Sneaky People

by Thomas Berger

Book Overview

For Buddy Sandifer, the problem is not whether or not he should murder his wife, it is how to go about it without getting his natty white flannels scuffed up. This sex comedy is set in the American Midwest of the 1930s.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671218972
• ISBN13: 9780671218973
• Release Date: April 1975
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 315 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Cheerfully Vulgar Berger Is LOL Funny

Like his masterful "The Feud," this novel drops us into small-town America in the 30s and surrounds us with dolts. In "The Feud," the Bullards and the Beelers took umbrage over every perceived slight in a twisted version of "Romeo and Juliet" peopled by morons. Here Berger narrows his focus on the Sandifers: Buddy, who owns a used car lot, his wife Naomi, and his son Ralph. Oh, and Buddy's floozy Laverne. They're a step up from the Bullards and the Beelers on the mental food chain, but still not finalists for the MacArthur Prize. Berger's gift for lowbrow period dialogue and characterization make this a comic gem with a dollop of surprising pathos. Think Gene Sheperd with a foul mouth and you've got Berger's measure-- or Peter de Vries with a foot in the gutter.

Loss of Innocence Novel Told With Irony

Drawing from nostalgic middle America in the 1930s, Berger writes about a rogue car salesman Buddy Sandifer who plots to kill his skinny wife so he can marry his sumptuous lover Laverne. As foul as Buddy is and as important his scheme is to the plot, he is not really the focus of the novel. The real focus is Buddy's son Ralph, a sympathetic adolescent overwrought by natural lusts and in possession of an honesty and integrity that his father lacks. It is those chapters told from Ralph's POV where the novel really shines for at its heart Sneaky People is, for all its lusty rogues and ironic twists and turns, a sweet and tender novel about a wholesome boy awakening to his sexuality and connecting that sexuality to a gallant form of manhood that his father, sadly, never showed him. Only Berger, a true original, could pull off a novel like this: Part seedy, malicious plotline, part perverted, unctuous characters, and part tender loss of innocence story--told with the sneaky, ironic syntax that Berger is so famous for. One last point: The childhood friendship between Ralph and his vulgar, bullying neighbor Hauser seems to have been used for a later novel, when they've reached middle-age, in what for me is Berger's best novel, titled Best Friends.

Humor in the car yard...

Berger is a very acute observer of modern (1930s) American life -from flogging off used cars, to the gun culture, to growing up as a teenage boy... There are quiet laughs throughout the book - and some not so quiet - but guaranteed smiles on every page, as much from the mad situations he describes as from his restrained choice of language. He is a fine writer and I will be seeking out his other works.

An engaging, witty tale that flies off the pages.

A master of sublime plot twists that are more than stirring they jolting, Thomas Berger shows off his storytelling talents in Sneaky People. At the heart of this story is an all-business used car dealer in the years before the Depression who wants his wife dead so he can move in with his favorite prostitute-turned-girlfiend. Buddy is certain his oddball but ever-faithful wife is a insufferable bore. What he's not sure of is if his half-wit mechanic has the brainpower to pull off the hit. One is left wondering what gives Sneaky People its knockout punch. Is it that beneath the surface of its glib, ordinary characters you discover the poetically quirky and deranged? Or is the serenditipous nature that it's unlikely heros get from A to point B?