Customer Reviews

Mammals: A Novel

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Recommended. As with a lot of good modern literature, "Mammals" aims to drag you into full view of the disjointed nature of modern man, case represented by "the uncle". Contrary to the previous reviewer I think this is the book's merit. The uncle's very sarcastic nature appealed to my literary tastes. I first read this book in 2003, at age 23. I liked it ever since. I don't particularly like writing reviews but I had to defend this novel in the light of the other review.
You can read the synopsis and get a glimpse of the writing itself even without my help. I won't bother with that. I would recommend this book though. Some other books I grouped Mammals with on my bookshelf are: A Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley; The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery; and The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.

I picked this one up because Niall Griffiths (my fav author) wrote a blurb for it. Now maybe it's because I'm not in my 40s, and maybe it's because of the translation, but I just don't get it. There were only a couple times I thought it was particularly funny, and the narration was continually disjoint and weird. It's awkward when someone refers to themself in the third person once, and in this case throughout the book the narrator refers to himself as "the uncle." I just didn't get it.