Check this out:

In Subsidized Time the Statue of Liberty is outfitted with a large-scale version of the subsidizing corporation’s signature product. To wit: in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, she’s wearing a giant diaper.

“NNYC’s harbor’s Liberty Island’s gigantic Lady has the sun for a crown and holds what looks like a huge photo album under one iron arm, and the other arm holds aloft a product. The product is changed each 1 Jan. by brave men with pitons and cranes” (367).

The following year, largely elided by the novel’s main action but referenced ominously throughout, is the ironically named the Year of Glad, when the gigantic lady will be adorned with a giant black plastic garbage bag—or, a “large dark billowing shape,” q.v. Geoffrey Day and Kate Gompert’s conversation on 649.

Another indication that the Year of Glad is going to be very unpleasant indeed for a great number of people.

On a pretty much entirely unrelated note, here’s my debut on Minnesota Reads.