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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Friends, with occasional music,
This review is from: You Don't Love Me Yet: A Novel (Hardcover)
This is a more modest work than Fortress of Solitude or Motherless Brooklyn. It depicts a world much like the one seen in the long-running television show: Friends. The four band members have no spouses or children and little commitment to mostly meaningless jobs. They all get along and surmount the minor challenges posed by their lives. A break-up in one relationship leads not to heartbreak but to another partner in short order. Band member Matthew kidnaps a kangaroo from his job at the zoo but is allowed to return, animal in hand, to resume work with no harm and no foul.The main character appreciates this existance. She prefers her friends to be "benign, enchanted and fond." Band members, Lucinda says, are "the dreamers, the fools, her only friends." She is 29, however, and recognizes at books end that she and Matthew are on the verge of "the true complete lives in which they would at last drown, the oceanic voyage into their thirties and beyond, through which their inchoate yearnings would be either soothed or disappointed, or both." This book is fun to read in the same way Friends is enjoyable to watch. We enter a world of youth, absent of responsibilities and pain, in which we are led to believe everything will work out as we hope or the rough equivalent. Lethem tells us through Lucinda that "the answer to any remaining question was yes." She leaves hesitation behind and opens herself and her friends to wild magic in the form of the The Complainer. This encounter leaves band members changed and undamaged; safely deposited back where they began. Perhaps referring to himself, Lethem has the only true artist in the book describe his role in this way: "I want what we all want...To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the external world, to see if they can be embraced." I would give You Don't Love Me Yet a cool embrace. It is fun but not very substantial. It left me with the same feeling I get from watching Friends. The characters seem to have more fun than I do without the interludes of pain, bodedom, angst, etc. I know it is supposed to be upbeat but I feel vaguely cheated. But that's just me. I would read this but wait for the paperback version. The hardcover text seems almost too weighty for the content.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not so great, but...,
By Hank Schwab (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: You Don't Love Me Yet: A Novel (Hardcover)
3 stars seems about right. "Fortress of Solitude" was magnificent, although it was geared toward an audience of a particular age, that would get all the cultural references. The new novel also is based largely on Lethem's love of music, and tries to delve into the creative process. However, he doesn't quite make it. None of it really seems to add up to anything particularly grand or meaningful. As one example, there is a subplot with a kidnapped kangaroo that Lethem seems to tire of, and just let go. This seems like something unfinished that he thought, "Oh well, let's just publish this and move on." Interesting enough, but don't expect to be wowed.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I thoroughly enjoyed it,
By
This review is from: You Don't Love Me Yet (Vintage Contemporaries) (Paperback)
I see that I'm not supposed to have liked it. Well, too late. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've read most of his books, so I know what a great writer he is, and expected good writing here. I'm sure no one disagrees with me that he's an excellent writer. The complaints seem to be about the plot. I liked the plot for several unusual reasons. I grew up in the Silver Lake district. I'm just getting into playing music. I'm old enough to be able to look at a young woman's life in a detached way. I read a lot (mostly high class stuff), and mainly I like a book by the author's use of language, and the way he looks at things in ways I haven't. Those are my excuses.
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