A review by wordmaster
The Fuck-Up by Arthur Nersesian

2.0

This book starts out promising, but quickly turns vapid and rambling. Perhaps when it debuted it was more of a shocker, but now its meandering "day in the life of a counter-culture antihero" trope feels tired and familiar. Still, as a late-eighties/early-nineties period piece it has some merit, and the author clearly worked hard at this. There's a very real realism to the setting on display, and parts of it will ring uncomfortably true with readers who have lived in a big city, yet the series of events our narrator "lucks" through are hard to swallow as plausible. And the dialogue? No one talks like this--not now, not then, not ever. Still, some passages are truly insightful and there is a lot of brilliant poetry-in-prose style to be found (though Nersesian turned to his thesaurus for those million-dollar words far too often for my tastes). It's just that there's not much payoff for all the effort. Big on style, small on plot, but still provocative enough to get you talking about it. Two stars, and if I could add a half I would.