Everything Looks Impressive [Paperback]

Hugh Kennedy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1993

Embarassed by his modest background, Yale freshman Alex MacDonald nevertheless falls in love with Jill Lanigan, a senior whose controversial sexual political attitudes lead to a violent confrontation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This endearing bildungsroman depicts a college freshman confronting sexual politics and the leisure class at Yale. Kennedy does a fine job of tracing out what happens when young people who have too much time and too much money are set free from the constraints of parents and boarding-school dorm mothers. Alex, whose parents run a set of tourist cabins in Maine, attends Yale on scholarship, having wished all his life to join the elite in the halls of Ivy. He falls in with a prep school crowd of budding nihilists whom he loves and hates at the same time. Along the way, he meets and becomes obsessed with Jill, a senior who has a female lover but sends him ambiguous signals of desire. When Jill is beaten in a campus gay-bashing incident and dies, Alex is forever changed. He plays a key role in the investigation and decides that the simpler values he left behind were not so terrible after all. Following Christmas break, he returns to New Haven to make a new start (with a fresh perspective). This 1980s update on Fitzgerald, though at times as self-indulgent and full of itself as the pretentious people it portrays, is a promising first novel. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

First novelist Kennedy examines the values of the 1990s as perceived by a group of Yale students. The plot revolves around Alex McDonald, who experiences growth outside the classroom through contrasting social situations and peer interaction. Alex's wealthy roommates and quasi-friend, senior Jill Lanigan, whose sexual politics are new to him, provide contrasts and social frictions from which he learns values and maturity. A Yale graduate himself, the author presumably knows his milieu, and he writes well, but his book will be appreciated mainly by college students. --Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Main Street Books (January 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385469063
• ISBN-13: 978-0385469067
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,197,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Marvelous Novel, January 23, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Everything Looks Impressive (Paperback)

Everything Looks Impressive, the first novel by Hugh Kennedy, is the story of a Yale freshman from a modest background that finds himself in a world of culture and privilege beyond his understanding. While he grasps to form a bond, any sort of meaningful relationship that he can, he interacts with several colorful, charming and spoiled characters that take his emotions for granted.

You cannot help but fall in love with the innocent charms of the narrator who struggles to maintain his values while trying to fit in with his peers. A perfect scene when his girlfriend from home visits him at Yale shows him realizing just how phony he had started to become right under his own nose.

Packed with dynamic prose, witty humor, and a few surprising plot twists, this book is a must read for any fan of contemporary fiction.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I've never forgotten it..., August 17, 2003

By 

Robert Wellen (CHICAGO, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Everything Looks Impressive (Hardcover)

I read this book a good ten years ago and I have never forgotten it. I had just finished my first year at college as well. I just read another book, a coming of age novel, that reminded of it and I wanted to put a good word in for Mr. Kennedy's book. I've never forgotten the feelings and insights it gave me. I think of it often.