Customer Reviews

P: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fantastic novel, at once hilarious and heartbreaking. Careering between Tom Wolfe, Dickens and Damon Runyon, Conn creates some of the most memorable characters and situations found in the pages of a New York story. The story is simtaneously high brow and low down, as compelling as any cliff-hanger mystery. A word to the wise: Go buy this book.

I found a copy of this book in manhattan and bought it without even ever hearing about it. Trust me...it's worth it. It takes you back to a time when 42nd Street Times Square wasn't a place to bring the family for an entertaining evening on the town. It is the story of Pornstar/Producer Benjamin Seymour (who should be played by Ron Jeremy in the movie.)
Conn writes in an interesting style combinging third-person narration alongside what appears as actual screenplay style formatting in the "movie" that has become Benjamin's life.
"P" is a heartbreakingly funny piece of work that shines a light on the conflicting sides of life in both the adult film industry and the human experience of living with heartbreak. It unfolds into a book unlike any I have ever read. Extremely thought- provoking without being over-philosophical. There are plenty of passages to go back to and ponder over long after you place the book on your shelf.

This novel is both highly enjoyable and thoroughly provocative. Reviews and descriptions I've seen focus on P's technical accomplishment and outre humor, but these elements only serve to highlight a poignant, hopeful story of several deeply engaging characters. It's not for the squeamish or readers who rely on straightforward narrative, but its rewards are many for those who don't mind four-letter words and a strangely shaped tale. Forget about pornography and focus on literature - read P.

It's laugh-out-loud funny, touching, obscene, full of dazzling verbal pyrotechnics, crammed with a wealth of detail about the texture of modern life. Novelists are too shy these days. Here's one who is daring to add his voice to a tradition that would intimidate most into silence. Two thousand years ago, Homer hiked the football. In the early 20th century, James Joyce took the snap. Today, Andrew Conn catches Joyce's forward pass.

Did Andrew Lewis Conn really take Ulysses and reconfigure it for the porn industry? Yes he did. And does this possibly heretical and certainly brave idea actually work? Yes, yes, a resounding yes. This book is shocking, not because Conn has apparently conducted endless, painstaking work in the field of masturbation technique, but because the story of Benjamin Seymour is startlingly, achingly good. P is a bit like rubber necking on a train wreck as the tortured soul of Benjamin Seymour is flayed, sautéed and displayed on the streets of a gauzy, romanticized New York. But at the end of each chapter, as I experienced satisfying sessions of spine tingles and tear drips, rib tickles and heart aches, I became more and more in love with this sad-sack character and his equally screwed up minions. After experiencing the linguistic tilt-a-whirl and structural calisthenics of Andrew Conn's P, any other novel, boringly depicted in typical, straight-ahead prose, would seem so puerile, so safe, so twentieth century. This is a major book that practically screams for attention.

This book had me hooked from the first paragraph, and it is so well written that I fell right into the story. It's a wild ride; between the content (racy, funny, sad, romantic) and the writing style (the author switched gears a lot which kept me on my toes) I couldn't put it down. I had to do a little mental work to keep up with the changes, but ultimately it added to the experience by providing various perspectives on the characters. I couldn't wait to find out where the story was headed. An excellent read!

I fell in love with the cover, and now I'm in love with everything inside. I'm stealing time from the real world to spend time with this book. It's been a really, really long time since I've read such accomplished, adventurous, knowing fiction -- poignant without being cloying, clever without being cutesy, and most of all, charming and so very, very human(e).

Kudos to Mr. Conn. My only misgiving about the book is that at some point, I'll reach the end.

I like to read first novel and this one by Andrew Lewis Conn falls into a particular category of first novels: typical. It is a typical first novel. It has a clever enough plot and interesting enough characters but it falls into many of the traps that I see in first novels.

Mainly, this novel is too clever for its own good. I see this in two main things: first, Mr. Conn clearly has a wide-ranging intelligence but it takes an expert to integrate concepts from the details of pornography, the depths of Shakespeare, Joyce and Nietzsche and the subtleties of cutting edge physics. He doesn't quite pull it off. Second, I find Mr. Conn's variations of prose style as the book progresses to add little to the experience of the book and a bit pretentious. Normal prose, flashback, multiple headings, screenplay format, stream-of-consciousness--it's too much.

On a personal note, I don't consider myself a prude but I could have done without some of the more "vivid" details of the porn industry. I, like most guys, like a little prurient detail but after awhile it becomes a little much. And Finn may be a prodigy but she's still only ten-years-old. Of the many interesting characters in this novel, she was the only one I found that tested the edges of believability.

Still, there's a lot of good stuff here. I love the descriptive detail of Ithaca and New York City, in particular. I look forward to seeing Mr. Conn's next outing. I think there's potential here.

In his first literary effort, Andrew Lewis Conn displays a maturity and depth of emotion far beyond his years. I couldn't help but find myself falling in love with two of the most potentially unlovable characters - a middle-aged pornographer and a pot-smoking 10-year-old. The care with which Conn treats these misfits is what makes them so endearing. And the realistic and romantic picture he paints of New York City, it's as if he's speaking with the misty-eyed nostalgia reserved for an old friend. Thank you Mr. Conn, can't wait for the next one!

This is an incredibly ambitious first novel that lives up to and exceeds all my expectations. The language, the wordplay, the descriptions and above all, the story had me mesmerized from Chapter 1---my favorite in the whole book. Mr. Conn, I salute you.