Customer Reviews

I'm Losing You

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

 

 

From the raves garnered for this book and his latest release, "I'll Let You Go", I was intent from the first page on really liking this book. I came away disturbed and baffled more than anything else ... and slightly nauseous.

Wagner certainly is a prodigious talent. His dialogue flies off the page, and his characters, though a rather unlikeable lot, manage to convey a certain pathos that is truly revealing. I might even venture to say I was surprisingly moved by the ending. Unfortunately, though, Wagner comes off as a more impressive stylist than storyteller. As a result, the narrative tends to drift and gets lost amid virtuoustic and occasionally tangential verbiage. One particular complaint is that I often lost track of the characters themselves and how they were inter-related.

This is not - and I repeat NOT - a novel for everyone. It requires a strong stomach and an open mind. Some of Wagner's descriptions border on the pornographic, and occasionally seem to push the envelope just for the sake of shock value.

Still, there is quite a bit to admire here, and if one can get past the fact that these characters are - for the most part - utterly unredeemable, and the plot a bit unfocused, you are in for quite a read.

Quite posibly the best Hollywood novel since Nathaniel West's "Day of the Locust" or Robert Stone's much under-rated "Children of Light." Wagner has as piercing an eye for character as Nora Ephron, a more rapier wit, and more bulls-eyed capture-effect for nailing the squirming, mercurial nature of the de-centered city. A compilation of vignettes and plotlines loosely interconnected by wry and cunning crossed trajectories of power, desire, carnal predation and patholgical ambition. All of it wired up in electrifying prose and some of the most bitchy and acidic and blackest-of-black humor since Celine. Wickedly funny at every turn. Really a minor (maybe not so minor) masterpiece of the Hollywood genre. Clinically well-observed, vibrant, stylistically ballsy. The critics seem to find it too dark, not plotty enough, bitter, cynical. But insider Wagner ("The Class Struggle in Beverly Hills", "Wild Palms", among others), despite his mainstreamed largely east-coast-imposed postures of populist postmodernist, is a good old fashioned master of realism. The Flaubert of Hollywood. Form following function. A soured lesbian love affair is recounted through a one-sided e-mail correspondence, the authentic human tragedy of a congenitallly blind infant is diminished by the casting director mother's efforts to package it as pop entertainment, relationships exist solely through reception-fractured cell-phone conversations. It's the superficial aspect of human relations in the city of through-lines and sentimental sop that make the novel at once realistic and compelling. And unlike say a Kathy Acker (evoked constantly by every self-co-opted poseur as a pretentious badge of substance) where story is sacrificed to style Wagner keeps the reader engaged at every turn. It's the kind of novel you can open anywhere, anytime and come onto another splendid nugget. We'll be hearing more from this talent and I, personally, am looking forward to it.

It's a novel set in present day Hollywood, but instead of focusing on Hollywood stars, Wagner looks at the hangers-on types, the agents, lawyers, doctors, massage therapists, etc. It's definitely black humor, as a lot of unfortunate things happen to the characters, but it's definitely worth reading.

The multiple pov is quite interesting. In the first section, Wagner focuses on 4 or 5 characters, and quickly switches the POV between each one in a rapid succession. One character is an exterminator, the other an agent, the next one an aging starlet, and the next a dermatologist. My favorite is the exterminator, the Dead Pet Detective, who longs to write scripts for a Star Trek like TV show called "Blue Matrix". His mother is a psychologist, Calliope, who only treats celebrities, one of whom is a Blue Matrix star.

The second section is even more interesting: it's told from multiple narrators, each of whom are women. A different set of characters who you saw through a different perspective earlier. One is a screenwriter writing e-mail to her lesbian lover, another is a producer dictating into a microphone (much like Julia Philips in You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again), still another is a massage therapist writing in her diary titled "The Thief of Energy". These characters have an effect on each other's lives which is not immediately apparent until the end when things all come together.

bruce wagner is a genius and this book will rip your heart out of your chest, stomp on it, then give it a sweet little peck on the cheek before sending it on its way.

read it!

This is a page-turner, a reading in the car even though it makes you carsick book. Fascinating, Day of the Locust kinds of characters develop in divergent and converging arcs that will make your head spin.

But caution to the casual reader: major themes are physical violence and Buddhist thought. The reader welcomes the voluminous Buddhist current as somewhat of a check againt the horrific violence.

Give it a try if you can handle more than a bit of darkness, or are fascinated by LA. The popular culture references alone make the book a worthwhile read.

I like reading novels of Hollywood and this book was recommended. But about 60 pages in this I had to put it down and move to another book. This is not a light novel to read at the beach without full attention. Each sentence is written in complex structure like reading a college textbook. That's OK if there is enjoyment. But 60 pages in I couldn't find the entertainment or characters to attach to. It's rare I can't finish a book. Check my 250 reviews and you'll see it's only happened one other time. And I'm not a skimmer. I read completely what I write about. But this book was not worth further time commitment. Maybe this book was worth the commitment and I just didn't get it. But don't say you weren't forewarned.

After reading the first of Bruce Wagner's Hollywood trilogy, I was reluctant to close "I'm Losing You" and tell myself it was really over. As multilayered as a Napoleon, this novel is strong, flaky, and sweet in unexpected places.

Wagner is not an easy read, but he's a major literary force to be reckoned with. I look forward to reckoning with him in the future--say, ten minutes from now.

The two books are night and day ..."I'lll let you go" is a beautiful poetic, coherent story which winds the lives of it's subjects into a beautiful web....a mystery, a romance, a cryer...a classic....you fall in love and don't want it to end......."I'll lose you" seems like a suggestion I ought to just keep literally to myself for a book that never gets hold, no chartacters to care about....all in the end ho hom...stark raving mad pretentious....tits and tads of information - far too many to relate...kept wishing it found it's brilliance and web the way "I'll Let You Go" did....but ultimately just left me bored and confused.....

Oops . . . Mr. Wagner dropped the ball after an early promising start. His prose is so dense you need a knife to hack you way through. Skip it.