Customer Reviews

The Autograph Man

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After reading 50 pages and restarting every so often in case I missed something prior, I gave up. Makes no sense, no connection, seems to be just a series of rambling unrelated phrases, sentences. I hope to read "White Teeth" and hope it will be more interesting.

What is wrong or good with this book. What are the relations between main character, what is the main plot, or any of the other subplots, what is that that Zadie smith is trying to do. Questions, which vary in answers. Depending on the viewpoint of person who writes them. I'll do my best to try and summarise it shortly. Alex Li-Tandem, jew and chinese in same person. Weehaw, that, you could think, presents an excellent starting point for a story about hate, rasisim, justice that is no justice at all and standard post-modern pro-cultural prose. But, what we actually find here is, I do not know how to phraze it, but something which bears much resemblance with a intimate search fore onself. Lookin ag the religion as just some sort of gest, Aley li Tandem, finds his religion in much more mundane thing, autograph collecting, with Kitty Alexander in a role of her life as Jehova. Neglecting anything but that, his "social" and/or intimate relationships suffer greatly.
With few excurses with a jokes, or anegdotes, with pictures now and then that helps to break boredomness of every written text, Smith's managed to write very compelling story, and much thought provoking one.
Maybe somwhat too playfull for a matter that it tried to bring up to the light of day, this book stands for itself as a beacon to every young writer or independent thinker out there (sorry about typos, i have a very bad keyboard here :))

Zadie Smith's latest is a subpar Coupland-ish tale of a young man avoiding relationships and meaningful spiritual fulfillment through frivolous pursuits and binge drinking - sort of like most mid-twenty-somethings. There are a few good moments and a few witty lines in the book, but ultimately the tale just doesn't have much ooomph. Coupland's last book just came out in paperback and it's a better read. If you can get your hands on a copy of Dave Eggers latest book it's even better. If you are interested in young voices and you've already read those, you might still want to check out this quick read.

Reading the first book of "The Autograph Man" is most of the time very annoying. The protagonist of the story, Alex-Li Tandem, a half chinese half jewish autograph man gets drunk and stoned every day, consequently there is no real action. In the secon part of the book there is some kind of a plot, the story beginns to develope and so it gets more interessting for the reader. The open ending is a bit disappointing because the reader doesn't know how the life of Alex will go on. All in all the book contains too much unimportant details and the protagonist is a kind of a person you can't identify with nor you can like him anyway. If you have the power to finish the book you really can be proud of you!!!