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You Were Wrong (2010)

by Matthew Sharpe(Favorite Author)

2.91 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1608191877 (ISBN13: 9781608191871)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Bloomsbury USA

review 1: Sharpe's novel starts out with a strong premise--the narrator, Karl Floor, returns home to find a strange woman (Sylvia Vetch) robbing his home. The two characters become intertwined, and Sylvia more-or-less leads Karl on a journey that involves shady, mysterious characters, occasional violence, a stolen hat, drugs, sex, and even a wedding. I really wanted to like this book, but ultimately, I thought it fell flat. There seemed to be too much confusion, too much withholding of information, with very little payoff. All of the other characters seem to know exactly what's going on--it seemed to me that Karl was being manipulated, but I didn't know why, though I got the sense that any one of the other characters could tell me why. But they didn't. Karl's stepfather often speaks... more in long, rambling paragraphs. Other characters speak in code. Paragraphs of description were too dense, had too many lists. I loved the idea behind the novel, but not its execution.
review 2: Great writing always compels me to read on, and Sharpe is a great writer. There are some pretty ingenious uses of figurative language and imagery here. The story, though, and the characters, situations, plot, etc, struck me as almost surreal. There are little or no consequences for many of the actions, but I still can't decide if I enjoyed that or not. It kind of left me floating. Anyhow, I'm not making any sense, so I'll just say, I enjoyed it for the great writing. less

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