Gee, That Was Fun: 7 Days of Mayhem, 1983

An air conditioner falls from a New York City apartment window onto a woman's head. Two dozen people contract botulism after eating patty melt sandwiches at a shopping mall restaurant in Peoria, Illinois. A Vermont attorney sues to control medical decisions for a disabled New York infant. Ronald Reagan wears a robe and slippers to match the interior design of his White House residence. U.S. senators debate the meaning of the word "false." A body falls from the sky in the Bronx. Senator Jesse Helms plots creative ways to annoy his colleagues while his wife, Dot, polishes her book manuscript titled Interesting Deaf Americans. "With uncanny wit and a pointillist painter's eye for detail, Gee That Was Fun eschews the grand episodes on which historical fiction so often relies, reminding us that the fabric of our lives and the trajectory of our country, for good or ill, are composed of the smaller moments: the daily decisions made and not made, the tiny revelations, the ordinary failures and triumphs. A fascinating and endlessly readable novel in vignettes." C. Matthew Smith, author of Twentymile "You'll read Robert Fromberg's Gee, That Was Fun with a continuously mounting delight at what he is pulling off. Are these people and events real or fictional? You soon won't care, because you're in Fromberg's world now, a specific week in 1983, where you'll find the profound amid the quotidian, as long as you know exactly where to look. Just don't have the patty melt." Justin Bryant, author of Thunder from a Clear Blue Sky "Robert Fromberg's Gee, That Was Fun is a series of sly vignettes that nonetheless demonstrate connections between disparate events and ourselves over a series of days. Moments that would otherwise be mundane become significant through the retelling. Fromberg's wit weaves the events with gentle rebuke and quiet dignity, but nevertheless delivers a sharp and incisive look at a time before the world as we know it irrevocably changes. It is a critical read delivered with such crooked charm one cannot help but be seduced." Cathleen Allyn Conway, author of Bloofer and Nocturnes "This moving experimental novel focuses on events over a week in 1983 that explore the randomness of events and their impact on our lives, whether wrought through accident, happenstance, or the misguided actions of people we don't even know. As in life, the victims of these events obtain no satisfaction or reparation and leave us shaking our fists at God with one question: Why? Robert Fromberg has written a unique and deeply meaningful work of fiction that scrutinizes the random punishments meted out by the universe." Christian Livermore, author of The Very Special Dead