gregzimmerman's reviews
1196 reviews

Remember the mid-'90s tune "Everything Zen" by Bush? Remember how everyone loved the song 'cause it rocked, but no one had any idea what it was really about because the lyrics are a goofy mess of seemingly unrelated phrases and ideas? That's kind of how I felt about Tom McCarthy's uber-literary, Man Booker-shortlisted novel C.

There's a pretty straightforward story here that I enjoyed strictly on a "beat and rhythm" level. And then there's what it really means. McCarthy creates a laundry list of themes, images and ideas that recur throughout the novel. The meaning of these in terms of how they fit together and complement each other and the story holistically is frequently tough to decipher.

The story is Serge Carrefax's, who is born to English wealth right before the turn of the 20th century. Serge's father runs a school to teach deaf children to talk and experiments with various wireless communication technologies, and so Serge becomes infatuated with the burgeoning field of radio from an early age. He fights in World War I as a navigator, parties in post-war London and then moves on to Egypt to scout locations for new communications ventures.

Serge is a bit of an odd ball. He finds out early in his life during an art class that he "just can't do perspective: everything he paints is flat." And Serge's lack of perspective — in the broader sense of the phrase — is a cornerstone of the story. Serge is an impartial observer to his own life. In fact, oftentimes, the reader is left to form his/her own conclusions about things Serge tells us about, but doesn't understand or doesn't care enough about to explain more fully. Is that his sister he sees having sex in an early scene in the novel? Or is it something else he's describing? It's hard to tell.

The novel also has its own unconventional logic and rules, which McCarthy uses to pack in his list of tropes and tricks. For instance, he'll mention something seemingly inconsequential at the time, only to have the idea re-emerge later in a more symbolic context. Serge and some of his fellow soldiers discuss free will vs. determinism, and then soon after, they're building a tunnel to nowhere and no one is in charge of its construction. The effect is disorienting — it's hard to figure out which instance is the one McCarthy intends you to decode and add to the meaning of the story. And then there is the recurrence of several images and themes: Insects, wireless communication, descriptions of shapes and geometry, and drugs all flit in and out of the novel. What do they all mean?

C is not difficult, as some reviewers have purported. But extracting meaning might be. You constantly feel like you're missing something or left out of a joke or not understanding a reference. And that can make reading frustrating at times. There's so much going on here, it's obviously a novel meant to be read several times — like a Charlie Kaufman or David Lynch film is meant to be viewed several times to pick up a little more each time. The story's interesting, but I'm not sure it's enough of a draw to get me to read again. So, three out of five stars for C.

Life is hard. Life can be absurd. And when you're a teenager, you're not equipped with the same perspective as an adult, and every decision, every crush, every cruel joke seems like the most critically important thing that will ever happen. That notion is the foundation on which Paul Murray builds his profound, often-funny, rather lengthy Booker Prize long-listed novel Skippy Dies.

Murray's trick, though, is keeping his readers interested when he kills his main character in the prologue. What emerges after we learn that Skippy really does die — that the title isn't just a gimmick — is a portrait of Seabrook College, a modern-day boarding school in Dublin, Ireland. The novel begins several weeks before Skippy's death, and follows him and his group of kind of nerdy (his overweight roommate Ruprecht is obsessed with astrophysics; 11-dimensional M-theory, in particular), prank-pulling, drug-doing, girl-obsessed friends through their day-to-day trevails.

The brilliance of this book is that we read with the same sense of immediacy that these kids seem to be living their lives. We're constantly looking for clues that might predict why Skippy will die; like everything seems important at the time, but we have no way of know what actually is. Isn't that the way teenagers are? Like everything that happen, or every decision may forge the path for the rest of you life? Ruprecht, wise beyond his years, explains (in example of some of Murray's sagacious prose):

"...that every path you take, no matter how lofty or effulgent, aches not only with the memory of what you left behind, but with the ghosts of all untaken paths, now never to be taken, running parallel."

Murray's writing (see below for another fantastic theme-furthering passage) and the huge cast of characters make this book tremendously readable. I especially enjoyed the story of Howard the history teacher, his crush on the substitute geography teacher, and his failing relationship with his American girlfriend, Halley. Murray is very insightful and writes with an amazing sense of affinity for his characters, even the ones who are real jerks. After all, life is hard. But reading this novel sure is lots of fun! Four out five stars (minus one for missing a few chances to edit some sections, which drag a tad). But still very highly recommended.

("And she realizes that love doesn't go in straight lines, it doesn't care about right or wrong or being a good person or even making you happy; and she sees, like in a vision, that life and the future are going to be way more complicated than she ever expected, impossibly, unbearably complicated and difficult. In the same moment she feels herself grow older, like she's finished a video game and moved on invisibly to the next stage; it's a tiredness that takes over her body, a tiredness like nothing before, like she's swallowed a ton of weight...")

Meh - not the best in the series by any stretch. Never really believed the plot would be successful.

A novel narrated by a five-year-old boy with the title water-colored on the cover? Awww, how precious, right? Not so. Not by a long shot. Emma Donoghue's Room is one of the most fresh, terrifyingly good novels I've read this year, but it's anything but precious. Room works for three reasons: 1) The originality of five-year-old Jack's voice. 2) The originality of the story itself. 3) How these two combine to create a work of fiction that leaves its readers absolutely floored.

First, Jack's voice: He narrates the story as any normal five-year-old would. He's curious. He's unintentionally funny. And he negotiates some pretty tricky existential questions. (Is Room still there if we're not in it?) But my favorite part of Jack's voice is how he points out the absurdity of things we often take for granted. For instance, Jack hits his head, an adult says "careful," and Jack wonders, "Why do persons only say that after the hurt?" Also, Jack explaining lottery tickets: "The little cards with numbers all over are called a lottery, idiots buy them hoping to get magicked into millionaires." That one slayed me!

Secondly, Donoghue's plot is bold. A woman is kidnapped and forced to live in a shed in the backyard of the kidnapper's house. She has a son by her kidnapper. The son lives the first five years of his life in captivity with his mother. Donoghue says the plot was inspired by real-world events. But imagining what that ordeal must have been like to someone who doesn't consider it an ordeal but as simple reality, and then telling it as realistically as it seems, is a tremendous literary feat. The only thing I'll say about the rest of the plot — and normally I hate when reviewers do this, but I can't think of a book for which this is more true — is that the less you know about it, the more rewarding your reading experience. That's how it was for me. But know this: It's not always smooth emotional sailing. It can be dark, it can be incredibly sad, and it can be frightening, in the sense of getting a glimpse at humanity's worst. That's really what I mean by "terrifyingly good."

Finally, the combination of Jack's voice and the creativity of the plot make for a novel that unpacks in such a way that we, as adults, learn about the world along with Jack. Inasmuch as any five-year-old can come of age, we practically come of age with him. It takes Jack's innocent perspective for us to see things like evil, celebrity, family and friendship in new and interesting lights. Additionally, the strength of the mother-son bond in the worst of circumstances comes through extraordinarily clearly as the plot unfolds. The connection could not possibly have been so strongly rendered with an omniscient narrator, or really even if the mother had been telling the story.

I can't recommend this book more highly. Because Room was on the Man Booker Prize shortlist, I took a flier on it and am absolutely delighted I did. Simply put, Room's one of the best novels of 2010.

Wow — what an emotional wallop! Even as a football-watching, beer-drinking, dude-lit-reading, red-blooded American male, I say the following without an ounce of sarcasm: Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain is one of the sweetest, most heart-wrenching stories I've read in a long time. I haven't been that near to bawling my eyes out while reading a book since I was like nine years old!

You've heard about this book, right? (No shame if you haven't — I hadn't until about 14 people recommended it on my Dog (Book) Post.) It's narrated by dog named Enzo. Enzo is annoyed that he doesn't have thumbs and can't talk, but comforts himself with the notion that in his next life, he'll be human. In fact, he feels like he's ready to be human now. (He also thinks that the domestication of dogs was a conspiracy by humans to prevent them from evolving further. If I were a dog, I'd buy that for sure!)

Enzo lives with Denny, an amateur race car driver, Denny's wife Eve and daughter Zoe. Life is good for awhile. But then it's not. Eve gets sick. Her parents meddle. And increasingly bad things happen. But Enzo sticks by Denny's side, both as a companion and a voice (so to speak) of reason.

Enzo is a dog, to be sure, so there is much he doesn't understand. But what he does, what he's learned from Denny, is that race car driving can be a metaphor for life. And so, the lessons learned on the track are just as applicable when the dog poo hits the fan in real life. Denny explains that the key to racing in the rain is to remember that "that which we manifest is before us." A driver must be proactive because what he initiates, he can control. What he reacts to, he can't. So, too, in life. And as things get increasingly worse for Denny, he's tempted to give in and quit fighting. But it's Enzo's companionship that carries him forward. Denny is an incredibly admirable protagonist, and you root really, really hard for a happy ending. You root so hard, in fact, you're willing to suspend disbelief quite a bit for a few parts (of course, other than the fact that a dog is telling us the story).

This is a must-read for any dog-lover. But if you're a crier, keep the tissues nearby. It's a quick, frenzied read. It's simple, but intellectually engaging. It's funny, but often very sad, too. I really liked it!

Ouch! My head! Not sure the mental energy expended was worth the payoff here.

Near the end of Sean Wilsey's hilarious, engrossing coming-of-age memoir, Oh The Glory Of It All, he explains that "A memoir, at its heart, is written in order to figure out who you are." But there are other reasons, too — like outing your evil stepmother as a gold-digging, morally barren ho-bag; like creating a tribute to your dead father, who wasn't always your biggest fan; and like illustrating how different rich people are than we normals.

Rich people are interesting. Crazy people are interesting. And rich, crazy people, like Sean's parents and step-mother, are absolutely fascinating! It all starts with the divorce. Sean's mother and father are the prototypical rich, San Francisco socialites. And their split and the almost immediate re-marriage of his father to another San Francisco socialite, Dede, send shockwaves both through San Francisco society and Sean's delicate rich-kid life. (Random note: Dede's ex-husband then married Danielle Steele, who previously had been having an affair with Sean's dad.)

Sean's childhood and adolescence becomes a mess of under-parenting and over-schooling — he goes through three high schools, literally escaping from the third one, which is a cult-like, brainwashing place called Cascade. His father disowns him, his mother is furious, and Sean's on his own.

Sean's complicated relationship with his parents is the underlying theme of the memoir. His mother wavers back and forth with a strange version of love, and totally using Sean to advance her own agenda. His horrible stepmother Dede never misses any opportunity to flat-out tell Sean what a screw-up he is, and what a disappointment he is to his father. But nevertheless, through all his misbehaving, and despite the fact that his father wants nothing to do with him (Dede's influence!), he still desperately seeks his father's approval.

What's most interesting about the book is about how Sean changes in the reader's eyes several times throughout the memoir. He starts off as a "character" for whom readers have this incredible sympathy because of his horrible parents. At one point, his mother suggests that she and Sean kill themselves together, ostensibly to avenge the divorce! But then he becomes your typical rich kid brat — he's cruel to his boarding-schoolmates, he has no concept of consequences, and he does things for no other reason than to be a jerk, like throwing fruit at cars off the balcony of his mother's 30th floor penthouse. It's not until an arrest and a deal to attend a school in Italy that he finally has the experiences necessary for him to mature, and finally graduate high school at age 20. Then, throughout the last third of the book, we're squarely on his side as he battles Dede and grows into manhood.

This book came out more than five years ago and has been on my shelf most of that time, but it recently showed up on Jonathan Franzen's list of "Four Overlooked Books," so I finally took it down. I loved it! It's absurd at times (Sean is SURE he's going to lose his virginity to his step-mother Dede. But that's before he's SURE he hates her more than any other human in the world.) It's hilarious in a sarcastic, smart, but also understated way. (Sean relates how angry his mother was when she lost to Elie Wiesel for the Nobel Peace Price — "When it was announced that Wiesel had won, Mom, crushed, threw the pyramid (a glass desk ornament) into a mirror." I literally laughed out loud after reading that scene.) And it's even often sad and affecting, especially near the end as Sean relates his father's death. It's a long book, but definitely worth a read.

In the acknowledgments at the end of his hilarious new novel The Thieves of Manhattan, Adam Langer doles out "thanks to all the fake memoirists, fictional poets, literary forgers, and hoaxers who have provided such great inspiration." That's funny because it's true — this novel IS an inspired piece of fiction. It's a skewering of the publishing industry. It's an adventure tale, complete with a treasure hunt. And it's a treasure trove of inside jokes for literary geeks (Philip Roth signs a book to a smarmy literary agent: To Geoffrey, a true human stain...Cigarettes are called "vonneguts"...Trendy glasses are called "franzens".)

Ian Minot is a Manhattan coffee slinger, trying desperately to publish his short stories before the dregs of his inheritance run out. His girlfriend, Anya, has become a rising star, earning a deal to publish a book of short stories about her childhood in Romania. (Would she have gotten a deal if she wasn't from somewhere exotic?) When Ian, desperate for publishing fame, enters into a scheme to publish a fake memoir with a former book editor looking for revenge on an industry he believes has lost its soul, things go a bit awry. The line blurs between real life and fiction. And Ian finds himself running for his life.

The James Frey fiasco shines through clear as day (two chapters are even titled "Bright, Shiny Morning" and "A Million Little Pieces") as the go-point for this book. But with all the great jokes (see below for another), some hilarious caricatures, like an ebonics-spouting fella named Blade who becomes the toast of the literary world when he publishes a memoir about his gangsta life, and with the morph into adventure novel as the rubber meets the road on Ian's fake memoir plot, the novel moves way beyond what could have been a too-simple 250-page insult to Frey and other fakers.

At times you feel like Langer himself is angry or disillusioned, that he has his own axe to grind. At one point, he writes: "In the press, these hoaxes were viewed mostly as symptoms of a declining industry struggling for relevance and attention and a society of declining morals." More often, though, you get the sense he's just being funny — and it's pretty clear he had a blast writing this book.

For anyone interested in how the publishing industry works (or doesn't), and who enjoys a good laugh at its expense, this is a must. It's a slim little book, written specifically for literary nerds. And it's a whole lotta fun!

Another literary joke: Langer setting the scene at a party: "There was a trio of drunk writers, all named Jonathan, each of whom was complaining that the Times critic Michiko Kakutani had written that she'd like their earlier books better."

The quest for limitless freedom is a common theme in literature — from Jack Kerouac's character in On the Road to George Clooney's connectionless corporate downsizer in Up In The Air (via Walter Kirn's novel). Just about every red-blooded American has fantasized about the attractiveness of no attachments, of total privilege to do whatever is wanted whenever. But, as Jonathan Franzen explains in one of the more profound passages in his fascinating new novel Freedom: "The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should that dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage."

And so what we have here is 550 immensely readable pages devoted to the idea of exploring the limits of freedom within the context of oft-damaged and then re-mended relationships between a family and one particular friend. At what point does one person's freedom infringe upon another's? And at that point, is freedom still freedom? Indeed, these questions have fluid, multi-hued answers, especially as time passes and relationships change. But one thing about this book is clear: Many years from now, this novel will no doubt be cited as the prime example of the Franzen oeuvre: stories about families that aren't so much dysfunctional as problem-heavy.

And liberal environmentalist Walter Berglund, his wife Patty, and their long-time musician friend Richard Katz, are certainly besought with problems; but these problems are generally a result of their own poor choices, and the resulting secrets. In fact, another question the novel poses is to what degree do families have freedom to keep secrets from each other?

That question and the delicious conflict it creates is what makes the meat of the novel — and what makes it un-putdownable. Will these secrets be revealed, and if so, how will the revelation effect the characters' relationships? Franzen is a master at rendering these relationships — the ebb and flow, the who-needs-whom-more dynamic, the power struggles. Walter and Patty's marriage is the cornerstone of the novel, but how they both relate to Richard provides the intrigue. Walter and Patty's children, Jessica and Joey also flit in and out of the novel, often playing key roles in the side-taking and blame game when things go awry. And their stories are interesting in and of themselves — from the moment teenage Joey tests the limits of his own freedom by moving out of his home to his next-door neighbors'.

So Freedom is highly recommended. It's a long book, yes, but very readable — Franzen's prose flows effortlessly. He's just a joy to read. (By the way, see below for one of my favorite sentences of all time.) But in order to "limit" this novel to 550 pages, Franzen has to spend vast swaths of pages in summary — the one part of the novel, though minor, that was irritating. Just tell me the story, I thought. I'd happily read another 500 pages of this! Also, isn't it sort of clunky to write an entire novel that plumbs the limits of freedom, and then title it "Freedom"? Again, a minor annoyance. So I'd subtract a half a star from my rating: 4.5 out of 5. This is top-shelf contemporary literature. Enjoy it!

Near-perfect sentence: "He'd lost his good looks, or, more precisely, they had shrunk into a small facial oasis in a desert of sunburned bloat."

Isn't it great when a novel surprises you? Despite the fact that Michael Gruber's The Good Son contained three of my literary pet peeves -- story told in flashback, story told in alternating strains of storyline, and dreams and their interpretations playing important roles in the story -- I really enjoyed it.

Gruber is known as a writer with incredible range, writing books about forged paintings, lost Shakespeare plays, cop thrillers, and now this: a ripped-from-the-headlines international thriller with an intellectual bent. Indeed, if Gruber's name wasn't splashed across the cover, you might think Vince Flynn, who had suddenly learned how to write well, had been trapped in a room with John LeCarre, with the resulting work edited and polished by Khaled Hosseini (of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns fame).

The Good Son contains three strains of story: 1) Theo Laghiri is a special forces soldier back in the US to recuperate after being injured in Afghanistan by friendly fire. 2) His mother Sonia, a bit of a free spirit, is organizing a conference in Lahore, Pakistan to discuss how to bring peace to Central Asia. This is a risky move, to say the least, as she is infamous in the Muslim world for a book she wrote in her younger years in which she chronicled her experience of dressing as a man and going on haj to Mecca. Muslims were not amused, and there is a Rushdie-esque fatwa out on her. 3) National Security Agency up-and-comer Cynthia Lam has translated some intercepted communications between what appear to be Muslim terrorists plotting something big. She follows leads and hunches, and plots to use the situation to advance her own career.

And so, as they must, the stories converge at first subtly, and then rapidly, making for a fast-paced, exhilarating second half. But even the back-stories of Sonia's young-womanhood and Theo's childhood in Pakistan that make up good chunks of the front part of the novel are so rich in detail and intrigue, it'd be impossible to tell the real-time story as effectively without them. Sometimes, with back-story, you wonder how much is relevant or even necessary. Not here -- it all is.

Other chunks of the novel are conversations between characters (Sonia vs. Muslim jihadists) in argument regarding the terrorist rationale and the debunking of such. Part of this is Sonia (as a trained Jungian psychologist) interpreting dreams. These dreams and their well-written and logical interpretations provide a fascinating insight into the Muslim religion; one that makes you appreciate the purity and beauty of a religion that has been polluted by radical fundamentalism. Additionally, Gruber's handle on Pakistani and Afghan culture is brilliant, especially in showing the profound differences between those and American culture and thought.

Another really interesting part of the book emerges in the first 100 or so pages, as Theo tries to re-acclimate himself into day-to-day American life. Three different times, he ruminates about the ignorance of Americans about what is happening on the other side of the world; about how angry it makes him and other soldiers that we deign to "support our troops" but have no idea what the wars are really like. Theo says, "...when you come back, you kind of secretly want your fellow citizens to get blown up a little; we don't admit it, but it's true. How the f#@k can they be so -- I don't know, normal, like in a dream of shopping and careers and ordinary daily bullsh!t, while what's going on over there is going on?" And then later: "...maybe obsessing about money and sex and celebrities and celebrity sex and the teams is a sign that the terror has failed to bite, which is great, but if it's no big deal, why the hell are we breaking the army into pieces over it? ...it's another thing that makes me snap and get pissed at my fellow Americans."

Overall, I'd rate The Good Son 4 out of 5 stars -- minus a star because at times, you really have to suspend disbelief. Still, this will certainly be a satisfying read for anyone who likes fast-paced thrillers that challenge readers to think deeply...maybe about some preconceptions you've never really spent any time or energy to really consider.