When you feel life is a cliche, do you fight back? Tim Kinsella's strange, dream-like debut novel is filled with painfully aware characters, families, and outcasts caught in inherited rhythms of cruelty and ambivalence. Dark secrets lurk when three siblings gather for a funeral: a thoughtful dancer back at her bar, a bitter father working in a toothpaste factory, and a fist-fight addict struggling to keep his nose clean. Across town, boy is locked up in a delusional man's home. Meanwhile, a teenage runaway looks for a new life in The Legendary Shhh, a strip club recently passed down to an unprepared heir. There, in the back room, is the only escape from these derailed lives: a karaoke machine. The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense reveals the honesty that can only be heard while singing someone else's song.