Customer Reviews

Why Did I Ever: A Novel

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Do you remember, back in the mid-eighties, when the world seemed to be overflowing with short fiction, and you read your first Raymond Carver short story? And you thought "Oh my God, this is wonderful, perfect, classic. His work will stand the test of time and then some."?
Well, that is exactly how I felt when I read "Why Did I Ever." Each sentence, each empty space between sentences resonates with depth and meaning. Each word is exactly right, and placed perfectly. The entire novel is like a poem in its precision -- you feel like you can taste the words, they sit just perfectly on your tongue.
And then, if all of that isn't enough, the book is hysterical. Laugh-out-loud, follow-people-around-quoting-it, unbelievably funny. In the humor category it reminded me of Carrie Fisher, but it is more like if Carrie Fisher wrote like T.S. Eliot, Fisher with something to say, Fisher with the ability to write like an angel, albeit a dark angel. This book was by far the best book I've read this year, if not in the last several years. If I could give it 10 stars, I would.
Mary Robison is an author that will withstand the test of time and I can't wait, really cannot wait to see what she does next.

Don't be fooled by the short seqences and the fast pace of Mary Robison's wry and tragic novel, "Why Did I Ever", into thinking that this is a "light" or an "easy" book. Quite the contrary; each section, however brief, is finely crafted and perfectly in tune. The pathos that runs through the story - and we get it in increasing doses as the novel unfolds - is as heartbreaking as the humor is "laugh out loud" funny. This novel is a gem, and one that I will certainly read a second and third time in case I missed anything as I was gulping it down.

Brava, Ms. Robison.

To use a cliche like "I couldn't put it down" would insult the razor sharp, intense style of this book, but I actually kept reading it while having a mammogram! I sat in the parking lot of the imaging clinic until I'd finished the last page, then drove home and discovered I'd put my shirt on insideout. Guess that pretty much says it all. I truly hope this book gets the attention it richly deserves.

You know that it's a good book when you are in the grocery store, think of a line from it, and cannot help quoting it, and snickering to yourself. Or maybe even out loud! These beautifully crafted sentences with stick with you, and you'll try to work them into your mind and conversation whenever you can.

Mary Robison's cool little new Why Did I Ever is a deceptively slow-burn manifesto from which the so-called and too often self-proclaimed "postfeminism" generations could catch some practical clues about how to survive as a 21st Century would-be non-conformist 20- and 30-some, like me, 33, without a lot of idealistic worry and work. The subtle feminism that seeps into the main character's, Money Breton's daily existence seeps too into the reader's, while the computer, CD, cell phone, TV blare and glare. Money's fragments of narrative turn into traces of rebellion that somehow assimilate the reader, into a utilitarian, mundane, pull-it-down-from-the-conference-room-and-kitchen-shelves-and-add-to-taste kind of feminism. How, I don't know. But the effect is friendly and useful.

Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever is far greater than the sum of its parts which is quite a feat as the parts are amazing on their own. The novel consists of very short, often hilarious, sections consisting of one woman's demented, off-kilter thoughts as she copes, or doesn't, with what flows around her. As wonderful as these ideas and often vague notions are, the novel also subtley grows and packs an emotional wallop by the time the last page is turned. The writing may be beautifully minimal but the impact is not. It is one of the richer novels I have read lately and I never thought I would say that I was laughing my way through the first few pages.

This book is packed. If this is what they meant by minimalism, then they seriously underestimated minimalism. Or perhaps this is minimalism at its peak. Doesn't matter. Here's the book. Call the style anything but call the book unstoppably funny, wrenching to the bone, wise, and different from anything you have ever read.

Mary Robison is arguably the best contemporary author. Her prose does not need to be propped up with stale metaphors and similies. Every word counts. Her style could be compared to Hemingway. This novel changed my life as a creative writer. Besides being well written, it is interesting, fresh, and funny. I also read her first novel, Oh!, which is well worth reading. It is also very funny and shows Robison's talent with dialogue.

If your life has taken downturns, is far from perfect, and you've at one time or another had trouble coping, you can empathize with Robison's protagonist, Money Breton. She's so refreshingly imperfect. In her diary entries, there are many laugh-out-loud funny lines...at least, they are funny to those of us who don't expect sweetness and happy endings in life.

The writing style in the novel was intriguing, pulling me in line by line, diary entry by entry into numerous story lines. The story lines were woven together beautifully, and each word in the novel was obviously chosen very carefully. The result is a book that I looked forward to reading, then looked forward to finishing so that I could share it with every friend I have.

Rarely can you come across a book which you will either voraciously read in one sitting, or take with you in the car and read at stop lights. Written in brief glimpses of life comprised of short sentences and paragraphs, Mary Robison has poetically charged the meaning of concise images. Each happenstance is boiled down to pure brilliance and philisophical insight revealed through an everyday situation. This book is also a very intimate portrait of healing, that I would recommend to any parent or person who has experienced loss of any form.

Read it!