Review: Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory
I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.
Mogsy’s Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Genre: Paranormal, Fantasy
Series: Stand Alone
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group (Hardcover); Random House Audio (Audiobook) (June 27, 2017)
Length: 416 pages (Hardcover); 14 hrs and 2 mins (Audiobook)
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Narrator: Ari Fliakos
What do you get when you mix clairvoyance and psychokinesis with Cold War secret agents, the Chicago mob, shady con artists, and a dysfunctional family undergoing a crisis of zany proportions? You get Spoonbenders, a wildly original, humorous, and unexpectedly heartwarming tale of paranormal drama. This book had everything in it—and I do mean EVERYTHING—but I’ve seen Daryl Gregory pull off some pretty amazing things with an even stranger mishmash of ideas, so I never doubted for a second that he would be able to pull this off.
Spoonbenders introduces us to the Telemachus family, whose members made brief waves in the 70s by dazzling late-night talk show audiences with their amazing psychic abilities. At the head of this act is Teddy Telemachus, who ironically is the only one with no real power of his own, though he does make up for it by being a smooth and charismatic master swindler. The true talent was his wife Maureen, who is said to be the most powerful psychic in the world. And in their individual ways, each of their children inherited a bit of their mother’s gifts: Irene is a human lie detector, able to fox out the smallest insincerities or fabrication in others’ words; Frankie is a telekinetic, enabling him to dominate the pinball machines of his youth and later the roulette tables of his adult years; and finally there’s Buddy, whose second sight allows him to perceive events far into the future.
But that was then and this is now—the mid-90s to be exact. The Telemachus family has fallen far after their act was debunked by the Astounding Archibald, a renowned stage magician and skeptic. Not long after that in 1974, Maureen also passed away, leaving young Irene to take care of Teddy and her brothers. Now Irene is in her 30s, flat broke and raising her teenage son by herself. She is left with no choice but to move back into the house of her father, a septuagenarian still up to his grifting ways. Frankie has also gotten entangled with the local mafia, owing them a fortune after every one of his get-rich-quick schemes have failed to pan out. And Buddy…poor Buddy appears to have lost his mind, refusing to utter a word to anyone. Instead, he spends his days in Teddy’s house, starting one DIY project after another with seemingly no plans to complete any of them. However, Buddy knows something big is coming, and he does have a plan—one that may involve Irene’s son Matty, who has just discovered that he may have inherited his grandmother’s powers of astral projection.
With such a huge cast of characters spread across three generations, I was extremely impressed with how Gregory was able to keep this book organized and tightly paced. Each Telemachus had their own story arc, including past history and current conflicts, but most amazing to me was how the author managed to tie these separate plot threads back to each other, allowing all of it to culminate into an elegant and well-reasoned finale. As a voracious reader, I have to say I encounter books with ambitious ideas and big, bold premises all the time, but rarely have I seen such deft and clever handling of so many moving parts in a story. This could have easily devolved into an ugly mess, but in fact the results were the complete opposite, so my hat is definitely off to Mr. Gregory.
I also found the story unique and unpredictable—which is always a plus. Readers are bounced between the decades, from the height of the Cold War amidst fears of Russian psychic espionage, to the nostalgic 90s with the advent of AOL and a new wave of organized crime in Chicago. Not quite a suspenseful thriller novel, but at the same time not quite a feel-good family piece either, Spoonbenders is perhaps best described as a light dramedy, combining the ups-and-downs of life with a dark sense of humor that is as absurd as it is funny.
What’s more, the book also delivers a surprising amount of heart. As events in the novel prove, having supernatural powers does not necessarily bring happiness, and in fact, often they actually have detrimental effects on their personal wellbeing and relationships. While they may not be a typical family, I found it easy to connect with many of the characters due to the fact they deal with real and relatable problems, from Frankie’s lack of self-confidence to Irene’s struggles with her love life. Still, even when life gets too tough, it’s clear that they have each other to lean upon. They might not always get along, but the Telemachus family stays together through thick and thin, and an attack on one of them is an attack on all.
In the end, I really enjoyed Spoonbenders, which easily ranks among the most imaginative and well-written books I’ve read so far this year. This novel is definitely not your typical story about family, but it’s fun and engaging all the same. Daryl Gregory is fast becoming one of my favorite authors, and I’m looking forward to whatever and interesting and offbeat ideas he can come up with next.
Audiobook Comments: I alternated between reading the ARC and listening to the audiobook for this book, so I thought I would mention some of my thoughts on the narration here. All told, I loved the performance by Ari Fliakos, who gave such life and personality to all the characters in this story. His accents and inflections were just perfect, varying them enough so that each person had their own unique voice, thus making it easy for the listener to distinguish between the many different speakers—an important factor for any book with a large cast of characters. I hope to listen to another book narrated by him in the future.
The BiblioSanctum 
I recently read his short story “Even the Crumbs were Delicious” and loved it. It was very funny, quirky and a bit PKD-like trippy. Since then I’ve been looking forward to this being published. Great review. Glad to hear that you rate it highly.
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Thanks for the rec, I’ll have to look into that story! I’ve only read his novel Harrison Squared and the novella We Are All Completely Fine, which were both great. I’ve been meaning to read more of his work 🙂
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Where does the time go?! I find myself returning to your review today, and I still haven’t read this one. “We Are All Completely Fine” sounds cool, too. I will return in 4 years to let you know if I’ve finally read this! lol
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I have never alternated between audio and print…I wonder how it would work
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It’s very handy, once you get used to it! Audible and Whispersync makes it easier too, since it knows where you left off and picks up right where you stopped reading the last time, no matter if it’s print or audio. When non-Audible books, I just switch and skip ahead the old-fashioned manual way 🙂
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Isn’t it just amazing the things that authors can think up? It never fails to astound me just how imaginative humans can be…
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And when it comes to imagination and creativity, Gregory does not disappoint. I can always count on him to come up with something unique and amazing!
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This author is new to me, but your description of this book and – more importantly – of his skill in weaving together so many different elements in an enaging whole, has convinced me to add this novel to my “next” list. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
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Awesome, I’m glad I was able to put Daryl Gregory on your radar! I’m relatively new to his work myself, only having read a couple of his books before I picked up this one, but I’m fast becoming a huge fan!
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I loved the family dynamics, and yes, so much heart and feel good parts to this story. Quite a change from We Are All Completely Fine or Afterparty!
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Yeah, I haven’t read Afterparty, but after WAACF and Harrison Squared I did wonder a little if this would have horror vibes. Instead it turned out to be completely different than I expected, in the best way possible!
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I love the premise – many thanks for a really cracking review! I’ll look out for this one…
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You’re welcome, I hope you get the chance to check it out!
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As it happened – thanks to this review, I did get to Spoonbenders and really enjoyed it – that ending is remarkable…:)
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Here’s a non-post related question [which I’m also asking Bentley at Book Bastion]:
You have one of those cool picture signatures. How do you find it easily in your wordpress picture folder? I have to scroll through the hundreds of pictures I have to find the bookstooge one whenever I write a post. Is it different for you since you have your own dot com site?
thanks for any thoughts/insights.
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When you click insert media and it brings you to the window of your media library, do you have a search box in the upper right? I type the name of whatever image I need and it pops up in the results, if you know the name of the file when you uploaded it. I don’t think it’s a dot com site thing, since I also have another blog through wordpress which is just the free service and I do the same there. Hope that helps!
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I never checked to see if I had the search bar. I shall have to experiment today. Thanks!
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and that did it. I’d never even paid any attention to the search icon. Thanks again!
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You’re very welcome! I’m glad I was able to help out 😀
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I’ve seen an author friend raving about this author for a while and super excited about this book, I guess I should try and read one of his books! I’ve been recommended to start with Afterparty! I’m more ready to do so now that I see you liked this one 🙂
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I definitely recommend giving his books a try too! I haven’t read Afterparty yet, but I’ve heard such amazing things about it, and it’s on my list to read too 🙂
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I don’t know why but this book didn’t really appeal to me (actually, it was more a question of trying to cut down with review books tbh) but now I’ve seen two excellent reviews glowing with love for it I’m going to have to add it to my wishlist!
Ta
Lynn 😀
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I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first either, and it hadn’t been for the author I might not have given it a second look…plus, it’s not the best cover 😛 But it really was an excellent story! Here’s hoping you get a chance to give it a look! 😀
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Such a good review! Added to my stupidly long reading list!!! This sounds like it has such a wonderful premise and such quirky characters that I don’t think it’ll be on there for long!
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The characters really are incredible! I hope you get to check out Spoonbenders soon!
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Ok Mogsy. You got me. On my TBR it goes!
I’ve seen this one mentioned in the newsletters I’m subscribed to but I didn’t consider checking it out. Now I want to. It sounds fun and these days I’m interested in stories with several threads to see how it all ties together.
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