The Expanded Reilly Method

Mike McCardell's best-selling books about finding rays of pure sunshine among the dark byways of the big city have a full measure of heart-warming tales but this time he declares, "I have found the answer to enjoying an incredible life, no matter who you are or where you are or what you are doing or how much you weigh". In his 2008 book, Getting to the Bubble, McCardell described meeting the inspirational figure behind the Method, an autistic nine-year-old named Reilly, who had a sensationally runny nose and was perfectly convinced he could catch a fish in a polluted urban pond with a stick and a piece of string. Over the following year McCardell tried to face down deadline terrors and impatient bosses by imitating Reilly's unshakeable faith -- and found it worked. Sort of. Most of the time. If you held your brain the right way. Soon he was expanding the Reilly method to other facets of life that had been giving him grief, and found it sort of worked there as well: "I have not had a disagreement with my wife, because I have not wanted to. In truth, she has had some disagreements with me..." Each time the Reilly Way appears to him and leads him out of danger, his faith in it becomes stronger. Will the Method hold up? That is the question that holds The Expanded Reilly Method together as reporter McCardell stumbles from one complicated and comical situation to another. It is never quite clear whether the author truly feels he has found a harmonious new approach to living or if he is doing a send-up of the self-help industry exemplified by Dr Phil and Wayne Dyer. Either way the result is hilarious.