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Feb 18, 2008

Danielle rated it:

Hmmm. I like that this is a big, messy book. I like its big cast of characters, and its structure, which could be confusing, but somehow manages to fit together and make all the pieces add up, without even relying on unbelievable coincidence. I like that it is telling a lot of different stories. So I guess I like this book. But, I have trouble loving this book, because there’s something very smug about it. It introduces all of its characters with such contempt, and such a sense of moral and inte More...

2 comments like (23 people liked it)

Feb 18, 2008

Melissa rated it:

To get through a book where the "punk" characters say things like "cool beans" and "he's an Urkel" and "oh snap!"; where the strippers have hearts of gold and the former strippers grow up to be the best mothers; where the author unironically writes sentences like "the world was a pair of successfully removed breast implants"; and to still be engaged and even occasionally impressed by that book (when not prompted to delve into a long, exasperated More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Feb 21, 2008

Courtney rated it:

Ugh. I tried. I was excited about this book after reading the promising NYT Book Review of it (where I also misinterpreted that this novel was based on the author's life, but that only seems to be true in setting). A novel of a runaway/missing twelve year old boy, gaudy and outcast characters, and a sparkley cover (I am a sucker for well used glitter), I snatched this up as soon as it came in on reserve for me at the library. And, yes, I only gave 46 pages of it a try before admitting my disappo More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2008

John rated it:

It was by sheer force of will that I was able to finish this book. It's sad too because, like many here, I had high hopes for this much hyped debut. I don't believe that Bock's a lost cause by any means, but he's definitely got some refining to do before Random House or any other publisher so much as thinks about advancing him any more money. I primarily take issue with the unwieldy narrative, the disastrously underdeveloped characters, and Newell Ewing, the twelve year-old whose disappearance t More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 09, 2008

LaDonna rated it:

I don't know what, exactly, I expected when I started this book, but it certainly wasn't a slow-moving, leaden story.

None of the characters in this book are likeable, and they are all so stiff, it's hard to sympathize with them at all. It doesn't help that the cast is so huge... new characters are being introduced almost up until the very end. The author seems to treat his protagonists flippantly, and he doesn't even bother to give one of the characters a name, calling her simply "The More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 19, 2008

Matt rated it:

I feel like a sucker for having bought this. It's not very good. For Christ's sake, there are puns! I can't remember the exact phrasing, but one part read something like:

"I was being figurative, she said. To which Ponyboy responded with his middle figurative."

And his use of parlance – and particularly the use of the word "like" – is terrible and often embarrassing. The prose is all playful and buoyant and alliterative, and seems to undermine the su More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Apr 06, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

Maybe this isn't the right time in my life, but I couldn't read this book. One night, I had trouble getting to sleep after reading several chapters. The subject matter is extremely disturbing--especially the depiction of the subculture of runaways living off the Strip. I finally gave up on page 350.
I also had trouble with Bock's writing. At times, the language is beautiful, but other sections read like a grad student experimenting with different devices. I could almost hear the worksho More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 18, 2008

Carsten rated it:

I am still reading this book, but so far i am quite impressed. i really love the character development and the language. I saw some reviews that didn't like the book, that couldn't find the las vegas in the novel, but while i think there is quite a bit about las vegas in the story the city is not the main character of this story, it is the background, but that background could also have been LA, Orlando, or Phoenix. this is just a little thought along the way ... as i said i am still reading it, More...

5 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2008

Michael rated it:

Charles Bock can write well, so well that he has no excuse for several one-dimensional characters that no amount of detailed back-story can save from irrelevance, a very stock treatment of strippers and modern-primitive runaways, simplified cause-and-effect character development, and a focal point - this missing kid - who remains a complete cipher. That can't be the point. Is that the point? That said, the book is very fun to read, amazingly so considering that there's almost no plot, and what f More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 23, 2009

Jacob rated it:

From all the hype and its inclusion on the NYT 100 Notable Books of 2008 list, I had high expectations for this book. Unfortunately, it failed to meet them. The novel contains some great parts and snippets of beautifully written passages which stand out in a narrative that otherwise is weighed down with too many disparate characters and storylines that Boch should have eliminated. The book’s redeeming factor is that there are a few compelling storylines that keep the reader involved enough to More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 06, 2008

Kerfe rated it:

I never thought I would be listing a book I would rate a "2" because usually I just don't finish a book I'd put in that category. And though I skimmed large chunks of this one, finding some parts almost unreadable and without any clear value to the story(s), I did finish. But I would not recommend anyone else do the same, despite all its glowing reviews.

My first reaction at the start of the book was: way too many writing classes and workshops, could use an editor with so More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Mar 18, 2008

Al rated it:

I really wanted to like this book, which was favorably reviewed on the front page of the NYT Sunday Book Review. I didn't.
Nearly every character is grotesque and pathetic; it's hard to believe that human beings could be as clueless as these people are. Maybe one or two, but all of them? It's difficult to get involved in a story where the characters are despicable AND their actions make no sense. It doesn't help that nearly every character is obsessed with sex, and many with p More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 04, 2008

George rated it:

I first heard about this book in a Times profile of Bock. A big deal was made of how Charles Bock took 11 years to write this novel. This fact stuck with me throughout reading the book, as so much of it seems to have been so crafted and re-crafted to the point of being overwritten. There are references to very recent events, so it feels like he just kept going at it, revising, and refusing to let it go.

There are some truly fantastic parts of this book. Some of the subsections o More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 29, 2008

Libby rated it:

I started this novel, and put it down about 150 pages later. This was approximately two weeks ago, and I do not feel particularly compelled to return to it. This lack of feeling on my part is especially disappointing to me, given the author's coverage in the New York Times Magazine (who doesn't love an underdog?), as well as the book's cover-review in the Times book section, and the fact that I bought it in hardcover (beautiful jacket, by the way: uncoated stock, great typography, and a judiciou More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 10, 2008

Emily rated it:

Sigh, well, I read this for a book club and I have to be honest, it was sort of one of those books I had to make myself read. I liked parts of it a lot, and he is a good writer. I hated the kid, Newell. To be honest, I didn't really see why he would run away. That part didn't ring very true to me, but maybe the point is that you never really know and sometimes people run away for trivial reasons? I do feel though that the impact of that issue in the story (the runaways thing) would have been str More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 01, 2008

Lisa rated it:

Mostly liked it, although it struck me as very young, and not just because of the subject matter. The hardest part for me to get around was his trying to cram too much stuff in there, pushing his fascination with his characters before the reader has a chance to develop their own. When he pulls back, holds onto information and goes for a little less-is-more, it's usually really effective. So I guess my beef would be with the lack of variety where his pacing is concerned -- I think that could push More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 15, 2008

Maggie rated it:

"I want them to see me dying. That way, they'll know I'm alive."

Beautiful Children is the kaleidoscopic tale of Las Vegas' dark underbelly, a place where underneath the lights, glitz and glamour lurks a bevy of downtrodden and desperate. Bock centers the bulk of his novel around one particular Saturday night - the night that twelve-year-old Newell Ewing disappeared, leaving behind only a single shoe abandoned in the middle of the desert. Starting with the story of Newell's More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 30, 2008

Jessica rated it:

I liked and admired this book more than I loved it. It has aspirations to be a pretty big investigation and indictment of a culture that chews up dreamers and spits them out, but most of the characters are too thinly drawn to deepen it to that level. Instead, it's a very readable story about connections and loss, exploitation and love, fumbles, mistakes, accidents, viciousness, and hope, told in a non-linear structure that in a way is like reading reassembled fragments of a shattered mirror. In More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 25, 2008

Mary rated it:

By turns harrowing, profane, pornographic, and tragic, Beautiful Children is not for the faint of heart. But, as a book about the darkest corners of Las Vegas, populated by a cast of disaffected and irreparably damaged urban nomads, how could it be anything else?

At the book's center is the disappearance of 12-year-old Newell Ewing, and the dissolution of his parents' marriage as they struggle to come to terms with their loss. The book's narrative jumps around in time, gradually revea More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 17, 2008

Katie rated it:

I would liken the experience of reading this to being on a Tilt-A-Whirl that has gone on the loose: spinning feverishly in one direction, anxious pausing, spinning a bit in the other, and some heading very much off track, into, like, the log flume. I will echo criticism that Bock would have benefited from an editor and perhaps at the end avoided just about plainly stating the intended meaning of it all. Some of the pop / internet culture references were heavy-handed (I am thinking specifically More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 26, 2008

Michael rated it:

I came to Beautiful Children in between reading two Cormac McCarthy novels, Blood Meridian and The Road. And while Bock [full disclosure: I know him] and McCarthy are as different as two writers can be, they have this in common: Their characters inhabit an America that devours its children. In fact, Bock's Vegas occupies a sort of halfway point in the timeline between Blood Meridian's bloody Old West and the post-Apocalyptic ruin of The Road. And there are moments in Beautiful Children that are More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 07, 2008

Kathy rated it:

I didn't finish this book one of only two books that remember not finishing, read about 100 pages and decided it was too yucky,depressing and weird.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 27, 2008

Becca rated it:

I had big expectations for this one. Must say, that because it's big and unweildy and even ambitious doesn't make it a good novel. This is such a tough book to plod through and it delivers so little in the way of emotional impact or tension. I expected to see Las Vegas come alive and to feel something but it fell flat. I admit I haven't finished it...struggling to but will push through. I hope the ending pays off but I'm not so confident about that. Not sure what the hype is all about with this More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2009

Don rated it:

I think this book has been seriously overrated (although not by the members of this website!).

The writing is overdone, particularly at the beginning--a first-time novelist showing what he can do. Over time, this settles down, but throughout the novel his writing verges on the excessive. I read this book immediately after reading Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises", and the contrast between Hemingway's spare writing style and Bock's excess is startling.

I also fo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 09, 2008

Sara rated it:

This is the hot new book by a Las Vegas author. It's supposed to be the seminal Vegas book of our generation.

I didn't find it particularly Vegas-focused as I found it focused on parents and children. The story is about a group of interconnected people who occupy a range of positions in society. They're connected by all knowing a boy who disappears. There are intense, heartbreaking ruminations on both the previous lives and the aftereffects of the boy's disappearance, as well as some More...

0 comments like

Dec 17, 2011

Christina (Reading Thru The Night) rated it:

Was there any way to jump-start a libido quicker? Any other place on the planet that instantly offered the chance to reverse fortune and end losing streaks, the chance to set right a lifetime of disappointments? How could one read the gracious message - WELCOME TO FABULOUS LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - and feel anything but tingling anticipation? (22)

Have you ever watched the movie Happiness? It's a brilliant film, but one that I'm always reluctant to recommend because it is so unclean. Ser More...

0 comments like

Jul 16, 2010

ICPL added it

Lincoln and Lorraine Ewings’s marriage is coming apart over the disappearance of their twelve ("and a half") year-old, self-absorbed horror of a son, Newell, who’s run away. Newell was last seen in the company of his inappropriately older buddy Kenny, who might remind you of Garth, from Wayne’s World. Kenny met Newell at the comic shop, where Kenny had finally screwed up his nerve to show his drawings to comic book artist Bing Beiderbixxe (cute, huh?). Bing came to Las Vegas for a week More...

0 comments like

Jan 10, 2010

Alex rated it:

A promising premise that ultimately fails to deliver. Set against a group of runaway youths in Las Vegas, the novel offers an interesting look into the dredges of a city that's certainly full of them. While I wasn't expecting a romanticized or whimsical version of Vegas, Bock fails to explore some of his more peripheral characters. In the beginning of the book a comic book artist is having a signing at a local store where he encounters the central character of the book, a rebellious adolescen More...

0 comments like

Apr 09, 2009

claire rated it:

Picked it up at the local bookstore, read it in a day. The prose was decent and a couple of characters had a compelling depth, but it felt like Bock was trying a little too hard to be interesting. Seriously, if I want a methed-out porn-delivery guy, a mouthy preteen with ADD, a stripper with a heart of gold and hollowed-out nipples (to hold the sparklers, natch), and a sweaty comic book author all caught up in parallel narratives, I'll read a Carl Hiaasen novel. In fact, this felt like a Hia More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 19, 2008

Jason rated it:

I kind of wanted to hate this book due to all the hype, but it's a great fucking book. I found the subject matter fascinating, and the writing was at times stunning (albeit trending towards over-the-topness). I didn't care. The only reason I'm not giving it 5 stars is because there were two events near the very end that I found implausible. In most books I wouldn't give them a second thought, but because what preceded it was so solid they stood out. Good stuff.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)