Customer Reviews

Suzy Zeus Gets Organized: A Novel (Tin House)

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

 

 

I approached this book with the dread and loathing one rightly brings to any novel written in verse. I mean, wasn't "The Iliad" bad enough? Poetry gives me ADD. And don't pretend I'm the only one who's never gotten through both quarter New Yorker pages of a Seamus Heaney poem. Then there's the question of plot. Does a verse novel have the plot the author wanted, or the plot the author and the author's friends were able to find rhymes for? I picked up "Suzy Zeus" mostly out of crankiness, to confirm these suspicions.

Boy was I surprised. I mean, I had to go and wash my pants. Maggie Robbins has created a new genre here: Dr. Seuss for adults. Not in some campy, Urban Outfitter way, but rather because Robbins' poetry, like that of Dr. Seuss, has the ability to effortlessly lodge things deeper into your brain than, looking at it from the outside, you thought your brain even was. Suzy Zeus' life and voice are so fully imagined that poetry, at least as written here, is clearly the correct choice of delivery vehicle. You need the shorthand. Prose would be too impersonal and slow to give you what this book gives you.

Meanwhile, the book just reels you through. Can you imagine if all books did that? We'd all be really smart and entertained, though we'd get less done. You won't get anything done during "Suzy Zeus," but believe me, we can take care of things while you're gone: no matter how you try to pace yourself, in six hours you'll have finished the book twice. And then you can get back to your Powerpoint. Happy? You were while you were reading "Suzy Zeus."

This book, which is poetry, pop culture, psychoanalysis and much more, made me laugh out loud. It also caused tears to stream down my face. You won't read anything else like it. Genius.

sassy, sly, and sparkling, suzy zeus is a gift to us all, as is her creator, maggie robbins. buy this book! now! DO IT!

I've just come from a reading of Suzy Zeus Gets Organized at my local bookstore. I attended as a favor to a friend (full disclosure: the author's sister is a friend of my friend) with low expectations, but left with a copy of the book, on a mission to share the news: this book is a gem. Don't be put off by the fact that it is written in verse. It is rhythmic and infectious, and you'll finish the book quickly. It is a poetic page-turner. It is also very funny and at the same time dark and edgy. It has been compared to Bridget Jones, but I think Suzy is much more complicated and interesting.

What an impressive piece of writing. I read a friend's copy, and I have since bought four more, because I keep giving them away. Yet I know that I will want to read this book over and over again for many years to come. Maggie Robbins manages to tell a remarkably vivid tale of an ordinary woman's search for fulfillment in an incredibly efficient and always entertaining verse. That's right. Verse. Touching, sexy, sad and very, very funny. What a breath of fresh air to read something so daring and deft and moving. Whoever says the novel is a dead art form needs to get "organized" too.

It's my own fault for not reading other readers' reviews, and also my own fault for not paying closer attention to Amazon's description of "her irresistible, saucy, singsong novella-in-verse" - I just breezed past it, so I really should be rating my own failure-to-realize at 2 stars. 'Singsong' is putting it mildly. It may be witty and it certainly must be creative. But if you don't like singsongy poetry that dips back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth like two of the Brady Bunch kids trying to set a teeter-totter record, then you do not want to read this book. It's actually quite cleverly titled, because Suzy ZEUS reads a lot like Dr. SEUSS - and I mean that kindly. It's got that same witty, metronome rhyme scheme. "I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam-I-am." And, as an individual poem, I might have really liked one of them. But a full book of that see-sawing cadence was enough to make my eye twitch by page three. I'm not posting this review to be unfriendly - if that kind of poetry is your cup of tea, you'll love it. But Amazon should make a greater differentiation between books that are, and aren't, poetry. Sure, I should have read the description more closely... but this was a frustrating discovery, that the once-blithe activity of book-buying must now become a full-blown investigation because there's no longer an obvious barrier between novels and poetry.

Ok, I hate poetry and like a previous reviewer would never have picked this book up, never mind read it,if I had known. I checked it out of a library so I started it. It really caught me. I read the whole thing in a half and hour.

Suzy Zeus likes guys with handguns.
Suzy Zeus likes beer in kegs.
Suzy Zeus likes breaking windows.
Suzy Zeus likes breaking eggs.
Suzy's got a boyfriend, Harry.
Touch him and she'll break your legs.

There you go