Press
Bloomberg.com, January 4, 2007
Boston Globe, April 30, 2007
“[P]rovides readers with one picaresque, laugh-out-loud funny scene after another... Shay’s end-is-nigh novel successfully targets not just the funny bone, but the darkness of the human heart.”
Edmonton Journal, April 1, 2007
GO Brooklyn, December 23, 2006
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2006
“[T]he author smartly makes his hero an intelligent, entertainingly snarky fellow... A smirking time capsule of millennial tension.”
Library Journal, October 1, 2006
“[A]n amusing, well-written look at recent history, when the world’s problems seemed a lot less serious than they do today.”
Los Angeles Times, December 24, 2006
“Shay takes “The End as I Know It” into sublimely multilayered directions. ...[I]ts pleasures come in the casualness of its characters, a peculiar vibe that’s at once absurd and human. The author... has crafted a subtle satire whose impact is felt only upon completion.... It shouldn’t work but it does, and it actually makes a lot of sense -- that the maddening road through paranoia can lead to the ultimate truth.”
Metro New York, January 6, 2007
Publishers Weekly, July 10, 2006
San Diego Union-Tribune, December 31, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle, December 24, 2006
“Shay endows his main character (and probable stand-in) with the sharp wit one would expect from a McSweeney’s alum.... Shay is able to mine the anachronism of the setting for humor, which he does with both restraint and aplomb.”
Time Out Chicago, December 14, 2006
“[A] great comic hero, one who wins both our sympathies and our smirks as he digs his own hole... the most charming alarmist by whom we could hope to be cornered. When Randall’s not wringing his hands with utter conviction, he manages to be wittily endearing, his voice one of clownish confidence.”
Time Out New York, December 14, 2006
USA Today, December 28, 2006
“That Randall is charming and appealing even as he alienates everyone he loves is a testament to Shay’s light and witty touch with his nutty hero.... Shay is a first novelist not to be dismissed.”
