Book Twentyfour: The Unnamed
5.10.2011
The Unnamed, Joshua Ferris
It's always scary when an author's first novel is one of your all-time favorites and you go to pick up their second. But wow, have no fear with this one. While it is completely different from Then We Came to the End, it is almost equally amazing. Last night, while nearing the end, it had me sobbing in the bathtub, just from the pure truth of words that came out of a character's mouth. And the loops and turns this book takes you on are thrilling and subtle all at once.
If you are like me, you will worry over what it all means for a while. Is it some kind of allegory for the human condition? Or commentary on marriage/work/love/life/death/insert-big-deal-thing-here? I suppose I've decided, in my complete inability to make sense of it, that it really doesn't matter in the end. This is not the book I want to dissect bit-by-bit in Contemporary American Literature 101. I want to just simply enjoy it and feel for the characters and experience all the sadness, love, fear, horror and sweetness that it throws at me.
It's always scary when an author's first novel is one of your all-time favorites and you go to pick up their second. But wow, have no fear with this one. While it is completely different from Then We Came to the End, it is almost equally amazing. Last night, while nearing the end, it had me sobbing in the bathtub, just from the pure truth of words that came out of a character's mouth. And the loops and turns this book takes you on are thrilling and subtle all at once.
If you are like me, you will worry over what it all means for a while. Is it some kind of allegory for the human condition? Or commentary on marriage/work/love/life/death/insert-big-deal-thing-here? I suppose I've decided, in my complete inability to make sense of it, that it really doesn't matter in the end. This is not the book I want to dissect bit-by-bit in Contemporary American Literature 101. I want to just simply enjoy it and feel for the characters and experience all the sadness, love, fear, horror and sweetness that it throws at me.
posted by arajane at
6:29 PM
2 Comments:
I really liked this book. It was ambitious and depressing and earnest. I thought the comparisons to Time Traveler's Wife were completely UNJUST (as I hated that book and this one was balls-out good)
Go glad I never heard the comparisons to Time Traveler's Wife. Not that I read that book, but I just have a feeling I wouldn't have liked it.
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