Author Colum McCann received the National Book Award for Let the Great World Spin and it is well deserved. While reading the book, I felt I had been transported back to the early 1970s. The issues of the day are all described through the lives of the characters. You feel the anguish that mothers feel towards the loss of their sons in the Vietnam war. You experience the moral decay of New York city and the hopeless and helpless life of three generations of prostitutes. You also feel the dramatic similarity in the despair of rich and poor alike. More importantly, you also get a sense of how our warmth and love for one another is redemptive. It conquers all obstacles and makes a few very unlikely people become friends, lovers and married couples.

I think that this is a great book—one that will be used in schools and that will withstand the test of time to become a classic of American fiction. I love it and can’t wait to see more work from this excellent author.

There were only two chapters that really captivated me. One was about Lynn who is one of the partners at the ad agency. In the chapter, she deals with her potential breast cancer alone by driving around Chicago. It was interesting because your could really feel warmth towards her and her fears. It also exposes a very human side to a character that is otherwise portrayed as all business.

The other chapter that I enjoyed was the last one. One reason I liked it was that I could move on to a more interesting book, but I also liked it because you get to find out several interesting facts about what happens to all the characters. Like real life, some characters end up in somewhat messy circumstances and others succeed.

In the world of Dean Koontz, everything is possible. In his books, I have read of people with supernatural powers, Elvis roaming the country as a sad ghost, and dogs that can do just about anything. This book is no different. Cubby has a brilliant son who attempts to build time travel machines and devices that can affect the space-time continuum. There is, of course, a dog with supernatural powers in the book. No one knows this for sure until close to the end of the story, but the dog can do some amazing things.

It is easy to think that this is a book written by an author who is a little crazy, but it is not. The book is just a fun story with a moral message. This is also consistent with all of Dean Koontz’s books. I enjoyed reading the story and absolutely loved the last couple of sentences that relate to the title of the book. I would quote it here, but it might ruin some of the story for you. Get yourself a copy, you won’t regret it.

Linda. The stranger assumes that the “good guy” is a hit man. The real hit man walks in a while later and strikes up a conversation with the good guy. Tim, the good guy, hands over the money to the hit man and tells him that he has had a change of heart.

This beginning would get anyone interested in what happens next and that is exactly what happened to me. I was not disappointed with this story. Dean Koontz weaves an intricate tale that is better than any suspenseful movie I have ever seen. The assassin is a bad-ass who seems to be well connected and who kills relentlessly and without one bit of mercy or guilt.

No one is exactly what you are led to believe in the book. You discover near the end of the book, the true nature of the “good guy” and his, and Linda’s past. The writing is excellent and enchanting. Here are the two first sentences of the book: “Sometimes a mayfly skates across a pond, leaving a brief wake as thin as spider silk, and by staying low avoids those birds and bats that feed in flight. At six feet three, weighing two hundred ten pounds, with big hands and bigger feet, Timothy Carrier could not maintain a profile as low as that of a skating mayfly, but he tried.

I recommend this book highly. Buy one now, or go to the Lincoln Park (NJ) library or one closer to you and borrow it.

The narrative takes place at the end of the Cold War in Krakow, Poland. The focus is on sex, more sex and group sex. The story is difficult to believe because of the overwhelming Catholicism of Poland, but this is a story—not a history. In the story, there are two expatriate Americans living in Poland. These two are perhaps the characters most lacking in morality. One has abandoned a woman at home who has just delivered his child and the other is his cousin who likes to engage in sex with anyone who is willing to drop his pants—including her cousin. Together they embark on a life of irresponsibility and decadence.

As I mentioned early in this review, the book is excellently written and the characters are vivid. What is lacking is cohesive story to tie it all together. There are some subplots that are creative and entertaining, but there is no overall plot to take you from point A to point B. If there were such a storyline the book would be perfect. This quote should give you an idea of the quality of the writing:

Morality, she said lightly, is a circus tent. The big top. It’s gilded, gawdy, flocked, and garish. High, pointy, righteous, and mighty. (She shaped this out with her hands, molding a two-foot circus tent in the air in front of them.) It looks gorgeous from above, and it keeps us hidden from the eye of God. We love morality. We need it. We like it. Just like we like our traffic laws. But it’s really only there fro what’s hidden inside it. Inside the tent—that’s where we get to cheer and scream. Inside’s where we eat teeth-rotting food and fly the trapeze, where we walk the tightrope, drive the animals crazy with whips and chairs and meaty treats. There’s no good. There’s no evil. Morality is nothing but a flimsy old tent, the pretense of knowing right from wrong in a beautiful world where anything goes!

I recommend the book for the quality of the prose and its almost poetic beauty, but must hold back from saying that it is a must read.

It took me a while to get used to the disjointed writing that Mr. Palahniuk has put forth with this book. The shifting point of view is also very disconcerting for at least a third of the book. After that, you do get the idea and understand what is going on. In the first third of the book, you read passages that are the same, but are from the point of view of different Misters in the queue and really don’t get it. (At least, I did not get it.)

I was disappointed with this book. I thought the story line was awful. I thought the characters lacked depth. I thought the premise was boring and trite and like a porn film, it had no plot or intrigue. This book was recommended to me by a friend who had read some other works by the same author. Honestly, I wish he had not recommended it and I had kept my money. Stay away.

If anyone falls short in Bateman’s eyes, he believes that they are subhuman and does not think twice about killing them in the most painful and demeaning way he can conjure. He routinely burns dollar bills in front of homeless people and then gouges their eyes with a knife to show them how powerful he believes he is. He kills women and dismembers them and often cooks and eats their parts. In one chapter, he copulates with one date’s decapitated head. In other words, this is one sick character and book.

The book is grisly and not for the faint of heart. It starts off slow, but then becomes a blood-soaked roller coaster ride of decadence and evil. It is full of gore, drug use and characters who are completely jaded and see no value in a simple life. After reading this book, I felt like I should go to the nearest place of worship just to make sure no demons had possessed me. If it were not for the fact that the book is a satirical look at the culture of excess, it would have no redeeming value.

One positive thing that could be said about the book is that it is well written and makes you feel like you are there experiencing the action. It was orders of magnitude scarier and more repulsive than the film that was released with the same name. This is a testament to the descriptive writing that Bret Easton Ellis produced.

Patrick Bateman has no redeeming characteristics. He cannot even understand or accept love from his fiancé or from his secretary who is not-so-secretly in love with him. He is a human being devoid of humanity. If you are into a graphic portrayal of decadence at its worst, then this book is for you.

with steamy sex, romantic and exotic settings and philosophical musings on marriage and relationships.

Unfortunately, the book disappoints mightily. It should really be called, “Meandering Through my Family’s Past.” That is precisely what Sylvia, the protagonist of the story, does; she relates one boring mini-story after another about some very common and boring characters. The book includes an interview with Mrs. Kirshenbaum in which she states that there isn’t a point to a story, it is simply a story. I disagree. A story should entertain, enlighten or frighten. Putting us to sleep should be left to pharmaceuticals.

It is particularly upsetting to me that this book is so boring because the author is a gifted writer. At times, her prose is so perfect or thought provoking that you can’t help but pause, reread and admire it. The last two books that I have read by her have been similar in content and boredom level. They are stuck in the past and in old Europe. Binnie, you need new inspiration or even old inspiration. Return to New York where some of your most interesting stories take place.

I must emphasize that irrespective of a few books that are misses, Binnie Kirshenbaum is a gifted writer. Here is a quote I enjoyed from the book: “That kind of empty; when hope is no longer deferred but evaporated, and try as you might, and you do try, you can’t find the pleasure in the little things. A fine meal, good music, a breathtaking view of a landscape, the smell of the ocean snow falling, it all adds up to a storehouse of memories and regrets, and you can’t imagine there’s a perchance left to be had. “And then,” he said, “I looked up and there you were. At the next table. Wearing that white dress. So pretty,” he said. “So pretty, and I thought to myself, she’s going to drink that coffee, and then she’s going to walk on off. And I’d have let you walk on off because I wouldn’t have been bold enough to stop you. I was thinking about how it would’ve been over before it began, and how sorry I’d be.” Another paragraph I liked very much is; “When you keep to yourself, when you don’t reveal who you are often people will invent a story for you and you can let that story become the whole of it because you can’t be bothered setting the record straight, or you can’t tell the truth because it’s too late for that, to offer up facts not in evidence is to risk something, the opening of a door to an uninvited guest.

It is possible that you will love this book. Not all tastes are alike. However, I was disappointed and am still hoping for another masterpiece like Binnie Kirshenbaum’s, “A Disturbance in One Place.”

Descriptive detail often makes a story. In this case, there is not enough of it and that makes what could otherwise be a good book, just mediocre.

The story line is good and there is enough of a twist at the end that it is difficult to guess who did what and why. I think that it has potential to be a very good book if it is revised and descriptive detail is added, making the book grow by about fifty percent. The story is about a dysfunctional family that refuses to face the fact that every member is living a lie; I guess this makes the title of the book very accurate. There is one character in the book that everyone believes is a liar and a person without morals. It turns out, however, that this is the person with the strongest morality and the one who tells the truth most often.

I would recommend a rewrite to the author. Because of the lack of descriptive detail and character development, I cannot recommend this book.

She quickly becomes his mistress and her curiosity is more about him than the history of the Nazis and Jews. I found the story line tedious, predictable and not worth the time. There are quotes from other books and from the narrator’s notes interspersed throughout the chapters. These are not helpful and tend to make your mind wander off and wonder why they were inserted at all.

Here is a quote from the book: “It is too easy to dismiss him as a mere womanizer, a cad. It is too easy, and it is wrong. It, he, is more complicated than that. All these women, he loved them. Still does love them in a fashion of his own. He needs them, appreciates them, adores them all. He is genuine, and who can fully resist being loved, which is, of course, why he is successful.” This quote is about as interesting as it gets.