Customer Reviews

Stripper Lessons

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"Stripper Lessons," a posthumously released novel by John O'Brien, the author of "The Assault on Tony's" and "Leaving Las Vegas," describes Carroll, a lonely man, unmarried, with no friends, as he searches for answers in life.

By day Carroll is a file clerk for a law firm desperately searching for a missing file. By night, Carroll is a lonely and friendless loner searching for a relationship in a topless strip club called Indiscretions. The book details Carroll's attempt to search for what is missing in both his work life and his personal life.

At the club, Carroll meets Stevie, a newly hired stripper, whom he falls for instantly. His confidence, slightly bostered after watching a VHS tape he purchased on a TV infomercial which claims to teach shy guys how to meet women, Carroll strikes up a conversation with Stevie, whose only interest in Carroll goes no further than the dollars he left on stage for her during her dance.

But any conversation, a pat on the back, or a peck on his cheek is misinterpreted by Carroll as a sign that his angel, Stevie, cares for him.

The story is a study of lonliness and the desire, the need, and the desperation of humans to make contact with other humans. Carroll is a likeable character the reader can relate to and have compassion for, despite the fact few of us are like him.

I highly recommend the book. The book is slightly a slow read due to the writing style of O'Brien, which can best be described as "genius," but well worth the time devoted to devouring word by word what O'Brien has to say.

A perfect rendition of the life everyone lives . . . lonely, secluded, and surreal. The novel screams of O'Brien's talent to connect with the seedy and realistic side of our world. First class entertainment. Maybe it should be retitled "Life Lessons." A must read for everyone, especially O'Brien fans.

The main character, Carroll, is a milktoast loner, and O'Brien lets us see inside the head of the type of person most people would never get to know. The books reads like part poetry/part confessional, and his unconventional writing only adds to the story (e.g. capitalizing "That Place"). People like Carroll are everywhere, lonely and afraid, and we probably pass them every day at work, on the streets or in the hall. Stripper Lessons also gives us a glimpse (metaphorically speaking) at strippers, though it would have been nice to get a little more insight into those strip for a living, why they do it, how it makes them feel, and what they think of all the Carrolls they meet day after day.

Stripper Lessons took me two places I will probably never go in real life -- a strip club and the mind of a lonely outcast. I found myself identifying with Carroll, and while Stevie never became a real flesh-and-blood person in my mind, I think she was meant to stay unreal because that's how Carroll saw her. I thought this was a poetic, moving study of one quietly desperate man's attempt to fit in, and it made me want to read other works by O'Brien.

This novel portrays Carroll, a file clerk, almost friendless and unnoticed at work and elsewhere, and his regular evening visits to a not overly-exotic exotic club. This club is his only source of pleasure; there, he observes and fantasizes about the girls on stage while ordering cider from unappreciative waitresses. He does, eventually, make contact of a sort with Stevie, a dancer and mistress of a married man. She accepts Carroll's hesitant suggestion for a private show in one of the club's private booths. His "relationship" with her causes him, in his own restrained way, to lose control of himself at work and at the club, from where he is escorted out by a doorman near the novel's end. That end, however, finds him making a date in the club's parking lot for coffee with Stevie after her shift has ended: a triumph of sort in a nondescript life.
The novel has interesting use of language: Carroll's life is almost totally interior, and the prose accurately reflects his sometimes disjointed reactions to others. The language is more objective when it comes to Stevie, her boyfriend, the club's other staff, and individual's at Carroll's place of work.
As a repressed file clerk myself, I found this book believable, interestingly written, and true of so many living in a (appropriate here) "naked city."

Once again, O'Brien engages the reader early on and doesn't let go through the entire ride! I felt the same when reading Las Vegas. I want to meet Carroll, be his friend, and maybe learn something from him. O'Brien really knew how to give his characters depth, regardless of how undesirable they may be. There's a moral to this story. If Carroll can learn grace, elegance and confidence from the girls at Indiscretions - we can most certainly learn from those "sorts" in our own lives.

Gripping....could not put it down. A depressed, lonely file clerk obsesses over a stripper. Great description, authentic characters.
A dark novel with some funny moments.

I need to collaborate on a biography of this O'Brien fellow...any takers?

Best thing that happened in this book, was when I closed the cover after finishing it. I was compelled to read this novel after greatly enjoying "Assualt on Tony's" which was a page-turner describing an alcoholic's downward spiral during a city riot. However, this novel's main character, Carroll, didn't even drink. Tom O'Brien was clearly dealing with unfamiliar subject matter (sobriety) and was, to put it bluntly, bad at it. Second biggest complaint: a book called "Stripper Lessons" where a bar (also non-alcholic) has naked women as the subject matter and barely a kiss took place. A story containing no sex, no drinking; describing a sad, lonely guy consumed with talking to a woman (any woman), after buying new clothes and doing his boring day job was hardly worth the time. However, I highly recommend "Assault on Tony's" which had the most incredible descriptive allure (plus drinking and sex which were his obvious area of expertise). It's hard to imagine that the same author penned these two completely diverse stories

Stripper Lessons is the story of a two-dimensional nerd going through some personal growth thanks to a two-dimensional stripper. Most of the details and subplot are more tedious than anything else. There were a few things mentioned in the book that seemed outdated for something published in 1997, leading me to suspect the the author may have had this manuscript lying around and was able to publish it only after the success of Leaving Las Vegas.