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A review by dude_watchin_with_the_brontes
Sorry Please Thank You by Charles Yu
2.0
In some ways this reminds me of The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, in that there are SO MANY things I love about it, but Yu cannot let you forget, even for a second, exactly what he thinks women are for. The last story was so explicit about it, it left me so upset.
I liked the first story a lot, Standard Loneliness Package, which had a really interesting premise, and a pretty good execution except for, you guessed it, there is only one woman, and she is defined 85% by her relationship with the protagonist and 15% by her relationship with her father. Hero Absorbs Major Damage was similar - very cool premise, lots of humor, but there's only two women and one of them is the love interest, and the other is
Troubleshooting, Inventory, and The Book of Categories were all interesting in the vein of Invisible Cities or Einstein's Dreams in that they seemed to be mostly focused on the thought experiment, and less so on developing characters (or at least, more than one every-man character), and that may be why they were among the better stories.
Overall, though, this book reminded me of that quote from The Social Network (which I have never seen, but has brought about one of my favorite quotes of all time): You're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.
Spoiler
It is literally a letter to all women that they should love men who seem unloveable so they don't kill themselves.I liked the first story a lot, Standard Loneliness Package, which had a really interesting premise, and a pretty good execution except for, you guessed it, there is only one woman, and she is defined 85% by her relationship with the protagonist and 15% by her relationship with her father. Hero Absorbs Major Damage was similar - very cool premise, lots of humor, but there's only two women and one of them is the love interest, and the other is
Spoiler
in love with the love interest (which is played for "ooh, that's hot!", while male homosexuality is played for "ew gross no homo" laughs).Troubleshooting, Inventory, and The Book of Categories were all interesting in the vein of Invisible Cities or Einstein's Dreams in that they seemed to be mostly focused on the thought experiment, and less so on developing characters (or at least, more than one every-man character), and that may be why they were among the better stories.
Overall, though, this book reminded me of that quote from The Social Network (which I have never seen, but has brought about one of my favorite quotes of all time): You're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.