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Dead Do Not Improve (2013)

by Jay Caspian Kang(Favorite Author)

2.82 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1299079946 (ISBN13: 9781299079946)

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

publisher

Hogarth

review 1: This book is so hilarious and spot on. If you lived in SF around the time this was written (2012), and you don't take yourself too seriously, you'll really enjoy this book. It's good, clean fun to have a novel written so exactly about people and places where you live but just have the names slightly changed (ex: Cafe Gratitude is Being Abundance). And if San Franciscans love one thing, it's being in the exclusive club of those in the know.
review 2: You'd think it would be possible to make a hidden battle between Cafe Gratitude and kink.com into an interesting novel. That may well be so...but it's not this one.I have to admit that I didn't technically finish the book: I put it down 25 pages before the end, when it became clear that Kang had no idea how to resol... moreve all the half-baked plot ideas he's began. I might still have persisted if I'd cared about any of the characters, but I didn't.The book isn't a total waste: it's a good argument for why MFA writing programs should be cancelled and the funds reallocated for something more useful, like parking lots or free liquor for students. In its self-obsession, overly mannered wank, and its lack of grounding in any kind of meaningful life experience, it exemplifies the bland product of the undergrad-to-MFA-to-publisher pipeline. You don't necessarily have to go to sea as long as Joseph Conrad to write a decent novel, but it probably wouldn't hurt. less

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