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jonwash's review
2.0
Granted, it's hard to build a world. You don't want to spell everything out for the reader, but you don't want to leave them grasping at straws. Sadly, Klee does the latter. The clever moments aren't enough to assuage the frustration of trying to wrap your head around what is going on in Ivyland. Also, much of the elements are familiar. I almost put the book down during a chapter-long rehashing of a common street joke. I'm surprised I made it past the obligatory chapter from the POV of a gentle simpleton.
I've never judged a book based on the author's photo before I read Ivyland.
I've never judged a book based on the author's photo before I read Ivyland.
earthcoil's review
5.0
Ivyland is the modern-day, independent Brave New World, 1984, etc. with a tasteful blend of misanthropy and hope. Most striking to me was Klee's lyrical, clever prose and his gradual assembly of a story from such unlikely and seemingly disparate pieces. Highly recommended.
deadwolfbones's review
4.0
A very intriguing debut with a very well-defined sense of place.
Some engaging vignettes, but for my tastes I think it sacrifices too much narrative for the sake of clever wordplay and experimental storytelling (which, granted, Klee does very well).
Feels more like a collection of interrelated short stories than a novel, but there's a place for that, too.
Some engaging vignettes, but for my tastes I think it sacrifices too much narrative for the sake of clever wordplay and experimental storytelling (which, granted, Klee does very well).
Feels more like a collection of interrelated short stories than a novel, but there's a place for that, too.
kfan's review
4.0
OK clearly, dude can write his ass off. Good job Miles, *I get it.*
The world-building here (the part of a book I'm always most drawn to) is top-notch. A near future New Jersey where biopharma has taken over and basically become the new government. The kind of sci-fi that feels just contemporary enough to be super creepy but also hilariously terrifying.
The book has a complicated structure--loosely interwoven strands involving a number of different characters jumping wildly around a timeline. For me, this meant my reading experience involved a lot of flipping back and forth to try to remember what happened when, and who exactly this other character was in relation to this other character the last time we met them.
The craft here is stunning, but 3/4 of the way through I was like Come on man, just let me read the story. The structure took me out of the reading experience a little more than I would have liked. It's an amazing world and I wanted to stay immersed in it, but my awareness of the hoops Miles was jumping through to write this, the amount of sheer craft on demonstration, took away from the reading experience, if that makes sense.
But that's about my personal preference, not the book itself. The book is crazy good, Miles is a talented writer, and I am psyched about whatever he writes next.
The world-building here (the part of a book I'm always most drawn to) is top-notch. A near future New Jersey where biopharma has taken over and basically become the new government. The kind of sci-fi that feels just contemporary enough to be super creepy but also hilariously terrifying.
The book has a complicated structure--loosely interwoven strands involving a number of different characters jumping wildly around a timeline. For me, this meant my reading experience involved a lot of flipping back and forth to try to remember what happened when, and who exactly this other character was in relation to this other character the last time we met them.
The craft here is stunning, but 3/4 of the way through I was like Come on man, just let me read the story. The structure took me out of the reading experience a little more than I would have liked. It's an amazing world and I wanted to stay immersed in it, but my awareness of the hoops Miles was jumping through to write this, the amount of sheer craft on demonstration, took away from the reading experience, if that makes sense.
But that's about my personal preference, not the book itself. The book is crazy good, Miles is a talented writer, and I am psyched about whatever he writes next.
dreesreads's review
2.0
Meh.
A near-future dystopia in which bars serve drinks and pills manufactured by the company Endless. Endless also provides the anesthetic gas needed for the Van Vetchen procedure, a quick neck surgery that protects you from H12 (a flu?). Only a small percentage of people are allergic to the gas, and forever damaged. The poor cannot afford the procedure. And apparently some people get H12 anyway. And others say no one dies of H12, it's all just a scam.
And there are caterpillars everywhere. And the cops are criminals. And bridges are failing as the metal degrades.
Or something. The story is told from the perspectives of a variety of people, and leaps backward and forward in time and place. 2 years ago, last summer, last winter, 13 years ago, "now". Ivyland, NJ; Florida' lunar orbit.
I wish I had kept a list of names, times, and places. I don't know that anything really happens--I couldn't keep track of the order of when things happen, and it seems like this is just Aiden and Henri and Cal and Hecuba and Phoebe's lives over time. Just regular people living in-the-future regular lives. I think.
A near-future dystopia in which bars serve drinks and pills manufactured by the company Endless. Endless also provides the anesthetic gas needed for the Van Vetchen procedure, a quick neck surgery that protects you from H12 (a flu?). Only a small percentage of people are allergic to the gas, and forever damaged. The poor cannot afford the procedure. And apparently some people get H12 anyway. And others say no one dies of H12, it's all just a scam.
And there are caterpillars everywhere. And the cops are criminals. And bridges are failing as the metal degrades.
Or something. The story is told from the perspectives of a variety of people, and leaps backward and forward in time and place. 2 years ago, last summer, last winter, 13 years ago, "now". Ivyland, NJ; Florida' lunar orbit.
I wish I had kept a list of names, times, and places. I don't know that anything really happens--I couldn't keep track of the order of when things happen, and it seems like this is just Aiden and Henri and Cal and Hecuba and Phoebe's lives over time. Just regular people living in-the-future regular lives. I think.
icepotato's review
5.0
at first i thought it was a perfectly competent update of [b:Vineland|59721|Vineland|Thomas Pynchon|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1330726242s/59721.jpg|1934] but then i got to the ending and holy crap.
drewsof's review
4.0
The second half of the book can't sustain the first's sheer rush of interest, even though it does a damn good job of still being smart and dark and a-little-too-close-to-home. If you are a twentysomething - an intelligent one - you will find something intriguing about this book. I'm not saying you'll like it - and I'm not saying that non-twentysomethings won't like it - but you will associate with it, in the way we all (whether we wanted to or not) associated with Garden State.
It's dark and evocative and scary and sad and funny and mostly... it feels like real life, tomorrow. Is it a perfect novel? No. But it is a damn good one and I hope it makes it out of the first round in the Tournament of Books or at least gains a wider readership because of its inclusion. Because this is a book that has, unjustly, languished in obscurity. But maybe that's because it's a little too true, at its core. It touches something elemental, something universal, that we're all feeling... and that isn't necessarily a pleasant sensation all the time.
More about the dark mirror of this novel to our own reality at RB: http://wp.me/sGVzJ-ivyland
It's dark and evocative and scary and sad and funny and mostly... it feels like real life, tomorrow. Is it a perfect novel? No. But it is a damn good one and I hope it makes it out of the first round in the Tournament of Books or at least gains a wider readership because of its inclusion. Because this is a book that has, unjustly, languished in obscurity. But maybe that's because it's a little too true, at its core. It touches something elemental, something universal, that we're all feeling... and that isn't necessarily a pleasant sensation all the time.
More about the dark mirror of this novel to our own reality at RB: http://wp.me/sGVzJ-ivyland
danjplatt's review
3.0
[I wrote this brief review three years ago, but left it unfinished and buried with some other reviews in an archived folder. I’m posting it now to fulfill a promise I made to write more reviews and, for better or for worse, to make more of them public.]
I had mixed feelings about this book, and thought about putting it down a few times. I’m glad I stuck around until the end, because I would have missed a passage near the end that kind of knocked me over:
“To the west, gobs of smoke bubbling up near the lot where Viking Putt sat. When he was young, and industry booming, Ivyland’s outskirts gave off plumes of such unexplained smog at regular intervals, and he was given to asking adults whether it was a fire raging a few miles off. “It’s nothing,” was the automatic reply, no mystery dispelled. Of course it was not nothing, you’d have to be living inside-out not to see it was something, and this non-answer one day confirmed an ultimate childhood dread: that no one, not even grown-ups, knew what made black wraiths ascend only to break against clouds of concrete” (236)
This, to me, so perfectly captured a feeling I often had as a child, riding in the backseat of my parents’ station wagon toward North Jersey or Philadelphia and trying to comprehend these giant and ominous industrial cathedrals looming over the highways. For me, the insight offered by this passage alone made the reading experience worthwhile . . .
I had mixed feelings about this book, and thought about putting it down a few times. I’m glad I stuck around until the end, because I would have missed a passage near the end that kind of knocked me over:
“To the west, gobs of smoke bubbling up near the lot where Viking Putt sat. When he was young, and industry booming, Ivyland’s outskirts gave off plumes of such unexplained smog at regular intervals, and he was given to asking adults whether it was a fire raging a few miles off. “It’s nothing,” was the automatic reply, no mystery dispelled. Of course it was not nothing, you’d have to be living inside-out not to see it was something, and this non-answer one day confirmed an ultimate childhood dread: that no one, not even grown-ups, knew what made black wraiths ascend only to break against clouds of concrete” (236)
This, to me, so perfectly captured a feeling I often had as a child, riding in the backseat of my parents’ station wagon toward North Jersey or Philadelphia and trying to comprehend these giant and ominous industrial cathedrals looming over the highways. For me, the insight offered by this passage alone made the reading experience worthwhile . . .
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