Customer Reviews

The Suitors: A Novel

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

 

 

I guess I'm not Ehrenreich's target audience. I was attracted to this book because of the notion of retelling the Odessey with some modern slant. Great idea. Potential in there. But that's not really what this novel is about. Any links to the Odyessey are purely superficial.

Sorry, but as far as I can tell this novel was written to convince people that the author is terribly clever. It's not about character. Not about plot. The characters never speak like real people. There's an emphasis on sex in a way that seems typical of young men's fantasies. There was a moment not too far in when the author says, with deprecating self-indulgence, that he wishes the story could end here. Thing is, so did I. But it's obvious at that point that he's going to carry on for as long as he can. It's highly self-indulgent stuff, probably best enjoyed by friends of the author. I say it's mostly about the author being clever, but when a whole book seems focussed on convincing you of that it starts to ring a bit hollow.

I know that there are some folks out there that will like this - but not many. I guess it's highly "literary". He does have some great blurbs on the back by authors that I admire. Okay. Maybe I missed something. But if you like a good story about real people stumbling through life... Well this probably isn't the book for you.

This is really an extraordinary, beautiful novel. It is not for everyone--it's too smart to be, too strange and strangely wise. I bought this book and half expected it to be some pale shadow of Homer and found instead a whole world, hilarious, sad, absurd. Did I mention beautiful?

The Odyssey and The Suitors are like bookends for Western Civilization. This book is great, actually funny, filled with longing and sadness. It's a sly satire of our world, but infused with hope for life in the wreckage. I also found it truly, surprisingly, romantic. Not a word I usually use in a positive sense. But the Suitors is, really, a romance, an actual romance, for those of us who live in the decidedly unromantic world of freaks and lazy bums and warmongers and drug addicts. It's moving and beautiful. A major achievement.

The Suitors takes off from the bloody and seldom-mentioned ending of the Odyssey -- when Odysseus comes home and slaughters all of Penelope's suitors and serving maids. It's a love story, a grand adventure-- and sometimes a laugh riot-- that puts me in mind of the early David Mitchell, before he decided to become so tediously historically realistic. As a general rule, I'm a little wary of "experimental" fiction, but in this case the experiment is a brilliant success!

This is one of my favorite books and I really can't find much else in this genre, whatever genre it may be. It is trippy and associative, moving between some sort of reality and dark allegory. The characters morph and the scenes change in such a dream-like way. This book is turbulent, sexy, strange and moving. I am (impatiently) waiting for the next book by this author.

I've been wanting to read this novel since I read a short story by Ehrenreich in McSweeneys about an odd couple meeting in an aquarium in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. Although it's far from my idea of the perfect novel and I can see how it might be construed as pretentious, I think Ehrenreich has a very unique, and poetic voice. I love the way this book and the short story I read seem to teeter somewhere between a surreal nightmare, a daydream, and everyday reality. It's not for everyone, but if you are looking for something different and you appreciate the craft of writing, it might be just right for you!

While the plot loosely follows the Odyssey, the book at times reminded me of Orwell's Animal Farm, except it's much less heavy-handed. Ehrenreich displays a sly, acerbic humor and he's wickedly on-target as he mocks nationalism, war, and the human condition. That's what makes this book so good - it's full of unique gems of insight that sparkle throughout. Ehrenreich adeptly mixes humor and sorrow, joy and gloom with a deft touch. An exceptional first novel, and I look forward to more books by this author.

There were some intriguing blurbs (as was no doubt intended) that lured me to this book. "A modern-day Odysseus...", "...prodigious, Joycean prose..."," its daring not to be safe--not to be another well-made boredom turned out from trade schools." So, I had high hopes, and approached the book with the idea that this might be the new Thomas Pynchon. Alas! Dashed hopes for sure. The book certainly lacks the erudition of Pynchon, and the prose is so far from Joycean. And the Odysseus connection is most strained. Likewise, any possible satirical connection with the previous American administration, and its love of endless war.

No, I found a book in which the characters rambled, no particular motivation, just so much "Brownian motion" as they float on the surface of the non-story. Actions replete with meaningless descriptions of clothes worn, and meals ate. Particularly distressing is the gratuitous violence, whose glorification comes easy to those that have never experienced the real thing. I strained, and kept asking myself, "Am I missing something here"? and save for a few pithy observations on the male-female relationship, I eventually answered: "No." The one book that it reminded me of is William Burrough's "Cities of the Red Night," which was produced by the drug-induced fantasies of a man with far too much money, and who used it poorly. A book I thoroughly detested. Yet, in looking at the reviews of the later book, seems like a lot of people like it, so I'm willing to leave the door open for reconsideration.

Which is the main reason I'm willing to give the book a 2-star rating, an extra star for "reconsideration," as well as to encourage the author along the path of his inclination: no cute "trade school" books for the masses, and Pynchon's "mantle" still awaits.

This book is beautiful. A frightfully frank and intimate look at love, lust, literature, language. You can smell sea salt in these pages, and taste the limbs, legumes, frog soup & eel that the protagonists live on. Were they not so wicked and prankish, these characters might overwhelm us with their despair. Were it not so funny and rich, this book might clobber us with sadness. Payne and Penny's mad passions are as palpable as the calf heads that Ehrenreich serves whole and garnished with cock's combs and kidneys. What do I know: I just buy books online. But I'm thrilled to have discovered this one, and I'm thrilled that Counterpoint had the 'sauce tortue' to publish it.

Of all the books I ordered for my son, this was clearly the best written and most interesting conceptually.