Customer Reviews

Nothing Personal

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

 

 

I can think of a lot of adjectives to describe Jason Starr's latest novel like: dark; disturbing; exciting; funny; crafty; thoughtful; and, depressing. My top two, however, are gripping and complex. It's gripping because you have, at most, 3 pages to relax, and then, if you don't want to ignore more important things than reading this book, you must be clinically obsessive-compulsive. It is complex because, once again Starr creates accurate portrayals of people we know and must both sympathize with as well as detest by the end of the story.

Starr's ability to peel away the superficial layers of sanity, sobriety and humanity that his protagonists hide behind, is disarming and terrifying. By the end of the story almost every character is both a predator and victim. The story is dark, cold, exciting and tense, but with enough "justice" such that you should be able to face your friends and neighbors again with a manageable amount of contempt.

If you like Brooklyn and New York settings you will probably love their portrayals here. Starr is able to accurately capture the ambience of two distinct worlds that lay side by side and constantly grind and bump with tension. Starr knows New York and presents it in a way that is inciteful but not overbearing.

Starr's story is always well plotted with an exceptional interweaving of two worlds that ultimately collide. At times, I was repulsed, scared, angry and excited by this unpredictable story.

As with his previous novel, Starr blends much of societies culturally chic obsessions and pathos with humor. He also seems to be able to accurately portray, even with some sympathy, the psychological traumas of chosen and popular lifestyles.

So...do you like noir? Do you like well written suspense? Do like dark, dark humor and enjoy twisted justice? If you can answer yes to any one of these questions, you'll love this book!

At thirty-five years old, Joey DePino worries about what the bookies and loan shark will do to him. However, Joey is more concerned about how his wife Maureen will react if she learns about his gambling debts. Frankie the bookie has already cut off Joey's credit and two thugs employed by Carlos the loan shark has cost him two stitches and bruised ribs. Joey also lost his job for lunching too long at OTB, but feels one more bet, perhaps the Pacers against the Magic will make things right.

Ad executive David Sussman was strutting just a week ago about his affair with employee Amy Lee. Now he panics that the obsessed Oriental will destroy his life. She threatens to call his wife if David fails to marry her and who knows what she will do to his daughter. David wonders how he will end his relationship with the troubled Amy. Maureen and Leslie have been friends since school, but soon their lives will intertwine through the actions of their spouses in a way neither could have predicted.

NOTHING PERSONAL is a dark urban noir that takes the audience into an amoral world where beating the rap is more important than accountability for one's activities. On the surface Joey and David seem like two radically different personalities, but they react to their crisis in similar ways, mostly not wanting it to reach their wives. The characters are fully drawn so that the audience understands the two couples even Amy's fatal attraction. Jason Starr lives up to his surname with this taut thriller that climaxes with an intriguing unexpected twist.

Harriet Klausner

This book is an edge of your seat tension building plot that held my interest grippingly. I read it in one night and then the next day went and bought every other book written by Jason Starr. They are all brilliant. I love the New York setting in the dead end type jobs with the tension between the boss and main character. The marital tension. So well-written and clever. I haven't read a similar book and it was joy to read something different and intriguing.

There is promise for Jason Starr, but this book doesn't quite get in touch with it yet.

In what is supposedly a noir-thriller setting, one encounters David Sussman, a successful advertising agent with (of course) a less-than-successful personal life. He never sees his daughter, his trophy wife is in the binges of an eating disorder, and his mistress Amy Lee is threatening to expose their desk-riding affair unless he divorces his wife and marries her. In a related story, Joey DePino has just lost the daily double at the track due to a technicality. Of course, he is deep in the hole, and, of course, he is bound only to get deeper in with Morty, a bookie with Yiddish so weak that Josef Mengele would have had a better chance of getting through a bar mitzvah. Joey's wife, Maureen, is old friends with David Sussman's bulimic Leslie, which hooks together our string of paper doll characters, allowing this thriller (comedy? noir spectacle?) to proceed.

But there is little happening of note. Amy Lee is a nemesis about as daunting as a Care Bear. At least, each Care Bear had a symbol on its belly to let you know what its special power of pleasure was. Amy Lee may follow Leslie Sussman to the supermarket and leave unsigned packages of blank audio tape for the unsuspecting wife in attempt to show David how easy it would be to ruin his life, but there is little about her that makes her seem much of a threat. Joey DePino is a drab compulsive gambler. His one interesting moment -- his fantasy about living somewhere where he can own a car so he doesn't have to take the bus to the track. The closest he comes to redemption -- his wife Maureen reveals that she married him because she was better-looking than him and he was uneducated.

As for David, his marital affair and general middle-age crisis prove unentertaining and drab. When Joey pulls in an old buddy of his named Billy Balls for a quick money scam, the reader can practically hear the pounding of the last few tacks into an obscenely vacuous coffin.

Starr seems to pick characters and situations into which he can barely show any insight. Amy Lee's obsession is unmotivated, David Sussman's midlife crisis mediocre and boring, and Maureen DePino's realization that she is still attractive enough to have an affair echoes of a sentimental made-for-Lifetime movie. What prove more interesting are those moments that seem to actually be digging at that fantastic conundrum known as character. In the middle of an argument about his gambling problem, Joey decides that he is too tired to argue a point Maureen makes because it will only result in more screaming, and he simply doesn't want more of that at the moment. In the midst of his trouble, David Sussman decides that, if he beats a unknown fat man on the street in a walking contest, everything will turn out all right. These small moments become much more highly charged than stereotypical gambling addiction or hackneyed Yiddish. Jason Starr seems as though he'd rather be handling the broad strokes, when in fact his true strength may be in the more subtle brushwork. The end of the novel, for instance, leaves a wonderfully intriguing sense of justice. Like a spaghetti western or Alex Cox film, who remains standing, who succeeds and who fails, becomes something to watch for. The last moment questions how success is measured and how the characters with the bull's-eyes on their souls have earned them. If this is one of the highlights of noire, Starr is doing very well at it, but the ride he offers to get us to that moment, while not bumpy, does not make for terribly interesting sightseeing.

Starr's Nothing Personal is a pure crime novel, plain and simple. Less noir and more documentary, it describes the lives of two families, the DePinos and the Sussmans. Joey DePino is a working stiff with a major league gambling problem and a violent loanshark after him. His wife, Melissa, is disenchanted with her life, especially as she sees friends like Leslie Sussman get ahead. Leslie is married to David, an ad exec, and living in a ritzy Upper East Side apartment.

But David's life isn't all peaches and cream. A beautiful Asian co-worker, with whom he's had an affair, has turned psychopathic. As Joey struggles to pay off his debts and David grapples with an insane mistress, things go south in a hurry. And, typical of Starr's work, lives are lost in the process.

This is Starr's second book and, while not as cleverly plotted as Cold Caller, you'll get diabolical pleasure out of watching some stupid people do irrevocably stupid things. It's realistic, compelling stuff and Starr is a consistently entertaining author.

I love Jason Starr for his fantastic characters, intricate plots, and nasty little trick endings. This book delivers all of these things and more in a tale where the seemingly perfect upper-class couple is contrasted with a couple down on their luck. Through a series of events and entanglements and with some interferences from the requisite crazy ex-girlfriend (if you are a regular Starr reader you know this character by now, and you also know how well this guy can write her) the roles of the two couples start to reverse. Opposites abound in this book...fat vs. thin, rich vs. poor, cheaters vs. noncheaters...questions are posed about which status is really the most attractive and/or pleasurable...and it's all done in a really subtle, snarky, fun way. The whole thing is plotted wonderfully, the characters are hilarious and dark and ridiculous, and the whole book is pretty fantastic.

I don't really see that this book is written in any particular way for the male late night reader, as a reviewer said below. I'm a chick and I finished it in the daytime and found it equally fantastic. Yes, this book has some very dark parts, most of which occur at the expense of females, but I don't get the impression that these events are meant to be titillating or appealing to the male sensibility in any way. Kind of the opposite actually. So, whatever your gender or persuasion, go ahead and read this book. It's got great characters and plot and everything you could want from a twisted little noir novel.

Start reading this and pretty soon, you won't be able to stop. It'll definitely start kicking in. Starr's characters in their desperate situations will start gnawing at you and before you know it, you'll be snagged but good. The characters in here have everyday problems and they take drastic measures to try getting out of them. This is noir, and it is great noir.

There are two guys with desperate situations. Number one: what am I gonna do about my 10-years-younger-than-me mistress who's threatening to blab to my wife unless I tell the mistress I love her? And the other guy--what am I gonna do about the nine grand
I owe the bookies and the loan shark? Kidnapping and a whole lot of even nastier stuff happen here. It ain't pretty, but it ain't spozed to be. This is noir.

Yeah, this is the real stuff. Check it out.

I read Nothing Personal in about 4 hours on a plane ride home. I never expected to finish it so quickly, but, I couldn't stop turning the pages. Not only is this book very funny it is also deeply disturbing. Jason has a great way with dialect for making this feel like an edgy NY thriller.

It is well-written, held my interest and I immediately went and read all of Jason Starr's other books. I am a big fan of the Mildred Pierce, Postman Rings Twice, etc and this book was such a delight as the genre has been updated to modern times.

Straightforward one night read, probably, say, maybe definitely male oriented(understatement), but really entertaining and a surprise find. Read it over a year ago, but since I've read follow up books wanted to plug this one as the best of his work.