Not only does Goose Lane release some of the best literature this country is capable of (see: this year's wholly remarkable quartet of The Town that Drowned, The Time We All Went Marching, Tide Road, and Kalila), but last year's YOU comma Idiot is one of the best, and my favourite novel of 2010. Writing in the second person, a format only off-putting for the first paragraph, Doug Harris' tale of a low-level drug dealer eking out his existence in Montreal by doing as little as humanly possible is a treat on every level. His dialogue is the highlight, as crunchy as Elmore Leonard and quick-witted as Nick Hornby, but his empathy for character and his sharpness in motivation and plotting keeps the novel humming. So sure of itself, so fleet-footed yet grounded, it is hard to believe this is a debut novel. It's as entertaining as anything out there, better written than most, and it's lack of presence on major awards lists is a devastating oversight by people who cannot comprehend that just because it's funny, that doesn't mean it's undeserving of attention.

Read the full review here. ( )

It took me a long time and several attempts to get into this book. The first chapter is very choppy and disconnected, but unlike my initial fear, the style doesn't continue in such a staccato rhythm for the rest of the book.

I found myself getting drawn into the story of the characters as they unfolded, despite the backdrop of drugs that I don't relate to. I'm not quite finished yet, but I'm excited to see how the underlying "mystery" unfolds.

I just finished and I have to admit I had trouble putting this book down. While there were elements of the story that were very one dimensional and far fetched (I'm thinking of his "bank"), they were out weighed by moments that completely captured me. It's been a while since reading a passage and actually feeling like the moment was totally authentic. There were many elements that I thought completely captured the characters feelings.

Despite my initial hesitation to getting into this book, once I did I was completely hooked! ( )

Full review:

http://readingthroughlife.ca/you-comma-idiot-review/

Short excerpt:

Now, I'm not exactly saying that this is a high-energy, action-packed adventure story (because it's not), but I found myself more and more engrossed in the story the farther along I got. Harris writes with just enough of that "Canadian" feel for me to enjoy reading about his characters and what they go through, but it also has a bit of a darker, more contemporary feel.

Although not my usual style of novel, I quite enjoyed YOU comma IDIOT. Usually I’d summarize the book in my own words here, but the blurb from the back of the book does a pretty good job of describing the plot. The story is very much Lee’s life. Told from a first person POV that utilizes ‘you’ instead of ‘I’, the reader is sucked in to the ins and outs of Lee’s slowly wasting away adulthood. And Lee himself? What a character. A genuine normal guy (albeit one who sells drugs, is a handyman in a renovated warehouse turned apartment and sleeps with his best friend’s girl), Lee has a very pragmatic and sometimes cynical outlook on life. He’s incredibly harsh on himself, doesn’t always make the right decisions and skirts the law, but he’s a good guy.

While I may not have completely loved the book (though it’s a good story), I did love Doug Harris’ writing style. I can tell you right now, it was his prose and writing style that kept me sucked in and reading. It’s an incredibly well written novel, with smooth prose (even with some shorter sentences), good description, emotion and pacing, and has a very real and raw feel about it. The mystery surrounding Henry and the missing girl was done wonderfully, Lee’s emotions about Honey – his best friend’s girl – and his decisions regarding selling drugs and maybe getting a job come across loud and clear. YOU comma IDIOT is a book about life choices, events and the hassles of bad decisions. ( )

You comma Idiot is, in short, the story of Lee Goodstone, small-time drug dealer and general layabout. One of his friends stands accused of murdering a 17-year-old girl, a rival is horning in on his drug business, and he has just inadvertently slept with his best friend's girlfriend, by which I mean to say that, while he can't claim the idea wasn't entirely his, at least he wasn't the instigator. Complications, understandably, ensue.

All this is given to us in the second person, a tricky gambit. Some reviewers have complained that the second-person litany of Lee Goodstone's faults alienates the reader; no reader likes to be informed, page in and page out, that he is an idiot. But this misses the point. Second person narration does not, obviously, seek to tell us about ourselves; it's a rhetorical device a narrator employs to persuade us to take a certain perspective on the viewpoint character. And this, in turn, may raise the question of just who is narrating, and why. It gets complicated.

You gotta be ambitious to try it, in other words. And to begin that attempt by calling out the best-known second-person narrative, that staple of creative writing texts, Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City ... well, you gotta have guts.

Both You comma Idiot and Bright Lights, Big City feature protagonists who dabble with drugs -- and won't leave home without their sunglasses. But Harris is the bizarro-McInerney. McInerney's characters are glamorous, while Harris's are losers. McInerney's narrator loses his wife; Lee Goodstone takes up with a woman who has left her boyfriend. And in what is surely not a coincidence, McInerney begins his novel by telling us what kind of guy his protagonist is not, while Harris takes great pains to tell us what kind of guy Goodstone is. Those reviewers who complain that Harris alienates the reader are missing the point.

Jay McInerney opens by making excuses: "You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are...." McInerney's narrator argues that his character is better than this, that he doesn't belong here, that this is not really him. Harris does precisely the opposite. "You're the kind of guy who falls in love after one date," he declares. "You're the kind of guy who rehearses a conversation fifty times in his head and then blows it when it's for real. You're the kind of guy who...." And so on, and so on, and so forth, and so on: Harris devotes his entire opening chapter to ensuring that we know precisely what kind of a guy Lee Goodstone is, and the portrait isn't pretty.

If McInerney's narrator argues for absolution, Harris's portrays a toxic self-loathing. But despite the litany of condemnation, Goodstone soon emerges through his actions as no idiot at all, especially when compared with the company he keeps. He simply doesn't have faith that he can be anything more than what he is.

And this is where the problem lies: the novel, in a sense, seems to lack the faith that it can be more than what it is. The characters don't emerge as fully formed; Harris seems content to leave most of them flat. Goodstone is so averse to taking himself seriously, and so singularly lacking in ambition, that he rarely emerges as anything more than a comic figure. Harris is a more subtle writer than he seems to be, as when Goodstone watches a child, still out playing after all the others have been called it; we're given to understand that he could be watching himself, that he must either eventually go in, or exist forever as a kind of Peter Pan of the streets. But Harris continually undermines these effects by playing for the quick laugh, a laugh that is, unfortunately, sometimes forced. You comma Idiot seems not to be able to decide whether to be a purely comic novel, and so falls short of its promise.