Customer Reviews

The Third Brother: A Novel

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

 

 

McDonell's first novel "Twelve" was effective because although it wasn't beautifully written (and it did have moments of this), the book's style served its purpose well. In other words, the shallow characters and short chapters helped us understand these disillusioned characters a bit better and weirdly enriched the book. Bret Easton Ellis did this (fast pacing, shallow characters) before McDonell in both "Less Than Zero" and "The Rules of Attraction", but McDonell made his book unique and exciting.

"The Third Brother" is certainly not difficult to read. It is not a tedious piece of modern "literary" fiction. It is written in much the same style as "Twelve." The problem with this is that given the characters and action of "The Third Brother," short chapters make no sense. McDonell needs to garner the confidence to let his characters have depth and complexity. He needs to allow for longer dialogues, scenes, and chapters. There is nothing inherently wrong with short chapters and basic characterizations in fiction, but 21st-century expatriate journalists and intelligent post-adolescents, as nihilistic or hedonistic as they may be, aren't best portrayed like this.

As has been mentioned in reviews not on Amazon, McDonell's three-piece narrative is also weak and again smacks of a lack of confidence in his ability to maintain a good story.

McDonell nonetheless has a lot of talent and the potential to do well -- or at least much, much better than this second effort.

My girlfriend bought this book for me for Christmas so I felt obligated to read it. After reading it I am seriously contemplating breaking up with her.
The only positive thing about the book is that it's a quick read, mainly because it is at a 7th grade reading level. Little Johnny might like this one while his mom is driving him to soccer practice.
The story is weak and fragmented. There is no character development. You get the feeling the author is writing about situations that he has no clue about. For instance, the whole first part of the story takes place in Thailand where Mike is trying to hunt down one of his boss' old college buddies. Mike is supposed to infiltrate the backpacking, drug using scene around Thailand to find him. However, you get the feeling the author might've watched the travel channel once and thinks having a few Mountain Dew's is his idea of a wild time. Mike makes Thailand seem like Kansas in a feeble effort to spice things up. I have already wasted too much time writing about the book and I have not even said anything (much like the book). This book seems forced, Just stay away from it.

First off, I thought Twelve was a sensational novel and promised a great career for the author. But this? Not only was it not a novel, but it was barely even an idea. Poorly written, poorly paced and poorly edited. How did this get published??

I've not read this author's first book "Twelve", but heard good reviews and decided to read his second novel.

I loved the book. It's well written. It has a feel of being a story told by a very young man, almost a teen. He is very observant and thoughtful. He is a liar and a coward. He is a son of rich but dysfunctional parents, and a brother of a crazy brother with a third imaginary brother. He was a summer intern in Hong Kong and met a hooker girl in Thailand, who was killed by police ... almost in his presence and almost because of him.

I liked his Thailand story more than 9/11 story. It feels that the author had visited Thailand himself. After reading his travel notes, I know, I will never go there for a vacation. Thanks for a truthful story.

I just finished "The Third Brother" and found it to be a very fast-paced read with interesting twists and turns. But the ending was just too flat. I felt like the author introduced a lot of different characters and storylines that didn't seem to play out very well in the end. I felt as if I was left hanging on many issues--which may have been intentional--but I don't feel as though leaving out certain clues was the best way to move the story along.

In the end I would reccoment this book to more of a Young Adult audience (16-21). It would be relatable to any college student, expecially with the whole traveling aspect. But I don't think the general population would have much sympathy for any of these "sad rich kids." I feel like there is just too many books on children of privilege and how depressing their lives are. Although I did feel bad that the main character lost most of the importatnt people in his life, it's still hard to have any sympathy for someone who will always have boundless oppportunities and the "right" people looking out for him.

I think Nick McDonell is an young and important voice in new American teen lit. And his talent has developed over the 5 or six years since "Twelve," which, if I were teaching h.s. English, I'd assign. Can't wait for his next work.

The Third Brother is a strange, disparate novel. Made up of short, sharp chapters, author Nick McDonell seems intent to frame his story around a series of punchy, sensory vignettes of Mike, his young main protagonist. Mike comes from a well-to-do family on Long Island, and Mike's father uses an old network to get his son a holiday job working for a magazine in Hong Kong. Mike is intitially thrilled at the idea, especially when the editor, Elliot Analect, sends Mike with a seasoned journalist to report on backpackers and party drugs in Bangkok.

The real purpose of this expedition is to locate Christopher Dorr, a missing reporter. Analect, Dorr and Mike's father all went to college together and Mike will slowly discover the complexity of the relationship between the three men, which is convoluted as it is mysterious. Mike becomes a tourist in Bangkok's underworld where he experiences an urge to save as much as to describe. Amongst the seedy nightclubs and run down hostels of Khao San Road, Mike meets are variety of shady characters.

Mike is a pure, Harvard educated young snob, but his encounters in the back alleyways of Bancock, shape his reaction to his family, and to the world around him. He hangs out with local journalists and hippie backpackers, survives some brushes with the law, and witnesses some ugly stuff, such as drug deals, and even becomes attracted to a local prostitute.

Mike is as tangential to the hip scene around him as he is perennially inactive and indecisive. It's as though he's on a dare, to see how naughty he can really be, to see how far he can go, how much trouble a white kid from New York can actually get into, "is there a hole in the world so deep that my father can't rack me down and pull me out?"

Throughout the first half of the novel, McDonell immerses the reader in the sites, sounds, and smells of Bangkok, and sets up an interesting juxtaposition between the native Thais, the Western back packer kids eating their ecstasy pills, and the "farangs," the white men who don't know anything and yet get into trouble, and also the Thais who want to be like them - "yellow on the outside, white in the inside."

It's not that Mike believes in ghosts, it's that he knows you can be haunted, and when he finally returns home to New York disaster strikes, his parents have been killed in a house fire, and Lyle, his brother has become deranged, believing that the fire was caused by a "third brother." Mike ends up in Manhattan, on the day of September 11th, frantically searching for Lyle amidst the dust, dirt, and debris the World Trade Center. The chaos of the day reflects the disarray of his own family, when Mike looks at a snapshot of his family he sees the potential craziness himself, "just like it was there in all of them."

In tightly measured and articulated prose, McDonell details a young man's journey through twenty-first century angst, exploring grief, "causalities and orders and children and friendly fire all interwoven in stupefied clouds of glassy smoke late at night." The chapters are short with the novel divided into three heavily delineated sections, the prose moving effortlessly back and forth, providing a portrait of Mike's troubled psyche.

The death of Mike's parents and the madness of Lyle reopen old wounds, bringing to the surface what the protagonist so desperately wants to suppress. The challenge is to keep a story that spans two countries together, but McDonell, using his impressive prose skills wisely keeps the narrative fluid.

McDonell is also a sharp observer of human nature, and he manages to encapsulate all of Mike's youthful desires and insecurities, providing a portrait of a young man somewhat at a loss in the world, desperately searching for answers and for some kind of peace. Mike Leonard December 05.

Like many others, I was quickly sucked in to the first part of Nick McDonell's sophomore effort (after reading and completely enjoying Twelve). Knowing what awaited me in the second part, and having lived through 9/11 myself as a NYC resident in 2001, I had great hopes for what lay ahead. But for me, the entire plot quickly short circuited,leaving literary fragments in its wake. By the end, I was asking myself why his editor hadn't done a better job.

I look forward to the next effort. He shows great promise; it wasn't close to being fulfilled with this book.

I loved this novel! I read quite a bit and think this is the best book I have read in a long time. The symbolism is incredible but not so, "in your face," that it is annoying. All of the different threads come together in a fascinating way at the end of the book. I could not recommend it more.

Margaret Krause

This was dribble! Thats all I can say! Loved Twelve but this was a poor effort in writing. I am sorry but for a second novel this is very much like a forced book as the editing is terrible also.