Charles Bock

ok.

it took me forever to finish this book. the beginning sucked me in, with startling characterization, not the least being the character of las vegas itself. my brother lived in vegas for a few years, and i first visited when he was still getting settled, in a house with old friends of mine. i got the residents' view of a town i had been quietly fascinated with, from a distance, for oh so long. disneyfication was already in full swing, and the sleaze was being replaced by "fun family fare", but the excess was present enough to enthrall an east-coast girl with limited knowledge of gambling and desert environments. it was enough to get me to forget the waste, the expense, the sheer gross ego of it. the despair and destruction of the place was still there. but all of this is just by way of explanation for why i picked up the book in the first place.

i originally grabbed a free copy that came into the bookstore to send to my brother, to see what he would have to say about it. written by someone who grew up in las vegas, and who i apparently went to college with, if only for a year, i thought he might enjoy such attention drawn to a place where he had such a horrible and sometimes not so horrible time. then i wondered, would he really? would he even want to look that closely at a place he gladly left?

then somehow we ended up with many free copies coming into the bookstore, like an omen, like a calling. the damn thing just kept coming. then the reviews were printed, and the raves were like a flood, just like the free copies. so, i thought, its worth a shot.

i sent a copy to my brother and kept one to read, after realizing that no one else in the store had the time or inclination to read all these free copies. and at first i really did enjoy the characters, the starkness of the heat, the clear, bold lines of story, desperation, a lost child who is, well, kind of a jerk.

then i hit a point that stopped me kind of dead. i put the book aside, but not entirely. i left it at my boyfriend's house, and it just kind of kept sitting there, not leaving, being read a paragraph at a time, when i was there and remembered it.

it wasn't one exact and defined point that stopped me. but i began to reach a [b:critical mass|2956|The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn|Mark Twain|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1161831948s/2956.jpg|1835605] of ridiculousness, where the "hey look at this! its weird!" seemed to overrun the lush heat of character and storyline. my housemate and i discussed the rave reviews we had read, and realized that they all came from a new york that was far away, and as entranced with the idea of las vegas as i used to be, but for a different reason. "people grow up there? that's weird! this book is great! so many weird things happen! and its written by someone who GREW UP there!"

the new york times called it "avidly seedy" and mention that the author "grew up in the city’s equivalent of a real world," just for instance.

granted, i had been just as guilty in the "categorizing from afar" department in my youth. still, there is something vaguely disturbing to me about the hype surrounding this book. something voyeuristic and lurid.

that same housemate that had discussed reviews with me seemed to think it too conservative in its concern for the children, as it does have a lot to do with runaways, but i'm not so sure that i agree. in some ways the author was trying to capture his hometown, and all the strangeness and everyday of the place. lost children is definitely a theme, but i don't see it as such a conservative viewpoint.

what rankles me is the unrealistic and supposedly shocking sexual and interpersonal behavior that is supposed to denote what a town of extremes it is. it is almost as if the author was worried his las vegas wasn't going to be "vegas" enough, so he let loose with the the weird. the story seems to disintegrate into attempts to shock and dismay, and i grew more and more annoyed as the characters became less and less substantial. the stripper with special effects, the punk boyfriend and his tattoos, the fat porn king, the pregnant street junkie. it all got less and less defined, more and more cartoonish.

well, i finally forced myself to finish it, and i suppose the end itself would have been quite nice if i hadn't dragged it all out over months and months. i think there is a lot of wonderful things there, but i also think it is a book that doesn't quite know what the hell its doing. which is fine. its just not for me.

p.s. i just read a few other reviews, and i was surprised by the fact that so many people hated the book because newell was such a jerk of a kid. to me, it was one of the book's redeeming qualities, that this kid is missing, and peoples' lives are in disarray because of it, but the kid in question is, well, not all that likable and sort of a huge, selfish asshole. in fact, one of the most touching passages, for me, was when lincoln admits that he knows his kid was developing into not so nice a person. there is too much delicate handling of children in fiction. sometimes kids are just jerks, like everyone else. youth does not make you automatically angelic. sheesh.… (mais)

I read a lot of books about illness, but most are non-fiction (e.g., Being Mortal, When Breath Becomes Air, The Emperor of All Maladies) so I decided to try a novel. It's easy to see that everything Alice goes through in her diagnosis and treatment is true to life, and it is a nightmare. Since it's set in 1993-4, I kept hoping that leukemia treatments are now easier on the patient, but when I realized that the author's wife's death was not all that long ago, I'm guessing they are not. As a novel, this sort of works, sort of doesn't. What is the point of the random case notes scattered throughout? As others have mentioned there are abrupt shifts in time and perspective, which bogs down the narrative and some of the characters are just - huh? (e.g., the oncology resident and Merv). And I'm sorry, but their baby's name is "Doe"? I guess the author has never heard of the Baby Doe court case, but everytime that name came up that phrase popped into my head to further take me out of the story. I certainly felt the connection between Alice and Oliver, sympathizing mostly with her, although she is depicted as an exasperatingly hip and cool (but not shallow!) fashionista which for me worked against the sympathy. If I could give it 2.5 stars that would reflect my true rating, as would the nearly 3 weeks it took me to finish reading it.… (mais)