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Man Walks Into a Room

3.28 of 5 stars 3.28 · rating details · 3,443 ratings · 433 reviews

A shimmering, provocative debut novel about loss of memory, identity, and love, by a remarkably accomplished young writer.Samson Greene has a problem. A tumor the size of a cherry has created a pronounced amnesia, eradicating his memories past the age of twelve. The thirty-six-year-old Columbia University English professor is found one day wandering the desert outside of L...more

Hardcover, 256 pages

Published May 21st 2002 by Doubleday (first published 2002)

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Dec 10, 2011 Ian Graye rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews, read-2011

A Reader Walks into a Room

I bought "Man" after loving "The History of Love".

I don't think I realised until I started reading it that "Man" was her first novel.

There were times when I could understand why other readers might be tempted to give it up.

I persisted out of loyalty to "History" and out of a sense of anticipation for "Great House".

Little did I realise that it would (almost) have me in tears at the end.

Where Did My Character Go?

"Man" is not a novel of action.

Yet I don't think it's quite...more

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May 03, 2008 Jafar rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book starts off very promising. A man loses 24 years of his memory due to a brain tumor. As the book says, we’re nothing but a collection of habits and accumulation of memories. If we lose those memories and habits, we lose our self and start over with a blank slate. That should make a good concept for a very interesting novel. Instead, the story meanders through a series of irrelevant events and characters and doesn’t offer much in the end.

From the few places where Krauss discusses things l...more

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Apr 07, 2008 Brent rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 Goodreads.com

It starts out with a thirty-something year-old man who has no memories since the age of 12. He has all these years and years of people who remember him and things that happened in his life but h...more

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Feb 21, 2009 bookczuk rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to bookczuk by: Antof9

Shelves: bookcrossing, first-novel-or-book, good-but-made-me-sad, made-me-uncomfortable, moxie-review

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book, now that I am through with it. I am convinced that Nicole Krauss is a marvelous writer. Of that, there is no doubt. But I never fully engaged in the story here. Part of that is Samson's fault, though. I don't think he fully engaged in his story either. The ending came abruptly -- a rapid change of pace, with the epilogue in a different character voice which left me disorientated. (Ha! Just a note to add that I, too, find the use of this word dist...more I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book, now that I am through with it. I am convinced that Nicole Krauss is a marvelous writer. Of that, there is no doubt. But I never fully engaged in the story here. Part of that is Samson's fault, though. I don't think he fully engaged in his story either. The ending came abruptly -- a rapid change of pace, with the epilogue in a different character voice which left me disorientated. (Ha! Just a note to add that I, too, find the use of this word distracting. It appeared in two books I was reading on the same day, and startled me both times. It led to a flurry of emails to my grammar goddess, Antof9, with the query "Two separate books within 12 hours. Is it a real word? What happened to disoriented? And how do they differ?" She told me "File it under 'those crazy Brits'. Here's a very entertaining bulletin board on the topic:
We don't use it. We say disoriented. Or "confused", as one poster on that bulletin board noted :)") And on p 144, when Donald says "Palmolive, take me away", I also was distracted. Was it Palmolive rather than Calgon, because of his character, or because of poor editing? Sometimes, I think too much.

Anyhow, the premise of the story both captured and scared me. One of my biggest fears is the loss of my beloved. (I have told him that if he dies before me, I'll kill him.) To think about totally losing your loved one, but to have him physically still on the earth, lost to you by loss of memory, is shattering. I almost think that divorce would be easier, because your past together still exists in more than your own mind. There is a shared history.

One passage made me very sad, mostly because I am a parent and hope this hasn't happened for my son. Pip is talking about her experiences in India, watching the scattering of ashes in the Ganges, while downstream people collect drinking water, and she thought "...is that safe? Aren't they going to catch some awful disease? And then you go back to the room you share with like ten other people and you get into your dirty bed and cry, because you realize your probably never going to be that spiritually enlightened that you stop caring about germs and disease and just trust the power of Brahman. Because you grew up in America in a nice clean house with parents that tried to shelter you but ended up fucking you up, and you'll always be branded with that."

Is it so bad to want to provide protection for a child? To know about disease prevention and staying healthy? Surely if we are temples to God, and if God, however you chose to define the concept, lives within us, then keeping that home clean and safe isn't a bad thing, is it?

I will ponder this book a bit more. Again, I thought the writing quite fine, and overall the book was good. It just left me with more questions than answers. Sometimes that's a good thing, though. One should read to expand the mind, not just for entertainment.
(less)

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Feb 21, 2008 Sarah Messick-Milone rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

This book had a very interesting premise: a middle-aged man loses all his memory since he was 12 but still has the sophisticated mind of an adult: how does he cope?

Parts of the novel are very poignant-- mostly the scenes between Samson and his wife and Samson and his great uncle. Other parts really drag and seem caught up in vague ruminations on memory.

All in all, I don't think the book hung together too well and I much prefer her other novel, _A Brief History of Love_. Maybe since I loved that...more

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Dec 23, 2007 Maggie Campbell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"She's lovely. Beautiful and kind and what's not to like? but why her and not someone else?"

"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 those memories I accumulated, gone. Which one, if there could have been only one, would I have kept?"

"He knew she liked him but couldn't say why, and now he wondered whether she became so quickly intimate with everyone she stumbled across."

" 'And for a...more

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Feb 24, 2010 Laala Alghata rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love Nicole Krauss. I read The History of Love mid 2006. I loved it, but for some reason did not hunt for other books the author had written. Perhaps I had a long enough To Read list as it was. Earlier this summer I stumbled upon this book, and after recalling how much I loved the first book of hers I’d read, decided to give her debut a go.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read it almost start to finish without putting it down. I put it down just the once, and because I had to. I loved Samson, I love...more

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Jan 24, 2009 Tung rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Krauss’s second novel (The History of Love) was one of my top books from 2008, so despite a critical review of this novel (Krauss’s first) by a friend, I decided to read it anyway. I should have listened to my friend’s critical review – this book is nowhere near as good as The History of Love. The plot of this book revolves around a man named Samson Greene, a Columbia Lit professor who is found wandering the Nevada desert with no recollection of who he is or what he is doing in the desert. He is...more Krauss’s second novel (The History of Love) was one of my top books from 2008, so despite a critical review of this novel (Krauss’s first) by a friend, I decided to read it anyway. I should have listened to my friend’s critical review – this book is nowhere near as good as The History of Love. The plot of this book revolves around a man named Samson Greene, a Columbia Lit professor who is found wandering the Nevada desert with no recollection of who he is or what he is doing in the desert. He is taken to a hospital where doctors find a tumor in his brain likely causing this aberrant behavior. After the tumor’s removal, Samson wakens to find himself with the mind and body of a 36-yr-old man, but having no memories of anything that has happened in his life past the age of 12. The first half of the book is spent describing Samson’s reactions to this condition, and it is a superb examination of memory and the part it plays in shaping who we are. For instance, Samson struggles connecting with his wife – the person overjoyed to see him when he wakes up in the hospital, and the person who takes him back to their life in NYC to care for him – only he has no idea who she is, and he feels no love for her having no recollection of how they fell in love and married, nor any of the memories comprising those feelings. In another example, Samson recalls events from his childhood and remembers his mother, but having no memory of her death, he reacts in utter grief at finding out that she had passed away five years earlier. Moments like this or the awkwardness with his wife – these feel true-to-form and real, and Krauss’s prose sparkles throughout. But about two-thirds of the way through, the plot spins out of control: Samson participates in a bizarre military-funded science experiment on memory; he spends time in Vegas meeting a random character who assists him in returning to the hospital he was taken to at the beginning of the book so that the pair can steal back the tumor he had lost; he has an intimate dialogue with a stranger on a bus; he visits his great uncle in a nursing home and breaks him out – just a bizarre series of events one after the other. And throughout these events, Samson is completely unlikable. As much as you have sympathy for his plight having lost his memory and wife and 24 years of his life, for the last third of the book his behavior turns you off so much that the ending leaves you frustrated. And while Krauss’s prose is brilliant in many places, in other places the book feels more like a meditative essay on memory than it does a novel. This was a huge letdown for me after loving her other book so much. Not quite recommended.(less)

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Mar 02, 2009 Anda Marie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2009

I was going to give this 4 stars but changed my mind at the last few pages. Not that it ended poorly, but I just can't put my finger on it. I loved the writing and the poetic one-liners that Krauss is so good at. But I got the "first novel" vibe from this for sure ... in that she seemed to have SO many good things to write/ideas to share that she just inserted gratuitous paragraphs/plotlines that really did nothing for the story. Nice to read those parts since she writes so beautifully, but unne...more

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Jul 07, 2010 Sacha added it · review of another edition

p 39: The gestures we repeat over and over, they're just our need to be recognized. // Te kiss stayed there with no place to go, no sensory reserve that could absorb it and fit it away as a common act of intimacy, a thousand times received. He knew what Anna was asking: whether you could love someone without habits.

p 41: anechoic chamber of autism

p 48: if he got lost he walked until the city reorganized itself around him and he found himself somewhere he'd been before. There were certain places...more

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Apr 08, 2013 Madeline Knight-Dixon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The entire premise of this books is that a man wakes up, and has lost the memory of twenty years of his life (he only remembers up to being 12 years old). In itself, not a new concept. However, this book distinguishes itself as a truly unique work of art.

Moments of this book terrified me. Krauss makes this book unique by presenting a man who, after the loss of so much, enjoys the emptiness he’s left with. He allows himself to experience every moment beyond what someone burdened with memories can...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Antara Basu-Zych rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book ranks in my list of favorite books of all time. The story is about a young man, Samson Greene, who seems to have everything -- a beautiful wife, a professorship at Columbia University, a home in NYC, good friends... a near-perfect life. But a strange tumor on his brain causes him to lose his memory -- all except the first 12 of his life. So the book starts with him wandering the desert near Las Vegas, mistaken for a homeless man, discovered by the police. His wife is called and by that...more This book ranks in my list of favorite books of all time. The story is about a young man, Samson Greene, who seems to have everything -- a beautiful wife, a professorship at Columbia University, a home in NYC, good friends... a near-perfect life. But a strange tumor on his brain causes him to lose his memory -- all except the first 12 of his life. So the book starts with him wandering the desert near Las Vegas, mistaken for a homeless man, discovered by the police. His wife is called and by that time, Samson is just recovering in the hospital, still unknown whether he will survive. Starting from this crescendo, the story changes pace, elaborating on Samson's journey in Self-Discovery. The story has other plots, but I think I appreciated the themes exploring memory/mind/concept of Self: how much of a person's identity is related to their past experiences? Are past memories traps -- is a person more free if they relinquish their past life? How do the memories of others shape our own minds?

Within this personal story, there's a broader theme. Samson becomes part of an experiment that studies empathy. Ray, the scientist, uses Samson's memory-void mind to plant a powerful memory from someone else's life. Even though this seems an important cause -- making it possible for others to fee empathy, from the perspective of Samson, we feel more the violation and frustration of having the mind played with. This introduces the theme of how medical science may be helping others for a greater good, while potentially hurting and harming one vulnerable individual deeply as the guinea pig. What I found especially artful was that by this point in the story, I felt more sympathy for Samson's wife, Anna, than I did for him. It seemed that with his memory, he lost some ability to empathize, making his decisions rather selfishly and almost mechanically. It was surprising how this experiment affected him, like a personal assault. I think he was almost chosen for the experiment because of his aloofness, yet his reaction was passionate.

Also, I LOVED the ending. It is tempting to have everything neatly tied up at the end, but... the author rather chooses to end describing a simple, everyday scene in the future. Things are not resolved, but mirroring life, slowly being worked out... with hope, but perhaps some baggage too.

The language is Nicole Krauss poetry. I love how she is able to show, almost visually describe a scene, how the characters feel and think. Her description of what it means to be a lover, or how hurtful it is to have your mind violated... these are so beautiful and the reason I look forward to more books by this author! I am adding some of my favorite excerpts here:

"Tell me, was I the sort of person who took your elbow when cars passed on the street, touched your cheek while you talked, combed your wet hair, stopped by the side of the road in the country to point out certain constellations, standing behind you so you had the advantage of leaning and looking up?" (page 140)

"What Ray had refused to see was that no matter how great the desire to be understood, the mind cannot abide any presence but its own. To enter another's consciousness and stake a flag there was to break the law of absolute solitude on which that consciousness depends. It was to threaten, and perhaps irrevocably damage, the essential remoteness of the Self. this transgression was unforgivable." (page 206)

"Once there was a woman he loved. That was how it begun. But from there the story might have unfolded any number of ways. Only the end was always the same: he had emptied himself of the ballast of memory and lunged weightless into the future." (page 208)

"What is life without a witness?" (page 209)(less)

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Jun 18, 2012 Chris Leuchtenburg rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 22, 2012 Cameling added it · review of another edition

What if a brain tumor causes you to lose all memories of your life after the age of 12? That's what happened to Samson Greene. One day he's an English professor at Columbia University and the next, he's found wandering in the Nevada desert, with no memory of his name, what he's doing in the desert, that he's married, who his friends are, and that his mother's dead.

After the tumor has been removed, Samson has to deal with living in a house he doesn't remember, a wife he doesn't recognize and a li...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Katie Parker rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

This book is about a man named Samson Greene, who is found in the middle of the Nevada desert without any idea of who he is. Doctors at the hospital he is taken to find a tumor in his brain and remove it, but even then he doesn’t fully recover. He regains his memories up to age 12, but the subsequent 24 years are a complete blank. He can’t remember his wife, what he did for a job, or the fact that his mother is dead. And so it goes, with him adapting to his new condition and deciding which life...more

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Jul 01, 2010 Abeer Hoque rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is about a man whose brain tumour removal causes him to lose his memory from age 12 onwards. If you leave aside the fact that he's still able to create new memories and is perfectly mentally and physically fine otherwise, I still found it unconvincing. Not only can he understand vocabulary and concepts that he must have learned post adolescence, he seems perfectly well able to function in a world as a 36 year old despite that huge blank space. Sure he has some relationship and career i...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Annemieke Windt rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reading an early novel written by an author you've already read later novels from always feels like a bit of archeology to me. Can we already see the brilliance that's was to come out later. Man walks into a room was the debut of Nicole Kraus, author of A history of love. Her second novel I felt compelled to read and I loved it. It was evocative and showed great empathy.
That was harder with Man walks into a room. The story: a young man loses all his memories after age twelve after a tumor was re...more

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Jun 01, 2011 Patty rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I once knew an art professor who would buy multiple copies of books he liked. He would put one in his back pocket and when he ran into a friend, whip out the book and give it to his friend. This is that sort of book: I want to buy a few copies and give them out to the people I love.

But don't get me wrong: this is not necessarily a cheery, upbeat book.

I may be peculiar; I am drawn to books about people who have lost their memories. The first book of the Monk series, by Anne Perry, for example. Ma...more

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May 03, 2010 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is beautifully written. The book is about a man who has a brain tumor and loses all his memories from ages 12-36. He retains his childhood memories up until age 12 and is able to make new memories but 24 years of his life are just gone. I tried to imagine losing all the moments that make you who are and not only having all these personal events occur and not remember them, but also the events that go on in the world and having no idea what's going on. Losing the happy moments seem to h...more

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Feb 16, 2011 B rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wanted to read her latest book, Great House, but the library didn't have it in. Nicole Krauss wrote one of my favorite books ever, The History of Love. It's a realistic history, not a fluffy engorged pink one. Man Walks Into a Room was her first book and I'm glad I read it. It has such a great hook. A 35-year-old man has a brain tumor the size of a cherry removed. The surgery is successful, however, along with the tumor, every single memory the man had since he was 12-years-old is also removed...more

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Dec 20, 2010 Erin Quinney rated it 3 of 5 stars

I am conflicted about this book. I really wanted to give it three and a half stars. On one hand, the writing is excellent and the characters engaging. There are some interesting philisophical discussions and endearing comedic interludes. On the other hand, the story has some weak points and I found myself thinkig, "Who cares? Get on with the story!"

While the premise is interesting and the phrasing is very good, there is a sense of aimlessness in the execution. The action starts quickly but star...more I am conflicted about this book. I really wanted to give it three and a half stars. On one hand, the writing is excellent and the characters engaging. There are some interesting philisophical discussions and endearing comedic interludes. On the other hand, the story has some weak points and I found myself thinkig, "Who cares? Get on with the story!"

While the premise is interesting and the phrasing is very good, there is a sense of aimlessness in the execution. The action starts quickly but starts to drag. It takes a long time to get to the turning point in the story and when it occurs, it's kind of a letdown. From the beginning, I was waiting for a big revelation or ah-ha moment, but it never quite happens.

There are interesting characters in the story but their presence is brief and left me wanting to see more of them and less of the main character. While I wouldn't call Samson unlikeable, he is sometimes exasperating. He is drawn to fascinating people but is unable to develop these relationships because he never says the things he wants to say. Samson shows moments of spontaneity but ruins them by holding back at key moments.

The ideas in this book are thought-provoking. What would you do if you woke up and couldn't remember anything beyond the first 12 years of your life? Would you try to do everything you could to remember? Samson is never really drawn to remember what he has forgotten. He thinks he wanted to forget. He thinks he can build a new life and become a new person. Because the reader doesn't know what Samson was before the memory loss and we depend on the recollections of the people who knew him, we assume that he is an entirely different person. However, the epilogue shows this to be untrue. His wife remembers him as distant and "autumnal." While his taste in clothes may have changed, his basic traits are the same. Whatever the cause for his memory loss, we are left with the impression that his life won't end up very different than it was before--fond memories of childhood and the countdown to the nuclear explosion that obliterates everything.

I am a big fan of Nicole Krauss. She manages to put into words the confusing and complex emotions involved in personal relationships. She makes heartbreaking situations a joy to behold. Man Walks Into A Room shows the beginnings of this gift. Nicole Krauss's second novel, History of Love, is the culmination of it. Unfortunately, I read History of Love first.(less)

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Mar 04, 2013 Melissa Sussman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading this book I have a whole new appreciation for Nicole Krauss. Every sentence she writes is like poetry and I was completely consumed. This book had a lot of the same themes as her other books, mainly loss and loneliness. It's about a 36 year old Columbia literature professor who because of a small tumor in his brain one day loses memory of the last 25 years of his life. Sounds like a Hollywood movie cliche, but she handles the subject matter in an interesting new way. If you do not...more

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Dec 04, 2012 julie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

a book about the nature of memory and its relationship to identity - i can scarcely think of anything better than that. a man (samson greene) gets a small, benign brain tumor and and loses all memories of his life and who he was after the age of 12. not quite as luminous as krauss' following novels - a history of love and great house - but you can already see here the writer she will become.

samson goes around with a camera, taking photos that he never develops (i can relate to this). he justifie...more

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Jul 23, 2010 Kendall rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Something about this book could not keep my full attention. The themes of memory and loss and identity were really lovely, and there were a handful of really beautifully-written passages.

From one of Samson's memories of being twelve-years-old:
"It was the vivid color of the memory that startled him, a luminous blue. It was all around him, warm and smooth, and moving through it toward the glow of light he could hear muted sounds that seemed to come from a great, impassable distance. There was a fe...more

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Mar 30, 2009 Garrett rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Favorite excerpt:

"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. But he didn't hear the rest of it because just then he kissed her, a kiss that may have lasted for hours while porch lights shuddered and went out across the neighborhood. While stars themselves lit up or went out, star...more

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Jan 20, 2009 Antof9 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-read, americana, couldn-t-put-it-down, wanna-change-the-ending, nyc, first-novel

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I really liked this book ... until I got to the end. I don't mean I disliked it, but I realized that as I was reading it, I was really enjoying it, but that was sort of anticipatory of what I thought might happen near the end. Perhaps it was the misleading back cover (which I hardly ever even read!), or perhaps it was just my naive desire for a happy ending, but I really thought it would end differently.

It was fascinating, and really well written. I'm always surprised when a woman writes from a...more I really liked this book ... until I got to the end. I don't mean I disliked it, but I realized that as I was reading it, I was really enjoying it, but that was sort of anticipatory of what I thought might happen near the end. Perhaps it was the misleading back cover (which I hardly ever even read!), or perhaps it was just my naive desire for a happy ending, but I really thought it would end differently.

It was fascinating, and really well written. I'm always surprised when a woman writes from a man's point of view, or a man writes from a woman's point of view, and it's believable. But it was, and was very well done. It was also interesting to read Samson's perceptions and observations about Anna, as she grieved for her husband and their relationship.

Sometimes when you're watching a movie, you notice something that is missing, rather than something that happens. It's when I assume that the scene that would have explained what I'm confused about must be "on the cutting room floor". The same thing happened at one point in the book. Samson is having a conversation with Lana over lunch, and he says, "I'd follow you in a paddle boat and shout encouragement." Her response: "Thanks. And if you ever decide to walk across the country again, I'll follow you in a car." This never comes up again, but I felt like it told us how he ended up where we first met him. Why isn't this discussed? Why doesn't the author follow up on this? Why doesn't Samson ask Lana more about this? Or tell Anna about it? I think the answers must have been edited out. This is the kind of thing I would ask the author about if I were a reporter.

There was also a use of "disorientated" that I thought should have been "disoriented": Soon the long corridor gave way to other long, equally sterile stretches of corridor and Samson became disorientated. The sour chemical smell in the air, so archly inhuman, and the vile light that cast everything in a flat and sickly hue were enough to lend the place a tense, unnerving quality... Maybe it's small of me to pick at that one word when the rest of the writing is so good (as illustrated by the words around it), but that bothered me!

I did like this -- don't get me wrong. But I wanted more hope at the end than I got. It won't usurp History of Love as my favorite of her books, but I'm glad I've read her first novel.(less)

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Feb 27, 2011 Gr8Reader rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"A man is found wandering the desert outside Las Vegas. The cards in his wallet identify him as Samson Greene, a Columbia University English professor last seen leaving campus eight days ago. Thirty-six years old, with a wife, Anna, and a dog, Frank. But Samson doesn't even recognize his own name, and by the time Anna has make her way across the country to pick him up, doctors have discovered a cherry-sized tumor in his brain; its removal eradicates the last twenty-four years of Samson's memorie...more

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Feb 28, 2011 Katherine rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

“The wind blows continually in the wrong direction, a strange wind that unsettles us, swirling the dust in restless eddies. We eat our meals with sand between our teeth” (4).
“…a man who did not wake each day to the misery he’d left slumped in the chair the night before” (14).
“Later he tried to remember exactly what he felt and thought in those first hours, but unlike the sharp clarity of what followed, he could only recall the vague wake of the anesthesia” (15).
"He had stubby fingers and one of...more “The wind blows continually in the wrong direction, a strange wind that unsettles us, swirling the dust in restless eddies. We eat our meals with sand between our teeth” (4).
“…a man who did not wake each day to the misery he’d left slumped in the chair the night before” (14).
“Later he tried to remember exactly what he felt and thought in those first hours, but unlike the sharp clarity of what followed, he could only recall the vague wake of the anesthesia” (15).
"He had stubby fingers and one of them was cinched by a wedding ring that looked more like an artifact stuck on his finger than the symbol of any committed passion" (31).
“The city hurt to look at, all angles and glints of sun like shattered glass. The trees were pitiful, anchored in concrete. The dogs seemed to accept this, and no matter how many times they passed the same tree they would act as if they’d never seen it before and mark it as their own. Sometimes Samson would take Frank along, who, unlike Anna, had forgiven him everything. When they caught each other’s eye, he felt that Frank understood him and did not feel it necessary to remind him of the many things they had once done together. Often Frank could not be bothered to go through the charade of fussing over the tree, and simply stopped to pee wherever he was. On these days he seemed to hold in disdain the other dogs that were slaves to the system” (48-49).
“Soon it became a secret so well hidden that even the doctors did not find it when they swept their searchlights across his mind” (50).
“Later he apologized, but the words hung in the air between them, hardening like the unidentifiable spilled things on the street that solidified into horrendous fossils” (57).
"She put on Frank, who panted sullenly into the phone" (72).
“What are the criteria for gaping? Samson wondered. Extremes: tremendous beauty or prizewinning ugliness; deformities; violent or noisy behavior. All rash, obvious reasons to gawk. But the great candidates for stares seemed more subtle, those that quietly, diplomatically challenge the authority of the norm” (81).
“There was a table and a few lawn chairs, the kind with plastic straps that leave leg welts” (88).
“Everyone—the crowd, the security guards, and the former star who eventually rolled up in a limousine van—seemed to be going through the motions, having pledged to protect at all costs the illusion of fame, without which the city would be swallowed by a brutal wave of sadness and banality” (104).
“ ‘Look. What if we just defined the spiritual aspect of human nature as the need to belong—be it at some cosmological, biological, or social level. What people call spiritual experiences usually involve a sudden feeling of being supernaturally connected with some way, right?’” (104).
“It was a story he’d told countless times, now whittle down to a few phrases; a story that, like all true stories, lost something with each telling” (118-119).
“He spoke of human solitude, about the intrinsic loneliness of a sophisticated mind, one that is capable of reason and poetry but which grasps at straws when it comes to understanding another, a mind aware of the impossibility of absolute understanding. The difficulty of having a mind that understands that it will always be misunderstood” (126).
“He shone the light at the star chart and tried to find some connection between the flimsy rotating disk and the massive, breathing field of stars” (131).
"The man lost his shoe and it lay there until a cocktail waitress picked it up and carried it away on a tray of empty glasses" (173).
“By her side her mother, practically a child herself, her hair parted in the middle and falling loosely over her shoulders, not yet cut, primped, and permed into the unattractive helmet of middle age” (208).

*I'm noticing a pattern in my reactions to Krauss's work. She hooks me for the first hundred pages or so, then falters. I find I just want the book to end after such a promising beginning. Still, lots of good sentences and phrases to be had in her work(less)

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Dec 19, 2010 Richard Cheng rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 11, 2010 Alana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010_04_april, reviewed

While Man Walks Into a Room was Nicole Krauss's debut novel, I was first brought to experience her genius in The History of Love. Her first work feels like less of a novel and more like a lengthy short story -- though, to its credit, it certainly doesn't feel any longer than a short story. Instead, it's more of a lingering discussion on an idea that begs to be explored. As a result, it feels hard to summarize the plot in a tantalizing way beyond the initial scenario, as a large part of the novel...more While Man Walks Into a Room was Nicole Krauss's debut novel, I was first brought to experience her genius in The History of Love. Her first work feels like less of a novel and more like a lengthy short story -- though, to its credit, it certainly doesn't feel any longer than a short story. Instead, it's more of a lingering discussion on an idea that begs to be explored. As a result, it feels hard to summarize the plot in a tantalizing way beyond the initial scenario, as a large part of the novel is really a reaction to just that.

Samson Greene is found wandering the desert outside of Las Vegas eight days after going missing in Manhattan. Almost immediately, he undergoes surgery to remove a newly discovered brain tumor and when he wakes up, he has no memory of his life after the age of twelve. No memory of his loving wife, his career as an English professor at Columbia University, his friends, his dog, his mother's death... nothing. Remarkably, he appears able to make new memories and is still an intelligent and functioning adult, but the slate appears to have been wiped clean of over twenty years of experiences. Without any connection to this life, he doesn't particularly feel a desperate need for these memories to return so much as he just wants everyone to stop looking at him with expectation. This is an unusual response to memory loss and is incredibly painful for Anna, his wife, who just wants her husband back, intact, with memories of their ten years spent together. As he adjusts to this new world (though thankfully we are spared the Big ideas and he seems to have the mentality of an adult if not the personal memories), he struggles to establish a relationship with Anna and find some purpose to his own self. Unsurprisingly, things do not go well. Samson retreats further into himself as he realizes he cannot really make Anna happy, developing a strange friendship with a former student and relying on the companionship of his dog, Frank, who does not expect Samson to remember their time together. This is all moving along when Krauss throws in a bit of a twist: a neuro-scientist offers Samson the opportunity to take part in a hushed-up memory experiment and Samson quickly signs up. The experiment does not claim that it could return his memories, for those are lost for good, but instead the experiment is attempting something much more revolutionary and potentially much more traumatizing. Of course, if one picks up the novel and reads the very first few pages, one might wonder how the depiction of a young soldier witnessing an atomic bomb testing plays into the rest of the story. It is this memory that will hit Samson with all its atomic force, finally breaking him open to understand everything that has befallen him. It takes the story a while to get there, but impact is astounding.

As I mentioned, this novel is not one that should be read for plotlines; it's the exploration of a "what if...?" idea. From the beginning, you should be pretty aware that everything cannot end well. It might end not terribly, but that's about all you can hope for after a tragedy that takes someone from those he loves without actually killing him. Indeed, as characters wonder in the story, would Samson's death have been preferable to wiping his memories but leaving him standing? For a large part, I enjoyed the awkward and painful examination of what to do with this man who has been cut from the ties of his life, yes remains floating around. It's believable and heartbreaking, which is a hard emotion to muster when it comes towards the beginning of a novel and you have not really had time to get to know your characters. Your sympathy focuses mainly on Anna, the "widow" who is told to act against her hopes, to smother her desire that the Samson she knows will return to love her, and to simply help him adjust to his new life as a helpmate rather than a loving wife. Even though Samson is the one to experience the memory loss, he has no real remorse for something he has no attachment to in his present condition, so it's Anna who has experienced the real tragedy.... though Samson does come to understand his loss, in a way. Once we arrive at the memory experiment, things change a bit. Krauss is not interested in creating a science-fiction epic, though its aim to graft the memories from one person to another is rather fearsome in its implications. She uses this experiment as an opportunity to give Samson new ties and to allow him to explore his loss and the burden of what he gains.

Krauss is simply exploring the trajectory of a lost soul... what one might do in today's day and age if completely unanchored from the life they knew and yet somehow still inhabiting the shell of it. Strangely, if there were kids involved, Samson might have felt obliged to make more of an effort at rekindling a relationship with Anna. He trusts her because she's there but perhaps he does love her after all, if he would only open himself up to the idea. Instead, he struggles to find his own way, feeling untethered and yet concerned for Anna's welfare and future. Whether this springs from the knowledge that she tried to reorient him to the world, the fact that she seems so terribly hurt by what has happened to Samson, or a growing/returning love for this woman... well, without memories to understand one's motivations, perhaps everything is wrapped up together. By removing us from the story arch that might define more conventional novels, Krauss achieves a dreamlike state of wandering exploration... perhaps a more pleasant version of what Samson might feel as he suddenly finds himself as a thirty-something year old man with no knowledge of the twenty-odd years that led to his current state. It's haunting and painful, causing readers to question how they might react in similar circumstances, and ultimately having to accept that there is no way to know, as the person one now is would no longer exist without the last two thirds of one's life to shape him/her.

Nicole Krauss writes with such beauty that I now know I'll read anything she publishes. I might not push Man Walks Into a Room on anyone with the same passion as I did The History of Love, but I still think it's a lovely work of incredible quality. Reviews that I've read online have lamented that the ending doesn't seem to bring any real closure or epiphany, but then, the situation hardly suggests that there will ever really be closure. As for an epiphany, well, quite honestly the understanding that life continues on seems to be a rather painful and yet hard-won moral. It may not be the ending that one wants, but such is life. (less)

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About Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss is the author of the international bestseller The History of Love, which was published by W.W. Norton in 2005. It won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Ėtranger, was named #1 book of the year by Amazon.com, and was short-listed for the Orange, Médicis, and Femina prizes. Her first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was a finalist for the...more

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Quotes from Man Walks Into a Room

“He spoke of human solitude, about the intrinsic loneliness of a sophisticated mind, one that is capable of reason and poetry but which grasps at straws when it comes to understanding another, a mind aware of the impossibility of absolute understanding. The difficulty of having a mind that understands that it will always be misunderstood.” — 54 people liked it

“Tell me, was I the sort of person who took your elbow when cars passed on the street, touched your cheek while you talked, combed your wet hair, stopped by the side of the road in the country to point out certain constellations, standing behind you so that you had the advantage of leaning and looking up?” — 43 people liked it

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