false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170260388m/44380.jpg 44380 7 Nicole Krauss's elegant, haunting debut, <I>Man Walks into a Room</I>, is a what-if novel. What if, asks Krauss, a man woke up one day and he'd forgotten everything he knows? Samson Greene is found lost in the desert near Las Vegas, memory-less thanks to a tumor "applying its arbitrary, pernicious pressure to his brain." Once the tumor is removed, he can remember his childhood up until his 12th year, but then all is blank. He returns to New York, to his wife Anna, to his life as a Columbia University English professor, but none of these things makes sense to him anymore: "Samson could dredge up no feeling for his own life but that of vague admiration." When he receives a call from a mysterious scientist inviting him back to the desert for a sinister-sounding memory experiment, Samson heads West with a kind of despondent fatalism. Krauss's novel moves gracefully from exploration of a lost soul to science fiction to a meditation on memory. If the book unravels a bit at the end, it's only because Krauss is trying to do too much--certainly no literary sin. <I>--Claire Dederer</I> 43730 2002 Man Walks Into a Room total:1190|5:95|4:371|3:498|2:190|1:36| 1190 3869 1794 196 2 3 false false Sat Apr 05 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 07 11:01:53 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 07 11:29:21 -0700 2008 So, my reading group virtually voted to kick me out of the group whenever they decided to move our monthly meetings from Thursday to Wednesday. It's okay that I couldn't make it to the most recent meeting because I seem to like this book much less than the other reading group members here on ...more...]]> 3 3 false false Thu Feb 19 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 15 16:11:54 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 21 13:02:44 -0800 2009 more...]]> 2 3 false false Fri Feb 15 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 21 10:29:20 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 21 12:05:15 -0800 2008
Parts of the novel are very poignant-- mostly the scenes between Samson and his wife and Samson and his great uncle. Other ...more...]]> 3 2 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Dec 11 21:02:03 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 23 20:35:57 -0800 2007
"That place just beyond everything she knows for sure."

"Who was I? What did I care about? What did I find funny, sad, stupid, painful? Was I happy? All of...more...]]> 2 3 false false Tue Apr 08 12:37:32 -0700 2008 Sat May 03 02:33:33 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 2 false true Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 19:02:05 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 24 14:51:42 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 1 false false Mon Mar 02 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 23 07:26:57 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 02 10:23:45 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Mar 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 18 01:02:58 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 30 00:43:40 -0700 2009
"He inched towards her until their sides were touching, arm to arm, leg to bare leg. Sam? she whispered. Do you think--- This was Jollie Lambird, whom he had been in love with since the second grade, and he was ready to answer any question she might have for him....more...]]> 4 0 false true Fri Jan 16 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 13:29:54 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 20 06:39:36 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Jun 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 19 19:49:23 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 21 17:07:33 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 1 false false Tue Feb 03 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 09:57:01 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 03 16:58:03 -0800 2009
This was a much more difficult book for me to get into, and ultimately I never really did. It's a very internal book, which makes sense given that it's about a...more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jun 23 10:08:19 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 23 10:12:47 -0700 2009
This book attempts to do some unique sci-fi type stuff about memory transfer, but I can't help but...more...]]> 5 2 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jan 21 06:26:12 -0800 2008 Wed Jun 04 12:36:56 -0700 2008 3 0 false false Thu Aug 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 12:48:34 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 12:52:48 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 08 07:23:24 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 07:31:19 -0700 2009 Man Walks into a Room. The novel follows the events of Samson who disappears from New York and is discovered wandering the desert outside of Las Vegas, sick and ...more...]]> 2 0 false false Sun Aug 23 12:38:41 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 01 06:10:47 -0700 2009
Granted, after absolutely loving the last book I read ("Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" by Nicole Krauss' husband Jonathan Safran Foer) anything that comes after will be disappointing.

However, I guess I did expect better from Nicole Krauss. I ha...more...]]> 1 0 false false Sat Aug 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 22:06:18 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 22:11:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Jun 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 19:35:41 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 04 19:52:59 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false true Sat Sep 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 23 13:16:28 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 23 14:06:05 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 1 true false Tue Sep 16 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Sep 10 16:53:06 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 19 17:04:00 -0700 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=44380