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emmaaxtco's review against another edition
4.0
These were stretches where I really enjoyed it but there were too many characters. I would have rather gone in depth more with maybe 2 fewer main characters instead of getting just glimpses of so many people.
shelfimprovement's review against another edition
1.0
I stopped after chapter two, which was one of the worst, most ridiculous sex scenes ever put on paper. What pretentious crap.
mhall's review against another edition
2.0
After I reread [b:The Group|2657|To Kill a Mockingbird|Harper Lee|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1234606708s/2657.jpg|3275794], I became uncomfortable with the recycled plot elements here - I don't think this is a classic.
kaydee's review against another edition
3.0
In my twenties I often wondered what it would be like to be a lit. grad from Smith or Vassar or Wellesley or Oberlin, living in New York, working in publishing or as a writer or academic. Reading this, I've discovered that it would be nothing but tedium, interrupted by bouts of proselytising from your extremely self absorbed friends.
I didn't completely hate this, there were some redeeming features but the writing was clunky and I didn't connect with any of the characters. One of them died and I felt nothing.
I do see what happened here. Rakoff's (way better) My Salinger Year was a hit so this was resurrected. But you know, sometimes the first book should stay buried.
I didn't completely hate this, there were some redeeming features but the writing was clunky and I didn't connect with any of the characters. One of them died and I felt nothing.
I do see what happened here. Rakoff's (way better) My Salinger Year was a hit so this was resurrected. But you know, sometimes the first book should stay buried.
nursetess's review against another edition
2.0
I should have loved this book. It's written about me, or at least, about people more or less my contemporaries. The author can obviously craft a sentence, and at times the writing was lovely. But her ability to craft a compelling story; to follow a cast of characters from start to finish, to make me care about a single one of them...well that's where it all fell apart. The book centers on a group of friends from Oberlin as they navigate the post-college years in NYC, getting married having kids, and generally growing up. But even in the midst of the marriages and kids - none of them actually grew up. A less likable group of characters I haven't seen in a long time.
gigiivid's review against another edition
1.0
Don’t even know where to begin with how awful, depressing and useless this book was. The one thing that it was was well written. As in, the flow and choice of words were perfectly fine. The style of writing was fine. There were quite a few grammatical errors but I tend not to hold that against books.
Everything else was pretty bad. Firstly, in terms of its content, the characters were lifeless voids that all blended into one (had to constantly look back at the first chapter to see their original descriptions). New York felt dull and gray in its descriptions. The world they inhabited was flat. I didn’t care, couldn’t care, and was reading because I always read all books I start.
The story itself was so odd — any big event, big moment, big twist happened OFF SCREEN. All of them, 100%. In what I imagine is some sort of misguided attempt at literature or a theme, all the moments described were off-kilter realisation moments leading up to the actual plot. You read about them meeting someone for the first time, and then you found out 400 words later that they had married that person. This only lended to the lifelessness of everything else and made the book particularly depressing. Characters struggled through their 20s joylessly and with not very much happening. My 20s (the couple of years of them I’ve had so far) certainly don’t seem as horrifically dull and sad as they guys’....In that sense, there was no way this book could be relatable. I in fact have a little group of 6 friends from university with the exact same gender make up and yet I saw nothing in this book reflecting us despite being the literal target audience/person she was writing about. The bleakness of them getting these great jobs, in particular, was hard to stomach, when the reader was meant to feel empathetic for their rise and decline, when in fact all I could think was how it was all the characters’ faults in every way possible. Total miss. The ending was meant to be some poignant significant moment when in fact it totally missed any sort of framing or resolution by randomly picking an assortment of characters to do something together at the end. Most of this book did in fact feel random.
Finally, the pretentiousness of this book really got to me. Only ART people are REALLY living. Only NEW YORKERS are REALLY living. Only people who went to this very specific college in the US that I’ve never heard of (but, surprisingly, the author went to!!) are REALLY informed on anything....Oh please. Self-indulgence to the max, and it got very boring after a few pages. Unless of course we were meant to roll our eyes and hate them all for their ridiculous hang ups, but something tells me that’s definitely not the case.....
All in all, wowee, haven’t quite read a book like this that I’ve quite so personally disliked and have disconnected with on such a strong level. Naturally, wouldn’t recommend....
Everything else was pretty bad. Firstly, in terms of its content, the characters were lifeless voids that all blended into one (had to constantly look back at the first chapter to see their original descriptions). New York felt dull and gray in its descriptions. The world they inhabited was flat. I didn’t care, couldn’t care, and was reading because I always read all books I start.
The story itself was so odd — any big event, big moment, big twist happened OFF SCREEN. All of them, 100%. In what I imagine is some sort of misguided attempt at literature or a theme, all the moments described were off-kilter realisation moments leading up to the actual plot. You read about them meeting someone for the first time, and then you found out 400 words later that they had married that person. This only lended to the lifelessness of everything else and made the book particularly depressing. Characters struggled through their 20s joylessly and with not very much happening. My 20s (the couple of years of them I’ve had so far) certainly don’t seem as horrifically dull and sad as they guys’....In that sense, there was no way this book could be relatable. I in fact have a little group of 6 friends from university with the exact same gender make up and yet I saw nothing in this book reflecting us despite being the literal target audience/person she was writing about. The bleakness of them getting these great jobs, in particular, was hard to stomach, when the reader was meant to feel empathetic for their rise and decline, when in fact all I could think was how it was all the characters’ faults in every way possible. Total miss. The ending was meant to be some poignant significant moment when in fact it totally missed any sort of framing or resolution by randomly picking an assortment of characters to do something together at the end. Most of this book did in fact feel random.
Finally, the pretentiousness of this book really got to me. Only ART people are REALLY living. Only NEW YORKERS are REALLY living. Only people who went to this very specific college in the US that I’ve never heard of (but, surprisingly, the author went to!!) are REALLY informed on anything....Oh please. Self-indulgence to the max, and it got very boring after a few pages. Unless of course we were meant to roll our eyes and hate them all for their ridiculous hang ups, but something tells me that’s definitely not the case.....
All in all, wowee, haven’t quite read a book like this that I’ve quite so personally disliked and have disconnected with on such a strong level. Naturally, wouldn’t recommend....
aritrow's review against another edition
1.0
I was so very disappointed by this book, and it was a shame because it started out promising. It tells the story of a group of friends a few years out of college and basically it follow them through adulthood - getting married, having kids, etc.
That doesn't sound bad but the problem with the book was mainly with the telling of the story. Just when you start to get attached to a character, start to really want to learn more about that character, that character disappears, not to be seen for chapters on end, if at all. Some characters meet a guy and then get engaged/married to them for no discernible reason - they had never even been out on a date, why would you get engaged like that?! Other characters have flaws and you want to find out more about them because you can't, suddenly they're "fixed" and you're left wondering what exactly happened.
I honestly can't recommend this book to anyone, I was so very annoyed by it - and I'm very glad I checked it out from the library instead of spending money by purchasing it.
That doesn't sound bad but the problem with the book was mainly with the telling of the story. Just when you start to get attached to a character, start to really want to learn more about that character, that character disappears, not to be seen for chapters on end, if at all. Some characters meet a guy and then get engaged/married to them for no discernible reason - they had never even been out on a date, why would you get engaged like that?! Other characters have flaws and you want to find out more about them because you can't, suddenly they're "fixed" and you're left wondering what exactly happened.
I honestly can't recommend this book to anyone, I was so very annoyed by it - and I'm very glad I checked it out from the library instead of spending money by purchasing it.
seonaidrogers's review
3.0
I enjoyed My Salinger Year much more. It took me a long time to get into this book, and much longer to sympathise with the characters, if I ever did. They were all vaguely insufferable. I warmed more to some towards the end - Emily, and Sadie a little although that seemed a little bit of a self insertion character in parts.
I wondered why we spent so long with some characters and so little with others - it felt like perhaps he author had grown to have characters she preferred writing as the book progressed and gradually the others appeared less and less.
I did finish it though feeling warmer towards those characters than I did in the beginning, but mostly pitying them their perpetual unhappiness and lack of awareness. The critique of Emily's sister, that her mental state aused her to be too self involved and lack the ability to feel empathy or awareness of the suffering of others, could be applied to the majority of the privileged people of this book.
An interesting read but not nearly as absorbing as Eakoff's autobiographical debut.
I wondered why we spent so long with some characters and so little with others - it felt like perhaps he author had grown to have characters she preferred writing as the book progressed and gradually the others appeared less and less.
I did finish it though feeling warmer towards those characters than I did in the beginning, but mostly pitying them their perpetual unhappiness and lack of awareness. The critique of Emily's sister, that her mental state aused her to be too self involved and lack the ability to feel empathy or awareness of the suffering of others, could be applied to the majority of the privileged people of this book.
An interesting read but not nearly as absorbing as Eakoff's autobiographical debut.
yangyvonne's review against another edition
2.0
I just could not get into this book. Whether it was the introduction of way too many characters at once or the slow moving story, I just found myself totally not caring about any of them.