Customer Reviews

karlmarx. com: A Love Story

I live in DC, so maybe that adds to why a liked it, but I think this book would generally appeal to any person who has a habit of getting stuck in absurd situations and is too shy or directionless to pull out. That's the main character's flaw. It was graduate school for me, as well as for main character Ella Kennedy.

Ella faces the absurdities of an unfinished disertation, her DC think-tank, and relationships with her parents, boyfriend, and ex-bestfriend. At the same time, I enjoyed the reconsiderations of Karl Marx, and the parallel story of Karl Marx's doomed daughter (the subject of Ella's errant disertation).

But more entertaining for me were the generational differences Ella must ford through; from her boss's instruction to whip out a web-page overnight (even though the computer doesn't even have a modem) to her super-capitalist dad who is uninterestedly humored by her daughter's dabblings in the history of Marx. A live in British boyfriend who smokes like a chimney and can only communicate when the subject is orinthology -- although not a cross-generation relationship -- presents similar difficulties to Ella just the same.

Although some plots develop in a whacky direction, they resolve themselves well before they reach ridiculously unbelievable levels. The result is a quick book of very human situations and dialouge filled with good solid comedy.