Unexpectedly, Milo

Unexpectedly, Milo by Matthew Dicks

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


My third time through with Matthew Dicks and this book did not disappoint. Going along with the theme in the other 2 (Something Missing and Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend), the character at the heart of the story is one who suffers from a peculiar mental disorder which causes him to succumb to some odd compulsions, such as the need to bowl a strike, open jars of jelly (the pop of the jar opening soothes him), and sing Karaoke to the 1980’s hit 99 Luftballons (in the original German). Milo’s demands are numerous, and he describes them as if they were a U-boat captain that lives inside his head, dictating the nature and severity of the demands. Making this worse is the fact that Milo feels the need to hide this condition from his wife, Christine, a lawyer to whom he has been with for five years. But his marriage is starting to fall apart due to the fact that while Christine favors adult dinners and drinks and conversations, Milo would much prefer an evening of Dungeons and Dragons while chugging soda with his other adult man-children friends. But Milo’s fear that no one else would ever love him leads to him taking great pains to keep things copacetic with her. (This, by the way, makes me grateful for my own wife, who already knows that I am weird. I have nothing to hide.)

Milo works as a traveling home health care worker, serving a series of elderly clients, all of whom have their own bizarre needs that he fills, which include taking a rake to a rug to make the threads go the same way (?) or bringing Viagra to a porn watching enthusiast. Then Milo discovers a video camera in the park along with a series of tapes. They comprise a video diary by a mystery woman whose name is not immediately known, who he calls “Freckles.” In the tapes, Freckles reveals secrets from her past, and expresses regret at her role in the death of a friend (a coworker who took her shift at a horse training facility who was thrown and killed) and additionally a much older regret surfaces: her inaction in the disappearance and probably death of a close friend named Tess. Milo becomes fixated on her story and suddenly feels the need to know more about this woman, and maybe, just maybe, try to help her. Which leads to the road trip that is a tried and true literary device which moves story forward and allows the introduction of many more colorful characters.

It is a delightful book, as they’ve all been so far. It’s not as ambitious as Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend but it is similar to Something Missing, as it involves a compulsive personality who keeps big secrets from the world. All three books have been immensely enjoyable, with characters that are fun and quirky and easy to root for. I am happy to learn of another Dicks book (The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs) which I will be putting on my reading list next.










View all my reviews