Customer Reviews

You or Someone Like You

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

This novel will make a great book club selection. First, because it's beautifully written. The language alone kept me turning the pages. If you've read any of his previous books, you know that Chandler Burr can write. His non-fiction reads like fiction and his fiction like poetry. Second, because there is so much that can be discussed. Within the story of Anne Rosenbaum and her book club for Hollywood executives, Chandler Burr manages to weave in many very relevant themes that will encourage great discussion. There is politics, religion, literature, all tied to the question of whether literature can help us deal with the issues of our daily lives. Burr makes literature accessible, fun and relevant. You will learn more than you can imagine reading this novel. It made want to pick up some of those classics that have been collecting dust on my shelf. Be sure to check the website [...] for a great reading group guide.

For some reason I felt like I had to finish this novel once I started it and wasted a good number of evenings doing so. I found the author's continual literature lectures dull and skimmed over most of them. He makes the reader feel foolish and ignorant if you don't know the phrases of the many novels he analyses in the pretence of a story. There really was no narrative and the big event that is alluded to at the beginning is disappointing. I was much more interested in the story of the family and even in the arguments about Judaism being racist through elitism and exclusion but what a DULL book!!

SHORT REVIEW:

Chandler Burr's masterpiece. English lit majors would love it. Been called a "Shiska" at work or by a boyfriend's family? You'll find shelter here. Though I find the intelligence of Hollywood who's-who a bit inflated. A unique examination into the depths of "forbidden" love through the poetic verse of literary giants.

LONG REVIEW:

This is most definitely, in my opinion, Chandler Burr's labor of love. It is his masterpiece. He obviously put a tremendous amount of work into the development of this book, but beware, if you didn't pay attention in English Lit in college a number of his literary references that require you to read between the lines as to the meaning and relation to the story line will be lost on you. I had to reread a couple of them and a few others I just said, oh forget it, and moved on to the next line. Also, Burr's writing style is hard to follow at times. His unique lack of the use of quotation marks makes for some dialogue hard to separate from narration. However, I feel he chose this style to help develop the lead character's personality, which is highly educated dry English upper-class as well as a person who is more introverted. You may have even met someone like her and found her aloof in real life.

That said, I enjoyed this book. It is very unique. I think those who have either A) lived in Hollywood and worked in the industry, B) worked in a Jewish company or dated a Jewish man and are not Jewish themselves, C) a love and understanding for English literature, or D) any combination of two or more above will find themselves nodding in agreement, or at least appreciation, for the themes in this book.

I agree with one reviewer that the tone is a bit pretentious at times, but I believe that it is meant to be that way as a fleshing out of the main character, who is the narrator. I found it interesting that Burr developed characters who really don't have their own opinions but rather draw their ideas and opinions and relations in life through the words of others. The big crisis that the family endures is also sparked by and through the ideas and opinions of others and not through their own thoughts and feelings, however the conflict brought out for perhaps the first time real raw personal emotion and feelings from the narrator and how she dealt with it. I thought Burr conveyed well the fight for deep, true love, against a very real and controversial crisis of identity. I was a bit disappointed with the resolution of the conflict and the closing of the book, however. I felt like Burr just kind of ended it all. It was fuzzy. I wish he had written another 50 pages or so. Or, maybe we are supposed to read between the lines here as well? I wondered if it was planned or if he'd simply had it.

Overall, I applaud Chandler Burr. He took a leap and he went "there." I'm glad he did. And for those who thought it was bigoted...well...sometimes the truth hurts. I know I found refuge in what may be controversial for some...for those of us on the other side it hits home.

The book has some serious faults. Just a couple of examples: The protagonist is this ultra-intelligent multilingual woman with a PhD in English Literature. She should know that "Belgian" is not a language. Also, the part about her husband meeting "bewigged" single orthodox women doesn't sound true- married orthodox women have to wear wigs. Single orthodox women do not have to wear wigs.

Howard and Anne (he Jew, she WASP) meet and marry as graduate students at Columbia. They migrate to Hollywood where Howard rapidly becomes a studio exec of Spielbergian dimension. Anne is drawn into leading a book club which becomes the hottest venue in tinseltown. Yes, a book club! Those of you who have dug deeply enough into the bowels of Amazon to be reading this review are likely to be members of at least one book club so you know that pretty soon, all hell breaks loose.

Chandler Burr is a very bright guy and he demands the same from his readers. No icky sex scenes, no whining about an unhappy childhood, just hard core brilliance (when, after all, did you last see a fictional character's insights into William Faulkner AND Edward Lear?). Things heat up after Sam (he's their son) makes a trip to Israel. I'll give nothing away but the denouement, Tutti, you shouldn't miss

In Los Angeles, the studio personnel compete for places at the book group meetings led by Howard's wife Anne, jostling for morsels of insight about the classics of literature to apply to their scripts to gain the advantage.

In Israel, Howard's son Sam learns that because his mother is a gentile nothing will make him a Jew.

Chandler Burr's novel is Anne's coming to terms with two parallel class systems that dehumanize and destroy.

The writing is intensely felt, shockingly candid, bracing as an open winter window.

Though the writing style is poor and pretentious, the first half of the book has held my interest as it deals with literature - opinions on authors, quotations, analysis. I am a book worm and had read the books being discussed. But the religious drama, to my ear, has rung hollow, simplistic and vacuous. Being acutely aware of the myriads of elements that go into any national or religious equation, how twisted and complex are the path to self identity, how sudden or how slow anyone can find themselves without ground under their feet. In other words, if Sam (aka the author) would not be sent away by the yeshiva at the time of his interest in his origins, perhaps, the story will turn out differently. Or if Anne, seeing how Howard's middle life crisis bursts into religious awakening, would choose to convert to save her family. Perhaps the pathos of Anne's vitriolic anti-semitic attacks will be subdued.

The novel about the triumph of literature in the most vapid of industries - Hollywood - turned in the second half into an anti religious manifesto, with all the usual black and white cliches and a weak resolution of a conflict.

This is a great read with an aura of Insider-ness, Hollywood royalty and the frisson of an important breakup. It is layered with the great books set against a backdrop of how America is a microsom of recent wars.

Told with the detail of a reporter and scent writer we expect from Chander Burr. In defense of reading..I couldn't put it down.

Read this book.

Chandler Burr's You or Someone Like You is just a terrific novel of ideas--a thought provoking and well-written book that succeeds on a number of levels. The narrator of the novel, Anne Rosenbaum is a transplanted British woman married to a Hollywood insider, who starts a book club at the behest of other Hollywood insiders. Anne is an English Ph.D. and, while reluctant at first, is ultimately thrilled to have a platform to share her ideas about literature. The book club is a terrific success and gives Anne Hollywood power she never anticipated. While the book club, which is more a literature seminar than a book club as most of us experience, is flourishing, her family life begins to fall apart. She begins to contemplate, and fold into her book club, the nature of tribalism in American culture. Her ruminations are fascinating, provocative and certain to offend some readers. The novel itself is so entertaining; Burr is a wonderful writer. He writes with a rare clarity and precision. I think You or Someone Like You would be a terrific selection for a book club that can focus on the book. There is much to discuss, ponder and argue about in this novel--a must read for all thoughtful readers. Enjoy

Pretentious. It was obviously a male writing a female protagonist, because she came off slightly empty, flat. This was a vanity piece written for the author to tell us that Judaism is an exclusionary religion and why that's bad. All the Hollywood name-dropping was irritating and didn't really serve a purpose. The book club meetings were more like lectures where the protagonist spouted regurgitations of literary opinion mined straight out of the pages of the New Yorker. The story was secondary to the author pushing his intellectual agenda, and it showed. The writer can turn a pretty phrase, I'll give him that. But when the phrases are superfluous to the story, then it's like he's just showing off. This is probably one of the WORST novels I've read, and I'm including straight-to-paperback genre fiction in that pool.