Customer Reviews

Attic

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Very necessary for any Geek Lover. It's like an autobiography, with the most awesome strange plot lines twisted right in. Highly sexual, disturbing, intense. And it's all stream of consciousness, and it is so good. I personally like it a whole lot more than I like Truck, and it clearly belongs to a different genre than Geek. It's intense. In honor of my great aunt Eva, I give it three enthusiastic thumbs up.

Geek Love is one of my favorite books ever, but this novel seemed like a Kerouac-style ramble without a plot, compelling characterization, beginning or ending. Underwater misery with no subtlety or explanation.

Being a big fan of Geek Love, I was happy to find Attic. I wasn't sure what to expect, and what I found was a mess of prose. You are inside the mind of a crazy woman who finds herself in strange places and situations. You are given a first hand view of her thought process -- run-on sentences, vivid imagery, and confusion. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. After reading this book, I felt insane myself. Not recommended for the mentally unstable.

As Geek Love is one of my all-time favorites, I purchased Attic with high hopes. I was highly disappointed; it has some interesting passages, and some good character portraits, but it was overall a disjointed, self-indulging mess. Don't bother; read Geek Love again instead.

Dunn on toilets:"...from thy septic whiteness, magnate and vagabond are indistinguishable...". The free-flowing, hyper-anxious prose reveals an atypical coming-of-age story, one that lacks the usual cliches and tortured self-observations indicative of the genre. Dunn's writing combines the uncanny humor of Flannery O'Connor with the deep human insight of Dostoyevsky. Read this book and get a glimpse--albeit hellish--into the human condition.

bought truck because I'm a fan of geek love / dunn's earlier work, I loved it, easily got swirled into jail right along with the protagonist - didn't understand what was happening until it was 2 late / it was honest & jarring

As with "Truck," this book was nowhere near as good as "Geek Love." Dunn herself admitted she took ten years off to "learn how to write" after these two books were published.

Indeed she did, because "Attic" pales in comparison to the point that it feels like a different writer composed it. "Attic" is by far better than "Truck," but it is still a let down from the richly textured and beautifully delivered narrative of "Geek Love." I would not recommend it to any fans of "Geek Love."

To completionists such as myself: this book will take less than three hours to read, but to what end? Some of the reviewers here seem to think that run-on sentences and disjointed narration are masterful and artsy. I think the book was a decent story of a young writer trying to tell a semi-autobiographical tale of her trip to a womens' jail. It did contain some racial slurs that I could have done without, as well as some vivid descriptions of certain bodily functions that are better left unwritten.

The narrative style itself was more traditional than her follow-up book, "Truck," but it was still no "Geek Love." Think twice before you buy this. Read "Geek Love" again and hope that Dunn will someday follow it up with something of equal caliber.

THIS BOOK HAS THE CHARACTER I EXPECT FROM KATHERINE DUNN'S WRITING, ALONG WITH THE WEIRD OBSERVATIONS, WRITING STYLE AND CONTENT. SHE HAS SUCH AN ODD VIEW OF THINGS AND THE STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS/BIZARRE STORY IS A LITTLE BIT CHOPPIER THAN TRUCK AND GEEK LOVE, BUT I STILL LIKED IT. I HOPE SHE WRITES MORE SOON! I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF HER UNIQUE STYLE.