Odds Against Tomorrow (Rich) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[Rich's] precise, journalistic prose is that of, in Saul Bellow's words, "a first-class noticer"…Any sentence from Rich is worth reading, any thought worth pondering in this ambitious novel of ideas about the way we die now. I'm excited to see what he'll predict next…and also a little terrified.
Teddy Wayny - New York Times Book Review


Scarily prescient and wholly original.
Elissa Schappell - Vanity Fair


Let's just, right away, recognize how prescient this charming, terrifying, comic novel of apocalyptic manners is...Rich is a gifted caricaturist and a gifted apocalyptist. His descriptions of the vagaries of both nature and human nature are stark, fresh, and convincing, full of surprise and recognition as both good comedy and good terror must be.
Catherine Schine - New York Review of Books


This brilliantly conceived and extremely well-executed novel [is] the opposite of a disaster, a knockout of a book by a young writer to keep your eye on from now on.
Alan Cheuse  - NPR's All Things Considered


Mitchell Zukor works for a unique consulting firm, FutureWorld, predicting disasters that companies can indemnify themselves against...—earthquakes, nuclear war, terrorist attacks, pandemics, financial meltdowns, tsunamis.... It is almost impossible to read this novel without indelible images of Hurricane Sandy coming to mind. The novel succeeds on its own terms in envisioning such a disaster in terrifyingly visceral terms. And Mitchell’s intensely fraught journey from man of intellect to man of action is one the reader will not soon forget.
Publishers Weekly


This literary thriller is blessed with a propulsive plot, macabre humor, several richly developed characters, and serious ethical and philosophical issues, all lightly clothed in skillful writing. Highly recommended.
Booklist


A mathematician with a combination of unusual gifts sees the worst coming in this strange rumination on catastrophe prediction. Mitchell Zukor is the protagonist of this open-ended exercise in paranoia by Rich.... Zukor's impossibly accurate prediction makes him a cult figure of sorts, the visionary held hostage by his own fear.... [T]his book is not comfortable reading, but it's also nearly impossible to put down. An oddly affectionate portrait of disaster relief that deftly mocks the indemnity mindset of a culture under siege.
Kirkus Reviews