Belodoff

Yeah, well, I know Mr. Saunders is like a genius or something and I know this is like a book of short stories, except that some of them aren’t so short, and it is supposed to be like great and like, since I am the kind of reader/listener who is really careful to read reviews so I can be more than sure that I am going to read something that I love or, at least like, or at least find interesting. And so, if like your brain is watering for a real treat like maybe Hamlet, or maybe that’s not fair, so like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. And what you end up with is like a rerun of How I met Your Mother and it’s like a weird one where all the characters have the same dream and you see it from each screwed up characters point of view, then you would know what Tenth Of December is sort of maybe like. And if you can follow the way this review is written without crying for the English language and you really, really like dysfunctional characters that are like professional at being failures, then you might, well probably, would sort of like this book.

Seriously folks, I can’t understand why this book has gotten so much attention. It’s not just that every character in is dysfunctional, a lot of great books from Tom Jones to Holden Caulfield abound with dysfunctional characters and those books work quite well. Maybe this is supposed to be postmodern dysfunction? I don’t know. What this ends up being is a collection of stories about that guy you went to high school with, who came from a family that had trouble getting by financially and maybe the father drank too much? And everybody said the guy was not really stupid but something wasn’t right in his head. Later when you learned about impulse control in Psych 101, you thought of that guy right away. Do you really think short stories about a bunch of guys like that would be interesting? Really? Really? Just saying, think about it before you invest your valuable reading/listening time in Tenth Of December.