Customer Reviews

Karoo: A Novel

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It took me more than one shot to get through this book, but I was glad I did. I think that the hopelessness of the main character made it difficult to get into at first--it was hard to like him, and a little difficult to care what happened to him. But once I got into the story, I truly enjoyed it. Tesich does an amazing job of filling a book with characters that aren't really all that likeable--he puts you inside their heads and shows you their motivations. They are all full of crap, but they convince themselves that their motives are pure--this can be laughable and completely disheartening at the same time. The story gained momentum, and (knowing that it couldn't possibly end well) I was torn between digging my heels in and letting myself get swept up. The ending left me feeling like I was trying to swallow cotton balls. It was a redemption story without the redemption, a portrait of a possibly souless man...I highly recommend this book, but not to anyone who's looking for a warm-fuzzy feeling about humankind.

"Karoo" portrays a character with no core, a gambit which could easily become tiresome. But this book is more than a great portrait of a self-destructive character, which it certainly is. It manages to be a deep, thoughtful and heartfelt meditation on our media culture and how it affects our lives. Even the way "Karoo" is written challenges the way we accept the simplistic portrayals of life that bombard us daily. Often in life there is no neat resolution. This narrative, likewise, constantly confounds our expectations, just as life constantly confounds Saul Karoo's. Nothing is neat in this book, and we never know what to expect next. Minor characters come and go. Plot lines are left dangling. Things don't work out. Still we follow Karoo through his ill-fated plans and still we care for him. And Tesich makes it all make sense somehow.

Something of a post-modern "Babbitt" (Tesich does mention that novel's author, Sinclair Lewis, late in the book), the power and depth of this book are considerable. I couldn't recommend it more highly. It's a shame that Steve Tesich is no longer with us to give us more thought-provoking, relevant fiction like "Karoo".

Quite simply, one of the best books I have read. Tesichs' insights, observations, and descriptions of situations are so disturbingly real, you find yourself alternately hating/loving Saul Karoo, the subject of the novel. Karoo is described as something of an anti-hero, however 'Everyman' would be more apt as I defy anyone who reads this book not to identify with him in any number of situations - some humorous, others poignant, but all of them true to life. Follow the trail of (ex?)alcoholic Karoo from parties to restaurants to meetings and try and NOT see yourself in at least one of these cleverly written pages - some 'laugh out loud', others a bit close to the bone, but always an eye-opener in his slightly surreal world. A real page turner. One of those books that you hate to finish.

If you can't find parts of yourself in Saul Karoo, you're taking yourself too seriously. Look harder. I'm here buying copies for my friends.

this book reminded me of a young Woody Allen. the characters are sharply drawn. I felt as if the protagonist was the ultimate modern tragi-comic man. A modern Job who can not achieve human intimacy or attain a simple minded drunkeness and yet who seeks redemption

this is one of those books that you'll stay up until 3 in the morning reading even though you know you're going to be hating yourself the next day when you have to get out of bed.

Topics covered: marriage, divorce, deceit, addiction, love, hate, sick interdependencies in relationships, parenthood, abandonment...

Tesich's novel, published posthumously in 1998, creaks with age. Not just with the age of a now-12 year old book, or of Saul Karoo, the novel's middle-aged and ultimately unlikeable main character. The book feels old and dated, especially in its attempts at humor. Because in the end Tesich has written 300-plus pages about a character with nothing to say.

This is not a cohesive novel. Instead we see a whiny, self-indulgent Karoo flailing from one Manhattan-centric cliche after another: the Upper West Side dinner parties, the young city women carouses with as he halfheartedly tries to bed them, a neglected son with the soul of an artist, boozy dinners in restaurants with associates he can't stand, a humorless accountant and pestering doctor, a long-suffering ex-wife.

It's like watching a Woody Allen movie devoid of any humor -- all complaint and self-destruction without even the slightest wink toward the absurd. In the middle of this poorly-drawn midlife maelstrom is Saul Karoo, who doesn't care that he has no reason for his actions, which mostly consists of lying to those around him.

There is nothing fun, or funny, in Karoo's world. Instead he makes bold gestures, over the protests of his accountant, to not get health insurance. And he goes on for several pages rationalizing that his decision was an act of defiance. Seriously. Health insurance. Karoo is a script doctor, Hollywood insider's screenwriting guru -- certainly fertile ground for absurdity and humor. Not in this novel. Karoo's relationship to the industry or to his writing is less important than to his next drink. And even when he drinks he's not interesting.

Maybe this is what happens to a wealthy alcoholic on the wrong side of 50. Life shrinks to a caustic little existence, an infinite loop of the same actions, same results. Even Tesich's occasional attempts to give Karoo's philosophical musings meaning fall flat because Karoo truly has nothing to contribute. He rails, but there's nothing to rail against. He yearns, but there's nothing Karoo yearns for. He's just a drinking, eating Manhattan meatbag, and I didn't care what happened to him, or to those unfortunate enough to be around him.

It's hard to believe that it was written by the same person who wrote the screenplay for the wonderful, life-affirming "Breaking Away." Perhaps the 1980s weren't kind to Steve Tesich...

This novel of the 1990s is entertaining and competent, but I thought that Bellow or Updike or P.Roth had already written it. In other words, it doesn't seem to walk new paths, really. But since it does really amuse, at least me, I do not deduct a star.

Hero Saul Karoo is a repairman for faulty screenplays. Though he works for Hollywood, he lives in New York. He is successful and wealthy. But he is a sick man. He is, in his 50s, not just overweight, but fat. He is a confirmed alcoholic, but what is worse, he has developed an immunity against alcohol. He has been rendered permanently sober by some mysterious disease. No amount of booze can make him drunk. He could just as well quit if that wouldn't disappoint his wife, who bases her approach to divorce entirely on his drinking. See, he is a good man.

His main emotional disease is his fear of privacy. That has ruined his marriage, in his view. It also keeps him away from his son, who craves personal attention from dad. He feels at home only when in other people's homes. It also makes him unable to have any other lasting relationship. He has just one friend left.

He is also a confirmed cynic and realist. He knows what talent is and he knows that he doesn't have it. He can never write anything original. He even has re-writer's block.
His divorce is dragging on, because, in his words, the advantages of an unhappy marriage are not easily dismissed.
He loathes his Hollywood employers, but then, feeling semi-decent is one of the fringe benefits of associating with evil.

An intelligent, amusing lightweight, if you got nothing better to do. Mainly for the aging male population. One might see it as a companion volume to the Bucket List movie, making old geezers chuckle about their friends' difficulties.

I have to admit a prejudice. I knew and worked with the late Steve Tesich on two plays off and on Broadway and I am an unabashed fan. I was however, completely taken by suprise by the scathing wit and the deeply felt emotionalism of this brilliant novel. First and foremost, it is a great, suprising story. A page turner. It is also a stunning composite of themes from other Tesich works; loyalty and betrayal, the need for morality, mans relationship to God, the random violence of the world, and the ultimate redemptive powers of art. It's also REALLY funny in a dry, ironic manner that distinguishes the other plays, films, and novels of this greatly missed singular artist.

How many more works of fiction do you want to read where the main character is a writer?
Karoo is a (re)writer of screen plays, not coming to terms with mid-life perhaps, but aware he can write.
Tesich knows he can write. He flaunts his virtuosity.
But he hasn't written a novel. It's just a narrative in the first person, mildly amusing and not really memorable.