Customer Reviews

You Were Wrong: A Novel

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

"You Were Wrong" is strange story of a very unhappy young man who's life is dramatically changed one day when he comes home to find a female stranger in his house. Meeting her starts him on a journey of love, loss, lies and murder.

I suspect that this book is great for the right audience, but I just didn't get it. I kept waiting for the story to start, and it never quite did. Much of the text is the internal monologue of the main character, and I had a great deal of trouble relating to him. The other characters in the book all seemed pretty one-dimensional to me, and were basically unlikeable.

The author does have a gift for apt metaphors and excellent descriptions, but otherwise there wasn't anything I liked about this book.

Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

You Were Wrong is a short book, but manages to wear out its welcome in no time at all. I was ready to throw it against the wall after two chapters, but forced myself to continue reading so that I could finish and give it a fair review. The good news is that I got used to the writing style after a few more chapters, but the bad news is that I think that may have just been Stockholm Syndrome in action.

The main character, Karl Floor, is a sad-sack twenty-something math teacher who shares his dead mother's house with his hateful stepfather. When the book opens, Karl is beaten up by two of his students, only to stumble home and discover that his house is apparently being robbed by the beautiful and mysterious Sylvia Vetch. Sylvia doesn't act like a normal robber, however, and tends to Karl's wounds before taking him on a journey across town to the house where she lives. As Karl's life becomes intertwined with Sylvia and her circle, he wanders aimlessly through a series of mysterious encounters with people who abuse and confuse him. Karl is entirely passive by nature, and spends most of the book whining, getting dragged along against his will, or just plain lying down and passing out.

The book feels a bit more like a series of rambling vignettes than a novel. There is the slightest hint of a mystery concerning Sylvia's real motivations, and the story almost swerves into crime fiction at one point before course-correcting, but mostly it's a shambling collection of long-winded character studies. Sharpe describes the most mundane of things in excruciating detail, often employing digressions within digressions that bloat single sentences into page-long tangents. Characters don't speak like actual human beings; either they monologue for pages about vaguely related matters, or they utter terse exchanges full of thudding importance and implied mystery.

The best I can say about the book is that Sharpe occasionally pulls off a fine turn of phrase or throws in a decent joke. For the most part, however, I found it both overwritten and crashingly dull, and was glad to see the back of it.

Matthew Sharpe's extraordinary novel "You Were Wrong" tells the story of Karl Floor (the surname says a lot), a man who lives the most insular of lives. As Sharpe puts it, "house, job, house, job, car, until recently, had been allowed by Karl more than by most to constitute the parameters of his life..." When Karl meets a beautiful stranger, he must choose whether to connect with another human being despite the risk that such a choice inevitably entails--the risk of being wrong about reality, about good and evil, and about love. Sharpe's penetrating insights are alternately satirical and deadly serious (at certain points I heard echoes of writers as diverse as David Foster Wallace and W.C. Fields), and always spot on. Like the best literature, You Were Wrong invites the reader to engage with the remarkable prose, just as its protagonist was asked to engage with life. "You Were Wrong" should be read for many reasons, not the least of which is Sharpe's unique voice.

The author is talented in setting the scene, I'll give him that. Whereas I like a story that moves forward with some degree of regularity, this book read like a set of instructions a screenwriter uses to set the stage and mood for the actors. Though Karl was an interesting character with a misfit of a stepfather and the witty exchanges that ensued, I found myself wanting more dialog and less analysis of every room or road they found themselves. Not enough character development elsewhere with the exception of Arv and therefore the supporting cast failed to assist. If you liked Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with the on-going over-analysis of every action, you would be right to read this book.

Sharpe's books are at once darkly hysterical, adventurous and rollicking, deeply insightful, and beautifully written. "(you were wrong)" is no exception. In fact, one can open to any page and read any sentence and enjoy it out of context. His writing and characterizations are fun, accessible, and chewy with substance. Karl Floor, Sylvia Vetch and Larchmont Jones are unforgettable, unlike characters in any other book, yet somehow eerily familiar. A great read for a book club. You Were Wrong: A Novel

This is the story of a pathetic sap who transforms himself into a pathetic sap. The author, through the use of digressions and run-on sentences, manages to cloud the story so much, that the reader tends to forget how shallow the plot is. After all, Why use ten words to describe something, when a hundred will do?
Even if this book was free, I'd still feel cheated.

Engrossing and very funny. I was constantly torn between a desire to read on and to read over. There are page-turners and there are mind-benders, but You Were Wrong is both at once.

After reading a rave review of this novel in The New York Times I purchased it. And this morning on the city bus I left my copy after having attempted to read the first few pages. I know! I know! One should give a book at least 25 pages. Well, I couldn't. I have no idea why anyone would find this book appealing with its truly childish dialogue and very poorly constructed sentences. I am an avid reader who has posted many "reviews," but when a book simply does not allow me to read at least 25 pages, then something is wrong with the book in my opinion. Don't waste your money, folks.