Let Nothing You Dismay [Paperback]

Mark O'Donnell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 7, 1999

"Uproarious...one of the funniest writers around."--The New Yorker

Tad Leary has problems. Just fired from his job at a Manhattan private school, about to be evicted from his sublet, and stalled on his dissertation ("Social Hierarchies of Imaginary Places"), he wakes up on the Sunday before Christmas to realize he has seven parties to attend.

A trooper in jeans and a pressed white shirt, he sets off for brunch with his eccentric family, an afternoon performance-art piece by a friend sporting little more than a tattooed goatee, a dinner party where he runs into an ex-girlfriend, a late-night soiree where he spars with an ex-boyfriend, and more. With a charming combination of wit, wisdom--and just a little whimpering--Tad charts a survivalist's course through Manhattan's social hierarchies.

"A delight.... By turns zany and meditative, satirical and mellow...a gently bittersweet comedy."--Newsday  

"A wise, hilarious stocking stuffer."--The Village Voice

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With only five days to go before Christmas, several doses of bad luck have befallen Tad Leary, the hero of this funny, if thin, second novel by playwright and humorist O'Donnell (Getting Over Homer). Tad has been without a steady lover since he broke up with his boyfriend a year ago. Now, he has just been fired from his job as a storyteller at an exclusive Manhattan elementary school. Moreover, the actor from whom Tad sublets his West Side apartment wants it back. In the course of one day, Tad makes the rounds of six parties he's been invited to (there is a seventh, but he can't remember where or what it is). The parties are a clever device O'Donnell uses to examine and satirize a slice of Manhattan life that he appears to know down to the last hors d'oeuvre. Tad himselfAa baby-faced 34-year-old grad student in folkloreA"can bear reality only by dressing it in metaphor." He comes across as the date you feel sorry for, which makes him an unpromising protagonist and delegates the vitality and fun of this very stagy novel to its over-the-top supporting cast. There's Les, Tad's formerly upwardly mobile brother, whose suicide attempt seems to have cauterized the ambition center in his brain: the last we see of him, he's walking a gingerbread man across his wife's buffet, introducing him to the doughnuts. And then there's Yoni, who "once organized a campaign to get 'all you can eat' restaurants declared illegal on health grounds"; now she works as a "white witch, psychic masseur" and "erotomantic hipstress" and plans to serve cheese made from human breast milk at her next performance. If Tad never really comes to life, it's because the novel is essentially a group satire of a New York demimonde, with Tad more a personification of a type than a character with whom we can empathize.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

O'Donnell (Getting Over Homer, LJ 3/1/96) brings us one day in the life of Tad Leary, a short, baby-faced, unemployed, about-to-be-evicted 34-year-old gay man. Tad is so confused that he's sometimes not even sure he's gay. The story follows him through his social engagements on a Sunday five days before Christmas. He drinks his way around Manhattan from the East Village, where he attends a reception for a friend's latest piece of self-indulgent performance art, to brunch with his Irish American family at the home of his older brother (who is more successful in business than he was in a recent suicide attempt), to a chic Upper East Side party at the apartment of a former lover. While Tad keeps up a steady stream of witty one-liners, he never becomes a sympathetic character. In the end, the reader, though amused, still doesn't know what makes Tad think and drink. Recommended for large collections of gay fiction.?Daniel Starr, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (December 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037570096X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375700965
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,637,015 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Affecting if too clever by half..., November 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Let Nothing You Dismay (Hardcover)

Mark O'Donnell is kind of a hit-or-miss proposition. He can be--and often is--brilliantly hilarious, but he can also make your skin crawl. Fortunately, in 'Let Nothing You Dismay', there's more of the former than the latter. His puns and tropes keep coming, but there's less of the soppy emotionalism that ruined 'Homer' for me. This one kept me interested and entertained from beginning to end.

Also highly recommended are O'Donnell's earlier works, including 'Vertigo Park' and 'Elementary Education', as an introduction to this awesomely clever writer.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great holiday tale, November 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Let Nothing You Dismay (Hardcover)

Christmas is less than a week away, but for Tad Leary there is little to celebrate. He has just lost his job as the storyteller at a Manhattan elementary school. He is about to be tossed out of the apartment he is subletting. His thesis on folklore is past due and going nowhere. Worse yet, even though he is over thirty, all his friend, family, and associates treat him as if he is a child due to his short frame and boyish appearance.

In spite of his trouble's Tad has vowed to make this Christmas different. He plans to make the rounds by going to the seven parties he has been to attend. He hopes to land a job and a room for his marathon efforts and enjoy the season.

LET NOTH-ING YOU DIS-MAY is a wonderfully wacky seasonal tale that will bring joy to anyone who reads the novel. Tad is a great character, struggling with his recent set-backs, his sexual preference, and his treatment by one and all. Mark O'Donnell is a gifted humorist, who brings the likes of Thurber into the late nineties as Tad is the urban, poor man's Walter Mitty (without the dreams of grandeur). Like his previous novel, GETTING OVER HOMER, Mr. O'Donnell gifts his audience with a non-stop jocular story that demonstrates even when it is too dark for Green Lantern's ring, there remains the light of comedy to pull one through the night.

Harriet Klausner

3.0 out of 5 stars An oddly sweet, uplifting little tale..., February 27, 2001

By 

R. Peterson "I'm worldwide..." (St. Thomas (USVI)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Let Nothing You Dismay (Paperback)

Even though some reviewers did not like this book, I thought it was a lovely little novel. It is a week before Christmas in Manhattan and Tad, our protagonist, has just been fired from his job at an elementary school (as a story-teller) because an affectionate child has told his mother that Tad was his favorite hugger or some such nonsense (the mother is, of course, on the board or somehow related to those who worry about this). Tad has also realized that the apartment he has occupied for some time will no longer be available to him as the rightful owner is coming home. It is a Sunday and Tad has been invited to seven different events (functions) which he decides that morning he will attend in spite of the feelings of doom and gloom and utter loneliness he is feeling about his life. The reason I so liked this little book is because, while droll in its humor, it was at a very basic level, uplifting. We have brunch with Tad's family who are bizarre yet strangely accommodating, especially a brother he was never close to but who provides him with some food for thought. We meet old friends of Tad's who offer him a place to stay for a while if he needs, we meet the sister of an old boyfriend (who Tad treated poorly) who is actually rather forgiving, we meet some other friends who are artists and so self-consumed and weird that Tad seems perfectly fine by comparison, we attend a high end party where Tad drinks too much, says the wrong things to the wrong people, yet manages to stir compassion in the (potential new boyfriend) heart of someone who returns his wallet. And we visit the basement in the elementary school Tad has just been fired from, some of his better co-workers who have snuck away from the holiday party and commiserate with him. I liked this book because Tad has every reason to be depressed and wallow in self pity and yet he ventures out in his very vulnerable state and manages to let people take care of him in a very off-hand sweet sort of way. He allows himself to see that life is not over and that things are going to turn up. I liked the whole premise.