Customer Reviews

Us

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Although I thoroughly enjoyed Richard Mason's first effort, "The Drowning People", I found this long-awaited second novel confusing. I guess the idea of looking at the same situation from three people's viewpoints -- where the narrative of each of them is in the first person -- could be found interesting but it didn't strike me that way.

In "Us", I found the writing style "excessively literary", almost like showing off. This is not the Richard Mason I've met and conversed with and I do hope that he returns in the future with a book that better displays his skill at writing nuances and small details that add such richness to his work.

Three outsiders - Julian, Jake and Adrienne - come together in their first year at Oxford and, under the influence of Julian's charismatic sister, Maggie, take revenge on Jake's boarding school tormentor, the revoltingly perfect Benedict Chieveley...

The most generous reading of "Us" is that it attempts to dramatize an early quote from Hobbes' "Leviathan" regarding the three essential human types - tyrant, victim, bystander. When victims and bystanders play the tyrant, things can go horribly wrong. The life of man - even in sophisticated, educated, twentieth-century England - can still be "nasty, brutish and short" or, worse, long and filled with painful memories. That philosophical edge might have made "Us" a kind of English companion piece to Donna Tartt's "The Secret History", and there are moments when it leans in that direction, but not quite enough.

Unfortunately, the treatment it gets here is rather superficial. A novel dealing with childhood bullying and its lingering, life-altering impact is probably best executed as a close study of a single character. As the title suggests, however, Mason is probably interested in something broader: the psychology of the pack. He explores the consciousness of multiple characters by alternating between first-person accounts headed with each character's name, much like Julian Barnes, Graham Swift and so many others have done previously. This can work if the characters themselves are interesting people, articulate and self-aware, or even interestingly deluded. But Mason's characters are pre-fabricated types and their short, punchy chapters tend to stall at surface detail. They read like they were dashed off as writing exercises, when what this kind of story really requires is acute, reflective analysis. Indeed, the best parts are those in which Mason articulates, rather than dramatizes, the horrific and laughable aspects of the English and American class systems and the psychological torment afforded by relationships with family and apparent friends.

It might have worked better had he chosen one character (Julian or Jake) and gone deep, rather than tried to cover three characters in multiple time frames, especially in a novel this short (it's probably little more than 85,000 words). The characters simply never became real for me, in the sense that I never accepted them as convincing human beings - and that's problematic in a novel that probes psychological terrain and is ultimately asking its readers to feel, more than anything, empathy. As a result, I felt there was so much more that could've been done with such a delicious premise.

Mason's talent might actually be for short fiction rather than novels, because buried here are what could have been a few very good short stories: Julian's discovery of his father's affair, and his exploitation of it; the tale of the missing betting ticket; and Jake's rise to fame in the art world. All show that Mason has a talent for imagining wonderful situations, and making the most of them as short vignettes.

This was a great book, once I picked it I could not put it down. This is Richard Mason's second book and all I can say is that he just keeps getting better. While the story is a little simple, its the writing and makes this book and "The Drowning People" great. He makes you care and want to find out what happens to these characters.

For those who became fans of mason after reading the drowning people, us is a definite change. Us is quite a bit more graphic in it's raw descriptions but you can still feel mason's style. definately would recommend but be ready for a change!

While the author created some great characterization, the protagonists seemed extremely self-absorbed with few redeeming qualities. Except for the character who died young. Of course. Which was rather predictable.

Jake's depressiveness is kind of understandable because he's a manic-depressive, but the other survivors...not so good. No excuse for not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and moving on with their lives. Ten years is more than enough time to work through their angst and begin taking responsibility for their lives. So they seem rather antiheroic protagonists.

Adrienne seems like the only one with a modicum of optimism, although that's apparently because she's not bright enough to do the deep intellectual and philosophical analysis required to figure out that life sucks. And then you die. Which seems to be the moral of this story. Forget happiness, it's an impossible goal and it's useless to try to achieve it.

Had I sat down with the physical book in hand instead of listening to it on tape, I would have put it down a quarter of the way through and never picked it up again. It's much easier to finish a book while you're doing mindless chores. It's more difficult to find a book that rivets you to a chair while everything is piling up around you.