will later bind each to the other and to his readers, as well."

"...It suggests something of my affection for Foster’s Depression that I have quoted it so extensively. It won’t do to have a review exceed the length of that which it reviews so I will conclude with Foster’s final interview with the Doctor. It is one of the most touching and best presented arguments in the book — which is to say it is very good, indeed."