Scan barcode
aegisnyc's review against another edition
4.0
An audacious effort by Chris Adrian--a third of the book is written in Walt Whitman's voice, and much of it in the voices of the dead, speaking to the living. Some of the imagery was so strong and strange that I felt at times that I was watching someone else's dream. A glass house built of the negative plates of a photographer of the Civil War dead, a madman's kilt decorated with children's fingers he'd bitten off, a surreal trip down into the caissons during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
emilyversteeg's review against another edition
3.0
The concept/plot is very interesting. And at first, I found the execution interesting. Rather than telling the whole story through Gob’s point of view, Adrien tells it though the POV of several central characters. But this style eventually wore on me. We kept circling around the same events from new viewpoints, and I just wanted to get on with the plot.
annacharlottes's review against another edition
2.0
I love his other stuff. This one kind of stumped me.
anatomydetective's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars, rounded up. This book was well-written, at times really exquisitely written, but the plot itself did not draw me in. For a debut novel, it is an excellent piece of work, but his later books are much better.
nicka's review
Well, I feel bad because this book has gotten really high marks and excellent reviews on this site. But after reading half of it, I just didnt find it all that interesting. The writing isn't lacking, the characters aren't ill conceived nor poorly developed. Just didn't seem like much...happened. And maybe the second half is a barn burner, but working at a library, I'm tempted by books at every turn and sometimes my will is weak. I'll try and stay true next time Gob, if you'll have me back.
kn1tt3r's review
Although I loved Loved LOVED Chris Adrain's later work, I couldn't finish this one. The characters just slipped out of my grasp. I couldn't remember them from page to page.
dmahaffey's review
3.0
A compelling premise undermined by a lack of imaginative language, by structural shortcomings, and by unfulfilled expectations.
The gothic ideas put forth are exciting, and the author does not shrink from depictions of the grotesque, but I was hoping for more precise and lyrical language. There are outbursts of the kind of writing I expected from the novel, but their presence only highlights the absence of consistently good writing.
Much of the best writing comes about 100 pages into the novel, in a particular section. This becomes the core of the novel, around which the rest has been hung like cheap tinsel. The first few times the story breaks from one point of view and begins anew from another, it is able to maintain both my interest and its own narrative momentum, but by the final shift, to the perspective of a flat character whose rational skepticism is meant to temper the questionable sanity of her companions, my interest in the story skids to a halt (much like this overlong sentence).
This novel's ending is exquisite in a way, but it is not the ending set up by the preceding narrative. Gob is a man whose considerable charm and passionate belief in a patently absurd notion is enough to overwhelm both his own rational mind and the skepticism of the otherwise (mostly) sane people he meets. Whether he succeeds or fails is in many ways a secondary concern. But the manner in which he succeeds or fails (pardon my ambiguity, in consideration of those who may yet read the novel and wish to do so unspoiled) is unearned by the bounds of his quest. It's a pity; I would have liked to read the ending to this novel, and I would have liked to read the novel to which this ending should be attached.
The gothic ideas put forth are exciting, and the author does not shrink from depictions of the grotesque, but I was hoping for more precise and lyrical language. There are outbursts of the kind of writing I expected from the novel, but their presence only highlights the absence of consistently good writing.
Much of the best writing comes about 100 pages into the novel, in a particular section. This becomes the core of the novel, around which the rest has been hung like cheap tinsel. The first few times the story breaks from one point of view and begins anew from another, it is able to maintain both my interest and its own narrative momentum, but by the final shift, to the perspective of a flat character whose rational skepticism is meant to temper the questionable sanity of her companions, my interest in the story skids to a halt (much like this overlong sentence).
This novel's ending is exquisite in a way, but it is not the ending set up by the preceding narrative. Gob is a man whose considerable charm and passionate belief in a patently absurd notion is enough to overwhelm both his own rational mind and the skepticism of the otherwise (mostly) sane people he meets. Whether he succeeds or fails is in many ways a secondary concern. But the manner in which he succeeds or fails (pardon my ambiguity, in consideration of those who may yet read the novel and wish to do so unspoiled) is unearned by the bounds of his quest. It's a pity; I would have liked to read the ending to this novel, and I would have liked to read the novel to which this ending should be attached.
luiscorrea's review
4.0
One of my favorite writers. Made me want to be Walt Whitman. Had problems with a forward-moving plot since in each of the three acts it feels like starting a totally new book. Great writing.
More...