Syrup by Maxx Barry

I Find an Audio Book at The Library

I’m one of those people that likes book covers-I almost always judge a book by it’s cover.  So I like the look of Syrup’s cover, a woman’s lips opened slightly with a straw between them.  It is a cover that speaks of sex and sodas-but has an odd feel to it so I think it might also be about aliens.

The Story of Coca Cola and Fukk Soda.

This is another book that has a enough self reference to be both funny and annoying.  It takes place in a slightly alternate reality where Coke would bring to market a soda named Fukk and go into the Movie business with Universal Studios.

Imagine a Book Written like a Long Form Sales Letter

Liberally Sprinkled throughout Syrup are Headlines-the kind of headlines that  Quoyle was taught to write in The Shipping News, headlines that mean nothing, but grab your attention just the same.

A Story of Love, Greed, and Silly Names

Really, the book is broken into so many tiny parts that it is like listening to someone read a script for a thirty second spot, or a seemingly endless series of thirty second spots.  Our hero, such as he is, has named himself Scat.  His one true love is the hyper hip girl named 6.  The villain in the piece is called Sneaky Pete and he has an assistant called @.  I’m a bit disappointed that the author didn’t go the whole nine yards and name them Dudley, Penelope, and Snidly.  Though to be honest, 6 is a slightly more masculine character than Scat and might not have been able to pull off being called Penelope.

Everyone Has Three Million Dollar Ideas a Year

And to prove this point, Scat has several million dollar ideas, which other people end up making the millions on while he ends up being homeless.  Scattered throughout Syrup are classic Marketing Lessons about how to make billions of dollars selling everything from sweetened water to groceries to well, just about anything.  These are all little snippets from great Marketing books and I have hear all of them before.

It’s a Fun Read-Like Scanning a Script

For some reason I end up with a lot of audio books read by Scott Brick and I like him.  He has a nice delivery and his voice has a friendly quality to it.  He does a good job of giving the endless parade of headlines a bit of space and an air of importance.  Reading Syrup must have been like reading regular Ad Copy-with a few more bits of profanity tossed in for variety.

Fukk Soda-an idea slightly ahead of it’s time

I love the whole idea of a nobody hitting the big time inventing a new soft drink-Red Bull comes to mind here-and then having the idea stolen from him.  I like the way he goes into a catatonic state every time the soda is mentioned, but I found it a complete credibility breaker when someone says-“I’d like a nice refreshing Fukk, please.”

It would have made more sense for the story if they had partnered Coke with Disney Pictures and then made a porno-every time the Princess moans Fukk Me, Baby someone hands her a soda.  It’s too easy to go down that path, though, as taglines like I Need A Good Fukk or I had a great Fukk this morning would be shooting fish in a barrel.

Which is why we quickly leave the realm of Fukk soda and focus on the love/hate relationship and the evil genius that is Sneaky Pete.  Of course our heroes will win in the end, this book is so formulaic that it might well be used as a textbook on The Novel as Screenplay.

The Point of Any Screenplay is to Elicit Emotion in The Reader

I have worked up a good strong dislike of Sneaky Pete, but his Darth Vader like presence in the background leaves him a nice solid bit of cardboard villian.  However, if there is any character in Syrup you would like to be through most of the book, that character would be Sneaky Pete.   He has all the brains, charisma, and skill. But I’m not exactly feeling any great emotion about any of these people.  Everything is either mundane and pointless or end of the world important.  After a while, who cares?

FCUK is only a dirty word in your mind

Fcuk is a real world brand, so the idea of Fukk soda is not completely out there-I just think it would be completely out there for Coke.  I also wonder if people reading about the total tools who run this Coca Cola company would be inspired to run out and buy up all the coke products they can find.  More likely they would load up on Red Bulls

Get a $500 Giftcard for Filling Out This Simple Survey

Syrup is not really a novel-it a collecting of White Sheets with the hint of a solution which is snatched away at the last moment.  There is never the expected payoff, you never do get the Giftcard.  This ploy of keeping our heroes in constant peril and always one step behind the villain left me slightly disappointed at the end.  I was setup to expect one last trump card from Sneaky Pete-but there wasn’t one.  I’m sure that the author was sorely tempted to add a literal horse and a sunset, but he stopped just short on this one last cliche.  He couldn’t resist a good old fashioned Happy Ending.

Is Syrup Marketing?

Syrup spends a lot of time talking about itself, about fake people, about bad writing, about tricking people into buying something they don’t really want.  The book is filled with name dropping-Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and Gweneth Paltrow and so on and so forth.  Scat talks about how easy it is to whip out crap and then get people to pay for it.

I’m guessing that Syrup was one of Maxx Barry’s three million dollar ideas that year.  I wonder how much he charged Coke to make them look like complete idiots?

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