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A review by lulo49
The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
4.0
This was an odd one. I tend to most enjoy dialogue- and action-driven plots over detailed descriptions of locations and other sometimes (for me) distracting detail, such as a character's continual rumination of their thoughts and feelings. So the first few short chapters of this book did not appeal to me -- a broken shoe lace, then withn a day or two a second broken shoe lace, and what had been the cause of these almost simultaneous events? Was it the angle, the friction, the tying method, the fabric, whether there was unequal tension in the tying, etc. And I thought - where is this going? And the answer is - nowhere.
Yet something about this book intrigued me, especially when I got the rhythm of clicking on the several footnotes in each chapter (all numbered 1, which at first I thought was a publication error) for forther elaboration of the thought processes involved. And I became hooked. Still not certain why, but as the non-plot moved along from the shoelaces to other mundane items and process I became more interested. By the end of the book I was delighted with the thoughts and considerations of the narrator and was sad to see it end. Go figure.
Yet something about this book intrigued me, especially when I got the rhythm of clicking on the several footnotes in each chapter (all numbered 1, which at first I thought was a publication error) for forther elaboration of the thought processes involved. And I became hooked. Still not certain why, but as the non-plot moved along from the shoelaces to other mundane items and process I became more interested. By the end of the book I was delighted with the thoughts and considerations of the narrator and was sad to see it end. Go figure.