The Unnamed

Right out of the gate, the writing style of this book was a little off-putting. There were some really bizarre and jarring metaphors, that had no connection to anything else written. There are also eyebrow-scrunching passages like-- --"What do you feel when you see a black albino?" he asked. "Sorrow," she said. He stared through the windshield. "Me, too."-- Even in context, re-reading the scene before it to make any sense of it, I couldn't. I read a lot of bizarre stuff, and this was still a head-scratcher. As the book progressed, I started to figure out why the tone was how it was, but it still didn't seem justified. There seemed to be a disconnect between the characters and the narrator. Usually they are in sync. If not, then there is a reason, like humor, or maybe satire, as in Tom Perrotta's "Little Children". Here, it was just too discombobulating. Although, reading, i.e., Murakami, just because things are mysterious, bizarre, enigmatic, etc. still doesn't mean you don't go along for the journey. Maybe what the book was lacking at the start was an underlying purpose. I almost stopped reading. What Joshua Ferris did get right as the book progressed was the pacing of a thrilling read, and, the frustration and relentless vacillation between hope and despair when a family has to deal with unknown illness. In fact, the book became excellent as I read on. However, despite some of the bizarreness of Tim's life, he still worked and lived in "reality", and it's hard for anyone to except that he wouldn't have suffered consequences for some of his actions. So, bad beginning, and exponential improvement as it went on, but, I don't want to wait until I'm around fifty pages into the book before it starts to get good. Why couldn't the beginning of the book be brought up to the same quality as the rest of it? By what I've heard of Joshua Ferris' debut, "Then We Came to the End", I wish I would have read that first, and then bought this book. Now, I'm not so sure I want to read the other. I hope someone buys the book for me, so I can read it without paying for it. Oh yeah, I can just get a library card.

A modern day Ulysses coming back to an ever waiting Penelope, in a sysiphus like struggle against his own body's impulses.