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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yes!, June 17, 2008
Before I read this book, I was already interested in the cultural milieu in which it is (mostly) set --- the club scene in 90s New York --- but you don't have to particularly care about this epoch to get hooked by the novel, as I did. Ferrell is a true wordsmith, and the novel is worth reading just for the quality of her prose. This is perhaps most conspicuous in her ability to grant even the most minor characters a rich presence, with just a few light strokes of her poetic brush. Matt's double life as club promoter and college student puts him in touch with a LOT of people, and this gives Ferrell the opportunity to stitch together an enormous weave of New York souls as a backdrop to the mounting drama. Whether it's a fiendish, over-the-hill club promoter or a pathetic, process-obsessed NYU counselor, every character springs to life with a precision that testifies to the author's sensitivity for human particularity--even an anonymous line of waiting club-goers quickly flashes forth its proprietary verve. Of course it's the more central characters surrounding Matt who give this book its compelling psychic life. All are worth getting to know, but the standouts for me were Vic, Matt's volcanic, delusional, diabolical guru of a boss, and Liza, a Jezebel figure who has to be one of the hottest female characters ever cast in literary fiction. (I'm serious.) Then there is Hans, a German sociologist lurking in the footnotes for reasons unknown until much later in the book. He took a bit of getting used to, but once his story began to unfold, I looked forward to his intrusions. They have a peculiar style of their own, torn between Hans' "professional" interest in Matt's story and his overwhelming drive to evaluate his own disasters. Although he is a comic figure, he nonetheless has a mature, nuanced love story to report that helps broaden the emotional range of the novel beyond freshman year. As for Matt himself, here is a character one gets to know extremely well. Ferrell spends a good deal of time in his head, where Matt schemes, soliloquizes, berates himself, and generally chums around, in a sort of erudite slang bred from a youth of bookish isolation. His voice dominates the book, and it is a funny, incisive, and loving one, but also insecure, malleable, and troublingly vindictive. Ferrell occasionally spends a bit too much time spelling out his thoughts, rather than letting his actions or conversations reveal them. But Matt's personality withstands sustained attention, and I finished the book feeling that I had truly gotten to know someone, and thankful for it.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lyrical, funny, and incisive, July 15, 2008
I read this book from cover to cover and then bought three more copies to give to friends. As a transplanted New Yorker, I loved Ferrell's gorgeous, lyrical descriptions of the city, the "opera of the cosmopolis," as she puts it. The book captures the sounds, sights, and pathos of the city beautifully. Take, for example, this passage: "On Second Avenue a great alien street-cleaning apparatus ponderously coasted along glistening puddles of green... On 13th Street a streetlight buzzed off-on, off-on, maddeningly; on 14th, a man silhouetted in a high window stood with hands propped flat at the glass as if under some celestial arrest." In both plot and style, the book reminds me a bit of a contemporary reworking of Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby. There's something Gatsby-esque about Matt, the main character, and his quest for social ascension. Ferrell's writing has the gloss and pop of Fitzgerald's, though her prose style tends to be less spare, more lush, than the latter's. The ending was a little abrupt for me, but overall, this book was beautifully written, intelligent, and funny to boot. Highly recommended.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fresh Take on the Freshman Year, July 28, 2008
What a great first novel! I was captivated in particular by the voice used throughout the book. The narrator, while distinct from the main character Matt, also speaks as his inner voice / consciousness - and what an inner voice it is. Rich, clouded, driven by a desire to be cool. A deep character is portrayed in the very transitional first year of college.
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