Customer Reviews

Face-Time

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Care to spend a few endless hours with a couple of characters who have absolutely no respect for each other or for themselves? Do you like characters that are less appealing than a 2-day root canal? Enjoy reading a book of "light satire" written in prose that makes the telephone directory seem fresh and clever by comparison? Do you love a tortoise-like pace, a leaden style, and an approach to humor that considers the word "shit" the ultimate bon mot? If so, boy does Mr. Tarloff have a book for you.

Consider just one sentence that demonstrates this author's distinctive style. You don't have to get far into the book to reach this first of many nadirs the book has to offer. It's in the second paragraph of the first chapter. Here it is:

"They come accompanied by a certain measure of irony, even self-satire, since a good part of her youth and adolescence was spent in Washington, and she graduated from Georgetown; she isn't exactly fresh off the farm."

What?

There are 256 pages of sentences like this facing anyone masochistic enough to try and shovel through it. Its almost impossible to make it all the way through, because the author keeps grabbing you around the ankles and throwing you to the ground with pointless, rambling, disjointed prose such as the quote above.

This book is a total waste of paper and ink and (worse) people's time. Despite the fact another write got the title first, this book is the one that truly deserves the title "Less Than Zero."

This sure sounded good. Joe Klein made an excellent novel out of similar material. Tarloff begins with an interesting premise and keeps his characters in the intriguing gray area of believable human behavior, their hats neither clearly white nor black.

So why is the novel not much fun, and eventually interminable, despite its brief length? Perhaps because it doesn't read like a novel, but rather like a prose outline for one: we are told everything, shown little. In theory, the story presented is interesting, but theory is all we get, and eventually it all gets kind of whiny and annoying. And although the book remains well-balanced, it almost never, ever funny.

Without humor, or anything resembling a satiric edge, we're left with an earnest sexual/political soap opera in which not much happens. This book feels as if it contains a good story struggling to break free, but it never quite manages to do so.

Not witty, not hilarious, not funny (wickedly or otherwise), not believable, not riveting, not thoughtful, not superbly written, not razor-sharp, not savvy, and definitely not worth reading. The prose is plodding. The characters are utterly unsympathetic and unbelievable. The references to Desmond Morris, Casablanca, etc., are pitiful in their cut and paste awkwardness. And somehow, the plot manages to be both contrived and predictable.

Jim Lehrer, Michael Lewis, Larry Gelbart, Judy Woodruff, Gail Sheehy, and Christopher Hitchens should all be ashamed of lending their good names to the promotion of this dreary dreary book, regardless of how good a friend Tarloff or his wife might be. The only one of of the group that came close to the truth in her jacket blurb was Woodruff. If in calling it the "ultimate Washington novel," she's referring to the fact that in D.C, too often who you know is more important than what you know, then she's right on the money.

This book is wonderful. This is one of those books that I stayed up all night to finish. Tarloff's writing filled me with the characters's joy and sorrow as if it were my own. The writing is exquisite. The book is perfect.

The first thing I did after finishing this book was to look for more books by Erik Tarloff, but there are none. I hope to see more by this author soon, whatever the subject.

I loved Tarloff's other book so much I ran out and got this one as soon as I finished "the man who wrote the book." It's hard to believe how much I wanted to tear the pages out of this one and throw it in the garbage... it takes talent to draw emotions out of a reader like that! However, who wants to feel that way for an entire novel? Not me, surely. I did stick with it and finished it just for the obvious ending - why? I dunno. It was like using your tongue to play with a painful cavity page after page after page.

It is a valid question in another review I saw here: is it tarloff's story? Why else would someone draw out such horrible pain with so little comic relief except as some form of payback?

It just made me sad.

This novel is terrible! I hate not finishing a book, but Icannot read one more word of this waste of paper. Don't make the samemistake I did and be fooled by the glowing nods and half-reviews given Face-Time. It's bad, not because the plot is obvious and tired (which it is), but because of the writing. The author employs words like "datum" over and over again and enlists characters who are pretentious and unbelievable.

Worst of all, the story is all tell and no show; that is to say, the narrator doesn't describe events and feelings but informs you of them. You never get a sense of what's happening or where it's happening because you're told "I was upset" or "He was impressive" or "It was a moving speech." Thanks, but I like my books to transport me somewhere, especially when we're supposed to be traveling inside places like the White House movie theater and Paris night clubs.

Once I came upon the page in which the narrator meets some Parisian woman who is supposed to be struggling with English but easily uses the word "putative" and easily recognizes a White House speechwriter, I gave up. END

A very enjoyable read. Face Time is topical, in light of the Monica/Clinton story. It is also a very interesting exploration of modern relationships and the ways we justify prioritizing our work vs family.

The characters are likeable, though they slip into the venal. No, you might not like the premise - infidelity spawned by power seduction (not rape!) - but Tarloff does a very good job of taking a 2 word cliche and developing it into an interesting story (the literary device is called a "conceit", I believe). He pens an all too plausible plot line and goes far enough to develop the characters well in this darker bedroom farce, and it has the ring of too much truth. It might cause you to think just one level beyond the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal as cartooned in the national press. It's a good enough read to keep you awake turning those pages and you probably won't disrespect yourself in the morning.

Hey Erik & Laura - is this your story????

Dreadful and depressing. I laughed out loud at some places where this foolish author tried to pretend he understood how men think and act. Worst line (in a fit of anger at his girlfriend): "Don't think that just because I'm a liberal Democrat I'm not capable of domestic violence." If that's your idea of good dialogue, you'll like this turkey; otherwise, give it a pass. (There's an obvious alternate title for this book. It is two words long and the first word is "Sloppy"). "Nuff said.

Some other reviewers here seem to have found this book riotously funny and blazingly insightful, but I'm really at a loss as to exactly where in this story the laughs are, and equally unable to believe real people with any intellect, sense of self-worth, or moral values would act or react the way these characters do. More than any book I've purchased in years, this one left me resenting the fact I'd judged the book by its cover blurbs and regretting the time and money spent on it.