July 2007 You Don't Love Me Yet
The blurb on the inside cover tells you this is:
A comedy of mismatched lovers, with delicious echoes of Jane Austen's Emma, You Don't Love Me Yet is another exhibition of Jonathan Lethem's prodigious range and talent.
Faber and Faber's website:
A comedy of plagiarism, usurpation, and sex, with delicious echoes of A Midsummer Night's Dream, You Don't Love Me Yet is another exhibition of Jonathan Lethem's prodigious range and talent.
Reviews:
'Steal this band' Zach Baron The Village Voice 01/03/07
'With the Band' David Kemp The New York Times 18/03/07
'Who Wrote the Book of Love?' Joe Heim The Washington Post 18/03/07
'Walls Tumbling Down' Edward Nawotka Houston Chronicle 20/04/07
'An anatomy of Californian manners' Alistair Sooke Daily Telegraph 17/05/07
'Songwriter's block? Call the complainer' James Urquhart Independent on Sunday 20/05/07
Henry Hitchings Financial Times 25/05/07
'Brooklyn Dodger' Jackie McGlone Scotsman 26/05/07
'The borrower' Aida Edemariam Guardian 02/06/07
posted by Beerandbooks @ 8:59 am
1 comments
1 Comments:
Would I recommend this book to someone else? NO!
Lethem's style grated on me from the start – my notebook is full of phrases that made me physically cringe. I stopped writing them down by p.53 and psyched myself up to plough through the rest of the book come what may.
An example: 'Lucinda lowered a cauliflower head into her basket, where, with a five-pound bag of Integral Fare's own granola, it dragged at her arm like a cannonball...'.
Given the publisher's reference to Austen I thought I was going to be reading a social satire. By the time I got to the end I was scratching my head and asking myself if I'd missed the point. I don't think I did. The book isn't funny; the kidnapped (depressed) kangaroo sub-plot is an irrelevance. The characters, with perhaps the exception of the Complainer, are flimsy and although Lethem tells us the novel is set in Los Angeles there is no real sense of place.
Possibly the only redeeming feature is the main theme – theft and plagiarism. Lucinda, the bass player in a band, takes the Complainer's lines and feeds them to another band player, Bedwin, as lyrics for their songs. When does 'influenced by' become 'theft from'?
Lethem has apparently acknowledged this is his worst book and has said it is “a profoundly unimportant book”. The dismal effort that is You Don't Love Me Yet combined with his seeming arrogance puts me off trying any of his other works.
Post a Comment
<< Home