Unexpectedly, Milo

Unexpectedly, Milo
By Matthew Dicks (352 pages)
Published by Broadway
Bookish rating: 2.5

I realized that this is the first book I've read this year (so far) that was written by a GUY. And the author's last name is, um, Dicks.

Insert middle school snickering HERE.

Anyhoo, in Unexpectedly, Milo, we meet Milo, a home health care worker, who has some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that he has managed to keep secret pretty much forever.

Milo finds some videotapes in the park, watches them, and begins a road trip to find someone mentioned in the tapes.

The plot is thin, but thin plots only bother me when the writing is crappy.

The writing is crappy. Okay, not entirely crappy, but . . . not great.

Dicks is an over-writer. Every sentence, paragraph, and scene feels like he takes it too far--like the reader is to moronic to get the point, or (perhaps more accurately) Dicks's writing is too weak to be particularly compelling, so he must continually drive a point home. With lots and lots of words.

The narration overanalyzes too much, and in a tedious way that is, well, tedious rather than OCD-ish. Backstory and prior events are blatantly retold or excessively reiterated, wasting my time as a reader.

Frankly, the only reason I gave this a 2.5 (and not 2) was due to Dicks's description of Milo's "demands"--his compulsions that made him slightly more interesting.

Overall, a meh sort of novel. Not particularly recommended.