Customer Reviews

The Tourists: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I picked this book up after reading a profile of the author in the LA Times. The book was described, perhaps unfortunately, as a member of the literary genre best described as "post-Gatsby" generational disillusionment with modern life and the nature of wealth. A lot of books have preceded this one and each one has its own take on a series of common themes, transposed for the times.

The book is rich in local details, which as a New Yorker I both appreciate and find somewhat limiting and distracting, in the way that Jay McInerney used in his books as an attempt to be timely and clever. It ultimately detracts from the story and reduces some of the universality of the story, I think.

Hobbs' shifting perspective, from first-person to third-person omniscient is also technically interesting, if questionable. One might argue that it's a little bit lazy in that you don't have to find more difficult ways to tell the story if you're confined to one narrator. That said, I found the characters to be somewhat archetypal and difficult to read. On the other hand, I find that some people are archetypal, so I guess that's not entirely off-base. Still, I found at times the characters were ciphers.

I sympathized with Hobbs' attempt to bring the story to a climax, while trying to resist the melodramatic instinct/hook endemic to the type (murder, tragedy, etc.). Tough sledding, but I did find his climax a bit underwhelming, and I guess as the outlines of the story became clearer, the ending was essentially unavoidable.

Overall, I found it to be a decent attempt to reconstitute the themes of Gatsby - trying to redeem the past, the power of wealth over ideals, and the ability to withstand turmoil by simply ignoring it, updated for a contemporary time of more fluid sexuality.

Great intertwined summer read with many suprises for the reader. Interesting acknowledgement of self-love throughout the book. It is very thought provoking and left me wondering if the narrator may have been the author or the "villian". Very autobiographical feel to it

In the bookstore this cover could, but should not, be mistaken for a chick-lit-esque novel on the complications of big city romance. It is much more thoughtful than that, and dares to reveal not only the duality of human existence, but also the darker corners of sexuality. It was engaging, well-paced, modern, and reflective. As a reader I felt myself pendeling between much in the book: loathing and compassion for the characters, bleakness and color of scene-setting, lust and betrayal, fantasy and reality, stupor and sobriety, all of which I presume to be the intent of the author. There was something genius about the fact that these characters all lived in NYC, but continued to exist in a universe that consisted of only a handful of residents. For me the strengths of the book were the character development and this new author's surpising skill to write both internal observation and strong dialogue. The weakness perhaps the feeling of wanting to shake the narrator into defining himself in a way other than background to the lives of others. Would have appreciated a bigger ending. I loved Jeff Hobb's writing style, especially such modern and unique cues as the brilliant use of run-on sentence for effect, and dialogue tags like "..." (this was me). I look forward to Jeff's next book as I'll definitely be buying that one too.

I wanted to like this book but I just couldn't. The narrative devices the author uses are juvenile, the construct of the book is farcical--by the end I was pulling my hair out I was so frustrated with the writer. To be fair, the start of the book is okay--you become mildly interested in the characters, but the author really runs out of tricks (and any originality or freshness) by about 75 pages in. Considering this book is over 300 pages, you're not in for a fun time. I was sad to see the book devolve so drastically. I wish this book were better!

I read the pre-publication comparisons to Fitzgerald and McInerney and could barely wait to get my hands on "The Tourists", but what a dissappointment! The characters aren't so much unsympathetic as unrealized; I didn't care about them, but perhaps that was because none of them seemed at all real. There is also no effective sense of the rich settings of the novel (Yale and New York City); reading this book is like going to New York on business and never getting a moment outside the airport, a taxi and a conference room. Sad, because the possibilities are so great! And the unnamed narrators long, unrequited longing for the ex-Yalie, ex-model, faux-designer Samona is inexplicable with what the writer chooses to reveal about her, and more appropriate to a pre-teen setting than to a bunch of New Yorkers pushing hard at 30. Oy, how I wish I'd gotten this one from the library!

I found this book on one of my fairly routine bookstore browses, where I basically walk the fiction aisles looking at titles until one jumps out at me. Sometimes I remember hearing about the book, and sometimes I am simply intrigued by the description of the book and the first few paragraphs. The latter was the case with Jeff Hobbs' The Tourists and I'm glad, because apparently when this book came out, it was labeled as a "Gatsby-meets-McInerney debut" novel. I probably would have run in the other direction if I had seen that, because how often does that hype ring true?

This is the story of four Yale graduates dealing with life in the "real world" nearly 10 years after college. While they weren't all friends in college, their lives become intertwined in far too many ways to recount in this review. And chronicling it all is the unnamed narrator, who is trying to keep his own life afloat both professionally and personally, and trying to make his mark in the world.

Even though I saw most of what happened in this book coming from a mile away, Jeff Hobbs created memorable characters from what could have been simple stock stereotypes--the fratboy jock struggling to make it in the business world, the exotic girl trying to be taken seriously, the gay guy determined to succeed over everyone else. The characters aren't always appealing, but I found the story compellingly readable; once I picked it up I couldn't put it down.

I do recommend this book, but for another take on the post-college angst story, I highly recommend Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children.

Four young 20-something Yale grads involved in a love triangle in NYC spanning 1996-2004--3 men and 1 women. Sexual ambiguity abounds with all three men taking bi turns. Lots of shifting from past to present with changes in tense. The first person narrator (one of the men) is the most elusive of the lot and his relationship with the other 3 is the hardest to pin down (which I believe was the author's intent.) What I loved - the richness of Hobbs' portrait of a certain slice of NYC and even more, what it's like to be an unmoored 20-something searching for oneself. Also, the emotional pain and anguish the characters inflict on each other through the subtlest and not so subtlest gestures. Last, the pacing - it went by quickly and I couldn't put it down after the first 50 pages. What I didn't like - the opaqueness of some of the main characters. Ethan and the narrator were totally incomprehensible. Meanwhile Samona was shallow. Only David was fully fleshed. Second, I hated the lack of resolution at the end of the book. The characters will definitely stick with me for awhile but I'll always feel as if I never finished the book. While I understand that was Hobbs' intent (no relationship ever gets packaged up tidily, especially ones as complicated as these), it still leaves one w/ a feeling of discontent.

From the standpoint of someone in the book's target demographic, I found the various storylines to be a relevant, at times bitingly honest, social commentary on contemporary relationships. Hobbs observes each character with an eye towards society-at-large and does it in such an under-the-radar way that the book is finished before we even know we have been part of the examination.

I think the true value of the book is in various interactions and subsequent relationships between each of the characters and what each of those observations say about us as a society.

The characters in The Tourists, despite their questionable motivations and integrity, are well developed. I realized early in the book I was distancing myself as much from unnamed narrator as he was from the reader. I thought by leaving him nameless was just one interesting method Hobbs used to richen the reading experience. His anonymity is in stark contrast to the other characters who reach for notoriety and fame. I think this contrast creates an interesting juxtaposition. I look forward to more of his characters in the future....

Jeff Hobbs' The Tourists is a fabulous page-turner. I was initially skeptical as the opening reads like a coming-of-age novel, but Hobbs' writing skills are tremendous and have propelled him well beyond that narrow genre. The characters are largely unsympathetic and the reader is left alone to interpret their interactions and to decide what - if any - resolution occurs. This created - for me- a fascinating love-hate relationship with the characters and made the book impossible to put down. Additionally, the parallels between college sports and fraternities and the business world were extremely well-drawn and true to my experience in the industry - it is true that the same jocks who were successful at Ivy League schools go on to become powerful in business. Hobbs manages to weave this theme into the story and to create a fiction that is painful because of its truths. I give this 5 stars and can't wait for more from Mr. Hobbs!