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Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account Of A Year (c. AD 2009) In A Large City (2013)

by Choire Sicha(Favorite Author)

3.22 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0061914304 (ISBN13: 9780061914300)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Harper

review 1: As a gay guy who lived in NYC during the events portrayed in Very Recent History, and as someone who has enjoyed Sicha's other writing, I wanted to love this book, but I was, in fact, deeply disappointed and irritated. I liked that the book specifically wants to engage with the odious realities of the economic recession and how they affected young professionals living in NYC at the time, but somehow the group of young people he describes are vaguely drawn and largely difficult to sympathize with. The premise of describing social and political customs of 2009 as if the reader would not understand them was cute at first, but became cloying over the course of the narrative. I appreciate what the book sets out to do, but the main character, John, and his group of friends, are ... morepresented as largely one-dimensional, superficial twats, who appear more interested in the appearance of potential mates than in their personalities and abilities. Their lives are portrayed as endless evenings out at gay bars, where the focus is primarily sexual coupling or jockeying amongst one another for the affections of different men. The romantic relationships that do occur are strangely without much substance or definition. From the beginning of the book until the end, we learn very little about John and I found it almost impossible to care about anything that happens to him. It's almost insulting that Sicha believes that the lives presented in the book are noteworthy. Surely there were people who lived through 2009 who had much more profound, nuanced experiences and tribulations. This book made me grateful for my own circle of friends and how much we aren't like John and the other characters in this novel.
review 2: If I could I would give it a 3 and a half stars. I won a free copy of this book in a Goodreads Contest. At first it was a struggle to read this book because it was not interesting. I would see it on my table and just groan at the fact that I had to finish this book to give it a true review. It was only when I got to the middle of the book when it started to get some what interesting and then it ended right there, in some what interesting. I didn't like the fact that the story was a bit everywhere. It would talk about the mayor, and then jump to John and his friends, then to finances. Quite frankly you could get rid of all the parts of the mayor, or finances and it wouldn't make a differences, the story would still make sense. The parts with John and his friends I found was okay, some parts where a bit confusing but other then that the drama that happens to any group of friends is relatable. Overall I liked the book, or the second half of the book. less

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