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You Were Wrong

2.87 of 5 stars 2.87 · rating details · 143 ratings · 63 reviews

Meet Karl Floor: friendless, motherless, put-upon, living with his loudmouth stepfather and pretending to take satisfaction from teaching high school math. Karl returns home one day to discover his apartment being robbed by a beautiful woman named Sylvia.

So begins a strange and mostly inadvertant saga: Karl, now in love with this unexpected woman, finds himself introduced...more

ebook, 192 pages

Published September 5th 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (first published August 2nd 2010)

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May 14, 2011 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

I mostly loved this book...all the way to the bloody end, but not through it. I kept thinking "wow, this Matthew guy is SHARPe" (hah! huh...), spinning these fantastically cinematic turns of phrase with astonishing ease, plowing the English language in this flamboyant manner as if he's saying "fuck you, I'm the first person in history to use this thing I like to call 'metaphor' and isn't it just really fucking cool?" Noggin-scratching sentences, oftentimes hysterically funny, predominantly poign...more I mostly loved this book...all the way to the bloody end, but not through it. I kept thinking "wow, this Matthew guy is SHARPe" (hah! huh...), spinning these fantastically cinematic turns of phrase with astonishing ease, plowing the English language in this flamboyant manner as if he's saying "fuck you, I'm the first person in history to use this thing I like to call 'metaphor' and isn't it just really fucking cool?" Noggin-scratching sentences, oftentimes hysterically funny, predominantly poignant, expressing a prism of emotional nuances for which we so often have no proper words, but that we all know and accept on a gut level. I mean, seriously, I could throw some quotes at you, but the book is littered with too many to choose from. It is a fast and fantastic read. It is also, I must warn you, probably a love or hate type of thing in most cases. Here are some tips for determining what team you should be in the Red Rover game...the "Hell yeah, this book" side, or the "Shut the fuck up, you whiny bitch" side:

HYTB! = You have experienced in your life an extended depression, or simply a general feeling of "blah, what's the point?" that has lasted long enough for you to start weighing the purpose of your sorrow, feeling stupid for feeling such sorrow, and feeling an even deeper sorrow because not only are you a sad bastard, but you have no discernible reason to be, so you feel guilt on top of depression, hence making yourself all the more depressed. And on and on in such a fashion. (This is me sometimes.) Also, you want to read about the fascinating world of two neurotics in love.

"Our friend was on the side of humanity that would always take things hard, and knew that this new lady in his life, though she might keep him for a time, would grow weary of this burden of how he took things. He did not see, or saw but did not know, that she was his kindred and not just in this."

STFUYWB. = You hate books full of mostly frustrating characters that you either can't relate to, or hate that you can relate to (you belong above, actually. This book will frustrate you more with yourself, but that's going to happen somehow anyway, right? Again, this is me, and I very much enjoyed it and the frustration it created). Anyway, you will definitely hate it if... your eyes glaze over when someone starts telling you about their "feeeeewings." You watch NASCAR. You are a textbook sociopath. You think that everyone should just be a little bit more like the Marlboro Man or some tough guy mobster type. You think all music that comes from broken-hearted men is for "sissies." You use the word "sissies" and don't put quotation marks around it. You want everything to be actiony and dramatic, but not in the "sissy" sense of the word "dramatic." Basically, if you are not and never have been melancholy and overly self-reflective, there is a good chance you will hate this book. If you read to escape, you will hate this book. I loved it.

I must admit, though: I hated the ending. It made me mad, mad, mad. You're asking me to suspend too much disbelief, here. You created a whole mess of other problems with no indication that they were going to be problems even though they obviously would be, and basically said without saying it "just shut up and deal with this twisted rendition of a Hollywood ending that couldn't possibly be one anyway or something like that or not like that or something." Why are you screwing with me, dude?

At the same time, I could be being harsh. I set the book down and immediately picked up a Nabokov novel before properly processing what I had read. That's like holding up a picture of Angelina Jolie to your fella and asking him who's hotter, you or her...totally unfair. This book was rad. He's no Nabokov, but the hint after hint of greatness shooting off the page told me that he could very likely do something truly perfect some day.

Sorry for the rambley review. Sadly, this is by far the most productive thing I have done all day. (Wah, wah).

(less)

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Sep 19, 2010 Krok Zero rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fall-2010

Attention DFW superfans, do you know about this guy Matthew Sharpe? He seems to be pretty obscure, I only know who he is because some blogger was pimping this book and then I saw it at the library and read it and liked it a lot. Anyway, he reminds me a lot of the dearly departed Mr. Wallace. The circuitous syntax leading to jaw-dropping marathon sentences; the sensitive moral and philosophical engagement with even the most mundane aspects of daily life; the heavyweight intellectual brainpower; t...more Attention DFW superfans, do you know about this guy Matthew Sharpe? He seems to be pretty obscure, I only know who he is because some blogger was pimping this book and then I saw it at the library and read it and liked it a lot. Anyway, he reminds me a lot of the dearly departed Mr. Wallace. The circuitous syntax leading to jaw-dropping marathon sentences; the sensitive moral and philosophical engagement with even the most mundane aspects of daily life; the heavyweight intellectual brainpower; the defiant, brainy sense of humor laughing ruefully in the face of human suffering and confusion. These are (some of) the attributes for which DFW has been (perhaps overly) lionized, and I've listed them here because they are all of them present in Matthew Sharpe's You Were Wrong, a terrific new novel that is not getting the buzz it deserves. The main point of divergence with DFW is a matter of scale: Sharpe is no maximalist, and he's able to say uncle after less than 200 pages, evincing a restraint DFW clearly did not possess in his longform fiction. I don't wish to make it sound as though Sharpe's voice is identical to or a ripoff of Wallace's, because he definitely has his own thing going on. I could just as accurately have mentioned Ben Marcus's Notable American Women as a comparative reference, but there are fewer Marcus fans on GR (though I think he's brilliant). Anyway I'm just saying if you're into DFW you will most likely be into this.

This book is weird, but it is accessibly weird, if that makes sense. Jonathan Franzen would probably get annoyed at it for being "difficult" but he would be wrong. It never exactly reveals itself, the reader is never really sure just what kind of book this is, but this condition is due not to authorial withholding so much as the book's general uncategorizableness. It begins as just a sharply written character study with a vague element of mystery, then becomes both weirder and plottier as a kind of existential thriller, then more or less casts off everything that it was before and just exists unidentifiably for a while, then ends as a demented love story. What's consistent is the singularly fucking amazing language, sentences that contort themselves baroquely but logically, prose pleasure on every page. Passages like this and better can be found everywhere:

What was the deep homily of the hundred mercifully distracting police procedurals that could be enjoyed on his television set at any hour of the night or day if it wasn't that there was no thing living or otherwise that was not a potential agent or vessel of the law? The law was in each capillary of the world. He could spit out the window and his spit would be law. Were he launched into space in a transparent plexiglass egg, each cell in his body and every molecule of his surrogate womb would be law, the stars but law's blind eyes gazing at him with cold impartiality.

And great knotty dialogue too, such as: "Stop pretending that being accommodating isn't just a form of aggression" and "I can't tell if you're bullshitting both yourself and me or just me."

From the reviews I've glanced at, some people are taking this book as a satire. I really don't know what they're talking about. Not everything that's funny needs to be a satire for you to praise it, critics. I think it is more an exaggerated fable about the opening up of an outcast, about the life of a painfully sensitive depressive and how a crazy sequence of events renders him possibly slightly more at ease with the world. Ugh, that makes it sound like some kind of awful Manic Pixie Dream Girl romp, which is most assuredly isn't, so just forget I said anything, ever. Point is, the book is really a lot of fun, smart and funny and deeply felt, and I don't know why it isn't a bigger deal. I mean, I'm the first GR user to even review it, what's up with that? I certainly had more fun with this than I am having with the Franzenstein monster at my bedside. Zing! (Also, this book has both a great title and a great cover, so you can't say it is not packaged for your pleasure.)(less)

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Apr 06, 2012 Matt Galletta added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

You Were Wrong, Matthew Sharpe's fourth novel, is occasionally funny, occasionally interesting, but largely just dull. This is due in part to the protagonist, a 26-year-old math teacher who is occasionally funny, occasionally interesting, but largely just dull.[return][return]The back cover of You Were Wrong calls the novel a “surreal detective story.” Borrowing plot devices from detective stories seems to be a trend lately among writers usually considered more “literary” (see Denis Johnson, Tho...more You Were Wrong, Matthew Sharpe's fourth novel, is occasionally funny, occasionally interesting, but largely just dull. This is due in part to the protagonist, a 26-year-old math teacher who is occasionally funny, occasionally interesting, but largely just dull.[return][return]The back cover of You Were Wrong calls the novel a “surreal detective story.” Borrowing plot devices from detective stories seems to be a trend lately among writers usually considered more “literary” (see Denis Johnson, Thomas Pynchon, Jonathan Lethem, etc.). The results of this technique can often be inspired and satisfying work, with talented writers creating variations on the familiar arc of a detective story.[return][return]Unfortunately, in this case the result is a novel that feels sketchy, the author hanging random thoughts on the skeleton of a mystery novel. Sharpe briefly touches on subjects like fatherhood, race, and sexuality, but does not seem interested in exploring any in a deeper sense.[return][return]Nor does he seem interested in a storyline that moves and engages the reader. Things happen, characters utter odd and incomprehensible dialogue, and the process repeats. This is again due in part to the protagonist, who is fairly oblivious to the outside world, but that still does not make for an engaging read.[return][return]The writing style also can grate. Sharpe employs a purposely verbose voice throughout. For instance, take this single sentence: “The problem of leaving the house, though, now rivaled the problem of staying in the house, which was closely associated with the problem of the man with whom he shared it, which had confronted him most evenings and weekends for as long as he could remember, and which, feelingly, was no so very unlike being trapped in the man's stale, crumbed, salt-and-pepper beard, or salt-and-brown-shoe-polish, if one were aiming for visual accuracy.” It's clearly intended to be humorous, and it is, but the joke wears thin after a hundred pages of it.[return][return]For an example of prolix sentences that can entertain, try Lynne Tillman's recent American Genius: A Comedy. For a better example of a “surreal detective story,” try a Coen brothers film.(less)

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Apr 13, 2011 Jeff James rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: review-copies

Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

You Were Wrong is a short book, but manages to wear out its welcome in no time at all. I was ready to throw it against the wall after two chapters, but forced myself to continue reading so that I could finish and give it a fair review. The good news is that I got used to the writing style after a few more chapters, but the bad news is that I think that may have just been Stockholm Syndrome...more Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

You Were Wrong is a short book, but manages to wear out its welcome in no time at all. I was ready to throw it against the wall after two chapters, but forced myself to continue reading so that I could finish and give it a fair review. The good news is that I got used to the writing style after a few more chapters, but the bad news is that I think that may have just been Stockholm Syndrome in action.

The main character, Karl Floor, is a sad-sack twenty-something math teacher who shares his dead mother’s house with his hateful stepfather. When the book opens, Karl is beaten up by two of his students, only to stumble home and discover that his house is apparently being robbed by the beautiful and mysterious Sylvia Vetch. Sylvia doesn’t act like a normal robber, however, and tends to Karl’s wounds before taking him on a journey across town to the house where she lives. As Karl’s life becomes intertwined with Sylvia and her circle, he wanders aimlessly through a series of mysterious encounters with people who abuse and confuse him. Karl is entirely passive by nature, and spends most of the book whining, getting dragged along against his will, or just plain lying down and passing out.

The book feels a bit more like a series of rambling vignettes than a novel. There is the slightest hint of a mystery concerning Sylvia’s real motivations, and the story almost swerves into crime fiction at one point before course-correcting, but mostly it’s a shambling collection of long-winded character studies. Sharpe describes the most mundane of things in excruciating detail, often employing digressions within digressions that bloat single sentences into page-long tangents. Characters don’t speak like actual human beings; either they monologue for pages about vaguely related matters, or they utter terse exchanges full of thudding importance and implied mystery.

The best I can say about the book is that Sharpe occasionally pulls off a fine turn of phrase or throws in a decent joke. For the most part, however, I found it both overwritten and crashingly dull, and was glad to see the back of it.(less)

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Nov 06, 2010 Elissa Hoole rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's hard to get a grip on whether I loved or hated this book, which I suppose is saying something that it had that reaction in me. I loved: the surreal feeling, the utter unreliability of every single word, the math--the way it defines and defies Karl--, the subtly aggressive moments of sexuality and the subtly sexual moments of aggression, the dead mother and her weird influence over her son, and sentences like this: “His life had been a series of slow, dull shoves through time toward the grav...more It's hard to get a grip on whether I loved or hated this book, which I suppose is saying something that it had that reaction in me. I loved: the surreal feeling, the utter unreliability of every single word, the math--the way it defines and defies Karl--, the subtly aggressive moments of sexuality and the subtly sexual moments of aggression, the dead mother and her weird influence over her son, and sentences like this: “His life had been a series of slow, dull shoves through time toward the grave, which she had disrupted by existing in proximity to him, and now the sun was coming up on a post-Vetch life that was pathetic, intolerable, and that he could have prevented just by forgiving her—or even not forgiving her but living with her in unforgiveness and accepting the beating and any subsequent treacheries and lies as the modest price of loving and being loved, which was what he assumed most couples did.”

I didn't like so much the exquisite descriptions of vomit sliding and pooling and congealing on things, the way Karl’s “voice” and the rambling of the evil step-father were so similar...the long stretches of page-long sentences in Karl’s brain have the same tone and cadence and sardonic humor that Jones has. Is this a comment about how he resembles the man he detests? Does the step-father not actually exist, or not actually exist apart from Karl? Or is it unintentional, the result of a certain style overtaking the book? The plot, or lack of it—especially the ending...though it kept me reading, waiting for the big reveal at the end, it wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped (although I loved the last couple of lines--hysterical!), and, sadly, I didn't much enjoy the dialogue, which seemed to be trying too hard in some places.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, and it's one of the better ones I've received via the Early Reviewers' program--I can appreciate what Sharpe was aiming for and what he achieved in many places in this book, and I like it when authors take risks like this. An interesting and complicated book!(less)

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Aug 02, 2012 Karyn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

Sharpe's novel starts out with a strong premise--the narrator, Karl Floor, returns home to find a strange woman (Sylvia Vetch) robbing his home. The two characters become intertwined, and Sylvia more-or-less leads Karl on a journey that involves shady, mysterious characters, occasional violence, a stolen hat, drugs, sex, and even a wedding. I really wanted to like this book, but ultimately, I thought it fell flat. There seemed to be too much confusion, too much withholding of information, with v...more

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Sep 06, 2011 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are many funny passages in this book. And also many stylistic tics that are probably a statement on Karl's (the protagonist), dull acumen, such as these passages, wherein one thing is defined as another to simplify it, the scene is broken down to its molecules (to simplify it), and Karl exercises his characteristic passivity:

The lids had fluttered at times when he searched for a word, and the fluttering had functioned then as a hand held out to stay speech, a Shut up uttered by the eyelids...more

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Aug 31, 2011 Christine Kuchinsky rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Weird. There is no other way to describe this novel. It begins when passive-aggressive, under-achiever Karl is jumped by two of his students. Beaten, bloody, and probably concussed, he meets Sylvia, a beautiful and mysterious woman who, for some reason, is in the home he shares with his speech-giving stepfather. Rather than kick Sylvia out or call the cops, he instead leaves with her and meets a group of seemingly slapdash group of beach bums, and life gets weird from there. He tries to sort out...more

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Sep 28, 2010 Gregg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

I won this book in a Goodreads First Reads Give Away.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. The story is intelligent and dark, with layers of complexity and some withering sarcasm. The author uses wonderfully descriptive language to say a great deal in such a short novel.

The back cover offers a review by Lydia Millet that describes "You Were Wrong" as a hybrid of a P.G. Wodehouse social farce and the bitter wit of John Kennedy Toole. I have read P.G. Wodehouse as well as "A Confederacy of Dunc...more

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Sep 02, 2011 Joel Roberts rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

strange book. much of the plot and dialogue was completely unrealistic... ridiculous, really. in this, i was reminded of Toole, but that is where the similarities end: this novel was not "A Confederacy of Dunces". i truly wanted to like this novel because i saw some risk-taking in the writing. unfortunately, i found Sharpe's style cluttered and inconsistent, confusing me and making for a difficult read. i have a tough time recommending this book because i regularly checked out for pages at a tim...more

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Oct 09, 2010 Margaret rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads-shelf

This has an interesting story line, a few twists and turns along the way and the author is able to pull together incongruous concepts to juxtapose ideas in an extremely novel way. These glimmers of brilliance are made recondite by the profusion of words, followed by clause after clause of cacophonous phrases, the best descriptor for the novel is abstruse, the key elements enshrined in a plethora of cynical commentary so turbid as to be occluded. Character motivations were nearly opaque throughou...more

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Jul 08, 2011 oriana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to oriana by: Krok Zero

Shelves: read-2011

Apparently this is meant for fans of DFW and Ben Marcus, and I am stupid and out of touch for not knowing that already. Shit!

***

Oh god my I never reviewed this?? Shit. Ummm, I dunno about the DFW comparison, and honestly I've never been able to get into Ben Marcus. It's a cool book, though; Sharpe has a super weird writing style that was kind of hard to stay immersed in, but never became overly quirky or annoying. I guess maybe the DFW comparison is like how his characters have these ridiculousl...more

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Apr 21, 2011 Marc Kozak rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Good Lord, this guy can write some sentences. That alone made this book worth it, just the sheer enjoyment of reading these long, meticulously constructed passages, often relating to some epic aspect of time or creation. Some might say it's a little too clever for it's own good, but I loved it. Take this first sentence of chapter three, where Karl wakes up on a beach:

Twenty thousand years after a slab of ice the size of France had made the beach he now woke up on in sodden clothes, Karl assessed...more Good Lord, this guy can write some sentences. That alone made this book worth it, just the sheer enjoyment of reading these long, meticulously constructed passages, often relating to some epic aspect of time or creation. Some might say it's a little too clever for it's own good, but I loved it. Take this first sentence of chapter three, where Karl wakes up on a beach:

Twenty thousand years after a slab of ice the size of France had made the beach he now woke up on in sodden clothes, Karl assessed the feel of having had all but a thin crust of flesh, hair, and skin scraped out of him by Stony and whatever series of people and events - now compressed into a red, wet bolus of vague sense memory - had come after Stony in the night.

If that sentence seems very long and annoying to you, I can't recommend you read this because it's all like that. I just happened to eat it up for some reason. Here's another I liked:

Karl pulled the car over to the side of a street almost identical to his own, in front of a house hardly distinguishable from his. A Martian visiting this section of Long Island, unable to decipher signs designating street names, would be so confounded by th similarity of the streets, the two-story houses, and the bright, dense, mown lawns, that it would, as if trapped in the labyrinth of a sadistic god, die a little in its Martian soul; not a bad outcome from the human point of view: Martians drive down property values; their children are bullies and perform poorly on standardized tests.

Not much actually happens in the book - this sad-sack named Karl comes home to find a pretty woman in his house who claims to be robbing him, but she sticks around and Karl slowly finds out a lot of truths about his life. The only thing stopping this thing from five star status is the characters themselves. Sharpe tries to convince us over and over that Karl is an idiot, but Shapre's wit and cleverness in dialogue makes Karl seem not as hopeless as was intended. In fact he seems pretty smart. Another character summarizes it pretty nicely at the end, commenting on how Karl always makes "these weird hostile jokes like you hate everyone even though we can tell you really love everyone but you're just really lonely and sad."

There's also the problem of Karl's dad, who goes on enormous monologues for literally pages. His and most of the character's dialogue is interesting and funny, but c'mon, no one talks like that. Sharpe may narrate like that, but not everyone (or anyone) should talk like that.

I dunno, I still thought it was great. Characters, yeah, plot, okay, but A+ for the sheer enjoyement of reading. If you like this, I recommend you run out right away and read A Fraction of the Whole, which is very similar to this but better.

Ok, one more sample:

He was curious about the implication that inanimate objects might also be dishonest, and periodically when encountering one he tried to figure out if it was telling the truth. He had wondered briefly too if, for a man-made object to be honest, everyone involved in its making had to be, and had concluded that was too stringent a requirement, since some man-made objects were honest but no men were all the time; lying to oneself, others, and the very nature of reality was intrinsic to humans, just as flight was intrinsic to buzzards, and buzzards who busted a wing, like humans who woke up one day to the pure truth, perished quickly unless lovingly maintained in captivity.(less)

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

Great writing always compels me to read on, and Sharpe is a great writer. There are some pretty ingenious uses of figurative language and imagery here. The story, though, and the characters, situations, plot, etc, struck me as almost surreal. There are little or no consequences for many of the actions, but I still can't decide if I enjoyed that or not. It kind of left me floating. Anyhow, I'm not making any sense, so I'll just say, I enjoyed it for the great writing.

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Mar 21, 2013 Allison rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'll start off by saying I didn't get it. I didn't mind the ride, but I didn't get the book as a whole. It needed a lot more contemplation than I felt like giving it. What definitely helped was that I went into it knowing it would be a very strange read. I was prepared and I was able to go along for the ride. It's definitely written in a very poetic and almost caressing style. I've never read a book before that felt like the main character's point of view was separated from the world by a layer...more

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Sep 20, 2010 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Matthew Sharpe is an impressive writer, and he sure knows how to pack a sentence with wit and intelligence. You Were Wrong is a strange family odyssey, told through the eyes of Karl Floor, a sad sack, high school math teacher, who is still mourning the death of his mother five years after the fact.

I was barely fifty pages into this short novel when I had already decided to make it my next featured staff pick at the bookstore, where I am employed. I also felt that (as far as ratings go) You Were...more

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Feb 02, 2011 Meagan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The descriptive tone was nice. The characters were certainly not two dimensional.
The problem I had with this books is that, even though the voice is third person, everything is from Karl's perspective and almost suffocatingly so. I wanted some space. The reader is deeply entrenched in Karl's mind and since he is dim-witted and his mind is prone to wandering, we get the feeling, much like Karl does, that we're just not quite understanding everything that is going on, that something is missing. Th...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Justin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the second book by Sharpe I've read (the first was Jamestown) and likely the last. I don't know why he insists on writing with such opacity. Many of his sentences are wonderfully composed, though some others are pedestrian. Clearly he cares about his craft, but it seems like he also disdains his audience. His aversion to plot clarity and discernible dialogue goes beyond some po-mo, mfa hang-up.

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Jul 27, 2011 Amy Warrick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oh goodness, What? WTF? Gorgeous words & sentences, bizarre story. I kept reading because I wanted to find out where he was going with this, and because it the writing was so much fun, but by the end I was all, like, DUDE. What happened here. Read for an example of fantastic & enviable writing, but as for the storyline, let it go, let it go. Okay, I did kind of like the ending.

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Mar 24, 2011 Todd Agostini rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Matthew Sharpe is an incredible writer.

However these characters were complete morons... except the father.. that guy was the best.

I found myself continuously impress by Matthew Sharpe's abilities as I read but I didn't like the story and I really hated the main characters.

I would read Matthew Sharpe again and think he is a great writer.

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May 14, 2011 Vaughan is currently reading it · review of another edition

picked this up from the library on a whim and it's decent, occasionally much more, but a lot of the characters are just too arch/deadpan/something that keeps me from really getting too into it; still, it's a quick read and something I can read at school during SSR, which can't be said for the next book I'm putting on my currently reading shelf

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Apr 29, 2011 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You will either love or hate this book-- I fell on the love side until the very end, which struck me as disjointed and, dare I say it, inorganic. The complex, looping sentences and digressions actually make this a quick read-- by the time you finish the sentence, you're halfway down the page. Dark humor doesn't hurt either.

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Mar 08, 2011 Meg added it · review of another edition

Shelves: sent-for-review, abandoned, first-reads

From the opening paragraph informing me that Karl Floor "had had a hard life," I had a sinking suspicion that the two of us wouldn't be getting along well. Sharpe's quirky novel is about a stifled, boring teacher and the beautiful "robber" who enters his home, informs him that she's taking stuff -- but can't leave without chatting with him first.

I got about 40 pages into this one before flipping to the end, slightly annoyed by the pretentious writing style and seeming lack of plot. As I original...more

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Mar 14, 2011 Patricia Geller rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am happily reading this book. I really like the way he writes but when I came to the end, it was so far fetched that it made me question the whole book but I would go looking for Sharpe's next novel. Someone wrote they didn't know if they loved or hated this book but it does leave you wondering just what you were doing.

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Dec 06, 2011 Corey rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An interesting little book. A bit formulaic at times, but an enjoyable read. Mighta bumped the stars up to 4 but for the ending. Seemed rushed, and perhaps a bit predictable. Can people remain as naive and locked out of the real world as the main character? Hard to say. Perhaps. I'd read more books by this author.

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Oct 29, 2010 Carrie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

I won this book from a Goodreads First Read Contest.

This book is hard to rate, and even harder to explain and review. What I can say about it is that it is very wordy. I know you're thinking, "it's a book, of course it is", but it's a little TOO wordy. It seems to ramble on, never quite finding the point. The characters were hard to relate to, and most of the time the book seems to go nowhere.

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Oct 14, 2010 Leigh rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm about 60 pages in right now - I'm torn. The story is interesting, but it is not an easy book to read, and I'm not entirely sure where the book is going.
- - - - -

Now that I've finished the book, I have a slightly different perspective. It is still a twisted story and not an easy book to read. But looking back, I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would after the first few pages. The story has some intriguing twists. It's a quick read, but I think it's worth it; just be prepared to be co...more

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Sep 29, 2010 Kathrina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-fiction

This was really good. Then it got weird. And then it was good again, or maybe it was good all along, and I was maybe distracted.
I love Sharpe's turn of phrase, his technique, his cliche-breaking. I am not as fond of his characters, whom he seems to hold at arm's length. They were not whole people, but perhaps vehicles for his magnificent dialogue. Anyway, who cares, great writing!
This a terrible review; I'm too tired to write what I really mean, and I hate that I used a cliche after praising his...more

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Oct 14, 2010 Jen Winter rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: giveaways

I won this book in a Goodreads First Reads Give Away, and I am so glad I did! You will laugh, cringe and scratch your head. Matthew Sharpe provides a roller coaster of creative writing. In fact his use of words should have its own category of creativeness. There is a surprise around every corner of this book which is so rich in observations of everyday things it seemed like a movie. I think his main character lives in all of us, restrained and held back from the real world. This was a quick read...more

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Jul 02, 2010 Nicole marked it as to-read · review of another edition

publishers weekly review says: "the great question of this book is simple: why are men so awful? again and again sharpe refuses to defend the neediness and self-indulgence and self-regard that so many men treat like a birthright."

um, i'm in.

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About Matthew Sharpe

Matthew Sharpe (born 1962) is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. Born in New York City, but grew up in a small town in Connecticut. Sharpe graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio. Afterwards, he worked at US Magazine until he went back to school at Columbia University, where he pursued an MFA. Since then, he has been teaching creative writing at various institutions including Columbia Universi...more

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