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Zoo Time (2012)

by Howard Jacobson(Favorite Author)

2.88 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1408828685 (ISBN13: 9781408828687)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

review 1: Stream of consciousness narrative. I usually like English humor. It's more verbal than American humor but this was just empty word salad. The narrator/protagonist is narcissistic, detached and says and experiences nothing to draw you in. I couldn't get past the first 30 pages. There didn't seem to be any story. You feel like you're living in someone's head where everything is filtered through this snarky, narcissistic filter and nothing is very real or matters much. Maybe I didn't do it justice by not reading further but it wasn't clever or funny in any way and there was no story. You can do a lot of things in a narrative, just don't bore the reader.
review 2: I started off great. A writer working in a clothing shops meets a hot woman. He marries the woman, bec... moreomes a published writer and lives the vida loca. But it soon turns out that he's interested in his wife, sure, but he really wants the mother-in-law. This is where it becomes a bit difficult to relate. But hey, it's fiction so let's give it a go. Sadly after about 50 pages it's all about a writer who writes about a writer who writes about a writer who writes and claims that a writer should never write about a writer (really!) and about how literature is dead, good writers are absent or dying, publishers are commiting suicide, etc. I kept reading, but I felt myself floating further and further away. And after about a week I found myself in the last 50 pages or so. And I couldn't believe it myself, it got interesting again! So I went from 'this is great stuff', to 'what kind of boring crap is this', to 'this is great stuff' again. I give it three stars for making something so incredibly dull interesting again in the end. I might give the author another chance. less

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