This Shape We're In
by Jonathan Lethem
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 290)
Read in March, 2008
recommends it for:
Lethem fans, mostly
I love Jonathan Lethem, and I have an unusually high tolerance for quirkiness, but I really wasn't invested in this...story? fable?...until the very end. The narrator is engaging enough, and there are nice absurd flourishes, but the ending is where it's at, and then it's over so quickly that it almost hurts. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who isn't already a fan of Lethem, and even then I think I'd only recommend it to fans of his earlier, more "genre-y" works...and even THEN I'...more
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Read in January, 2006
55 pages of highwire acrobatics, as told by your old-ass grandpa on his front porch. Unrealistic and unreasonable done plain and simple. 5 stars, 10 stars; whatever it takes. Read it. There's a certain street beat, an alcoholics anonymous honesty, in Lethem's writing. It's not a thing I can really describe or for the purposes of review, example. It's more current than wave. It comes across as a taut line crossing his sentences and pages, tightening his meanings. A thread of truth. Or a spindle o...more
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Weird and worth it. Take an hour for yourself: it's the craziest little adventure you didn't prepare for to a destination you thought was phooey--if you ever bothered to think about it in the first place. This is 60 pages I reread every couple of years. It's always good, but nothing like hitting those last pages for the first time. It's all the wackiness he usually musters boiled down to something you can drink with a beer. This Shape We're In always makes me smile.
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jeremy offered this book as a counterexample when i became suspicious that his dislike of the endings of the boy detective fails and special topics in calamity physics were indicative of a general trend. it does have a very good ending, but i didn't love the whole as much as some books with imperfect endings.
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Read in January, 2001
This was the first thing that I read by Lethem and it was very disappointing. Fortunately, I managed to ignore my feelings for this work and moved on to Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress Of Solitude - both books that I really loved, especially MB.
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Read in January, 2002
a silly bit of fluff from jonathan lethem. fun if you're a lethem fan, but otherwise fairly throw-away and hardly worth the publication as a single work. lethem's "allegory" seems more like quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness.
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My friend Ben gave this to me to read. He says it's really a poem. I don't know what he means, but it's definitly better (and longer) than your average short story.
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Read in June, 2006
recommends it for:
People with a pulse
I can't think of a better way to spend an hour. Open up and let this tale flow through you, literally...seriously. The imagery made my eyes swim.
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Read in July, 2007
A wonderful little surreal story, I especially enjoyed the level of ambiguity maintained throughout.
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Read in August, 2007
"Oh, self-love and self-involvement, sweet priceless obfuscators of grim reality!"
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Read in July, 2007
This is a strange little book. A fun read, but not earth-moving.
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Read in May, 2007
recommends it for:
hipsters, the terminally retarded, people who hate joy
I refuse to even credit this piece of prententious crap with a review.
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Read in June, 2007
read it on my lunch break. interesting, but not stellar.
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