Side Effects

Vonnegut meets Catch-22!

In the last hours of his hectic life, Simon Apple faces up to the hard truth that his very survival represents a prescription for disaster, not only for the pharmaceutical industry but for the nation itself!

How Simon is transformed from an innocent, loving child in a small midwestern city into Public Enemy Number One by a series of dizzying Side Effects makes for an unforgettable medical misadventure in an age when a new miracle drug, promising paradise, comes along every day — just in time for the Evening News. Side Effects is a rollicking read, the story of a hapless hero caught in an existential whirl where there's a pill for every problem, give or take some unexpected consequences.

With a cover by Gahan Wilson.

About Harvey Jacobs

Harvey Jacobs is the award-winning author of "American Goliath" ("An inspired novel"—TIME Magazine). His short fiction has appeared in a wide spectrum of magazines in the USA and abroad including Esquire, The Paris Review, Playboy, Fantasy & Science Fiction, New Worlds, and many anthologies. In addition to the novels and short stories, he has written widely for television, the Earplay Project for radio drama, and helped create and name the Obie Awards for the Village Voice. He was publisher of the counterculture newspaper, East. He received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a New York Arts Council CAPS award for drama, a Playboy Fiction Award, and a Writers Guild of America script award.

PRAISE FOR SIDE EFFECTS

"The culture of pharmaceutical overkill is the subject--and target--of this high-energy fifth novel from the little-known comic surrealist whose best books (American Goliath, 1998, etc.) rival the late 20th-century antic fiction of Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller and Stanley Elkin. ... A great comic novel and a huge leap forward for one of America's most underrated and accomplished writers.
— Kirkus Review

REVIEWS OF THE AUTHOR'S PREVIOUS BOOKS

A cheerful celebration of a big American myth... An inspired novel.
TIME Magazine

Bells clanging, lights aflash, the plot's ball bangs and rebounds. . . . A wonderful and wonderfully funny book.
—James Sallis
LA Times

His characters are haunting. . . . I have rarely enjoyed finding a writer as much as I have enjoyed my own discovery of Jacobs.
—Robert Cromie
Chicago Tribune

He manages to satirize our all-too-human foibles and failures without becoming too blackly unforgiving.
—Thomas M. Disch
Washington Post

Quietly amused, wry approach that gives distinction to Mr. Jacobs' work . . . his dry humor would be hard to improve on.
—Elizabeth Easton
The Saturday Review

A wonderfully engrossing read. . . . I recommend it to everyone who has given up of ever again being entertained at such a high level of aspiration.
—Michael Moorcock

A bawdy, joyous romp . . . it's a wonderful book.
—Jack Dann

Look upon the amazing world of Harvey Jacobs! Come one, come all, for an experience never to be forgotten!
—Fred Chappell

Like Doctorow's Ragtime and George R. R. Martin's Fevre Dream, it's totally realized.
—Howard Waldrop

A great book should aspire (and succeed) in making you laugh, making you cry and just maybe, making you think. . . . Harvey's novels will do all that.
—John Pelan