Customer Reviews

Sad Movies

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

 

 

I bought this because of the "Trailer Park Chicks Dig It" review below. It came out about seven years before Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity" and it's sharper, funnier, cooler, and, of course, American. It's very 1980s, I agree with the other reviewer, but it's also "timeless" I suppose in that it's a guy in his 20s coming of age and all that. The author has a new novel coming out, "Never Mind Nirvana," which people here in Seattle are talking about, but I don't know much about it yet except it's supposed to be great and Peter Buck of R.E.M. wrote a quote for it.

I bought this book shortly after it was published on the strength of a Brett Easton Ellis blurb on the back. Remember him? Anyway, I rather enjoyed the gray, narcissistic mood and the protagonist's obsession with murdering himself. Cool song quotes from the Smiths and Replacements place the book between melancholy self-possession and sensitive longing, though I would not be surprised if the feel is at least somewhat dated by now (think of "Less Than Zero"). My copy was absconded by a trailer park wench who later confessed and told me it was the only book she ever read all the way through. She also said one of her kids shredded it and she tossed the carcass. I have searched for it ever since, lamentably to no avail. This last should not so much stand as a tribute to the novel's force, but rather as a nod toward cheap sentamentality. Nevertheless, "Sad Movies" is a fine, relatively light read if you can find it

I think this was a good first novel. The characters were believable and the story was easy to follow. I didn't feel much for the characters in the end. I think he did a much better job with "Nevermind Nirvana," but this was a good, quick read.