Will Kirby is floundering. Day in, day out, the poor slob trudges through the rain-drenched city with his mind drifting off to the adventurous fantasies by which he'd like to rewrite his life. Nothing ever seems to change.
Until he meets Martine.
Miraculously, Will's encounter with the sexy French librarian sets free the he-man adventurer chained in his soul, blurring the lines between reality and his fantasy world. The result is not exactly pretty. Let's just say, the guy is a bit rusty at being suave and heroic. Not to mention Martine is half his age. But these are mere technicalities Will is determined to ignore as he sets out to shape his life into the stuff of an action-packed adventure novel. It's a rough journey, one that will take him ever deeper into a world of she-bitch monsters, old-school tough guys, buxom nymphos, and apocalyptic mayhem. As Will nears the point of no return, he'll have to decide if the rewards of living an all-but-fictional existence are worth annihilating both his sanity and the very world he shares with his loving wife and daughter.
Escape from Oblivia is a postmodernist homage to the men's adventure fiction of the 1950s and a satirical exploration of male tropes - damsel-saving hero, pants-wearing breadwinner, sensitive stay-at-home dad - Will falls hilariously short of any of these expectations.
At turns sexist and sensitive, comic and circumspect, Escape from Oblivia is the story of one man's descent into the mind-erasing abyss of a midlife crisis gone primal.