Millhauser really cracks me up. If you've read a fair number of biographies and are amused by impossibly precocious kids, he'll crack you up too. If, however, children annoy you and you're unaware of biographical cliches then, sadly, you will probably be less than amused.

I think Alicia Aho recommended this book to me. Bless her. ( )

Jeffrey Cartwright is six months older than Edwin Millhouse so by default they have known each other pretty much all their lives. Jeffrey, with his perfect memory, has taken it upon himself to become Edwin's biographer. His story is in three sections: the Early Years, the Middle Years, and the Late Years (when Edwin dies at age eleven). Jeffrey carefully documents everything from baby talk ("salivary sonatas" p 58) to grade school crushes. One of the disappointments of the story is the tedious repetition. It's as if Millhauser wants to express the idea that to speak like a child is to be incredibly repetitious. Here is an example, "Before Karen was born, the grandmothers slept in the empty bed in the extra room, but after Karen was born the empty bed was moved into Edwin's room and the grandmothers slept there. The empty bed was never moved back, and before Karen had a bed of her own, the grandmothers slept in Karen's bed and Karen slept in the empty bed in Edwin's room" (p 45). These two sentences exhaust me. In addition, Steven Millhauser writes with a great deal of detail. It is not enough to say a leg was dangling. It is important for you to know it was the right leg that was dangling and how it was dangling. ( )

On the one hand, I found this a wholly original and interesting novel, but on the other hand, I sometimes found the execution of its premise (the biography of an 11-year-old by the subject's next-door neighbor and obsessive admirer) wearying in its detail and layers of imagery. This the the kind of book that presents itself a particular challenge, which is to make its narrative true to its conceits while simultaneously engaging readers. It's on this point that I found the novel lacking at times, because I wanted the story to come more fully alive for me, but I understood that the tone of the narrator had a purpose of its own, and that purpose didn't fall into line with my own desire to see the story move along at a faster clip.

I think, therefore, that this will be a novel I appreciate more in hindsight than I did in the reading. There is a lot being said about language, creativity, childhood, and the nature of friendship. Also about interest vs. obsession. I won't forget some of the incidents or imagery, I know. I'm just sorry that I found myself at times feeling frustrated with the narrator and wanting to skim portions of the text. This is a well-written novel, and Millhauser creates some very affecting passages, so it's all the more frustrating to feel the impulse to avoid such craft out of impatience. ( )

Ostensibly the biography of one 11-year-old boy by another, Edwin Mullhouse is a dark and funny take on childhood, but it is not really a book “about” a story and characters. It is essentially a book about the art of the writer, and is a commentary on itself. Millhauser’s achievement is to simultaneously imagine, justify, and undermine the idea of biography as a creative performance, then crack it all open with an unexpected, revelatory finish.

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Millhauser’s uncanny evocation of childhood at a particular late American moment is a harrowing whirl of inscrutable mood swings, toys, teasing, scribbles, scoldings, licorice, violence, and wandering walks home. The surface conceit—that this is a biography of a boy, written by another boy—evaporates quickly; no mere child (and few grownups) can write prose so taut and shrewd. The world of children is revealed as the one and only world, the world of imagination and enchantment, desire and disappointment, life and death. Millhauser grants Jeffrey some trenchant musings on the art of words and the writer’s tumultuous psyche, and when in the last few pages Edwin tells Jeffrey that "I aspire to the condition of fiction,” we know he means both transfiguration and ascension. ( )