What do you think?
Rate this book
The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards
An inventive and witty debut about a young man’s quest to become a writer and the misadventures in life and love that take him around the globe
From as early as he can remember, the hopelessly unreliable—yet hopelessly earnest—narrator of this ambitious debut novel has wanted to become a writer.
From the jazz clubs of Manhattan to the villages of Sri Lanka, Kristopher Jansma’s irresistible narrator will be inspired and haunted by the success of his greatest friend and rival in writing, the eccentric and brilliantly talented Julian McGann, and endlessly enamored with Julian’s enchanting friend, Evelyn, the green-eyed girl who got away. After the trio has a disastrous falling out, desperate to tell the truth in his writing and to figure out who he really is, Jansma’s narrator finds himself caught in a never-ending web of lies.
As much a story about a young man and his friends trying to make their way in the world as a profoundly affecting exploration of the nature of truth and storytelling, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards will appeal to readers of Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists and Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize–winning A Visit from the Goon Squad with its elegantly constructed exploration of the stories we tell to find out who we really are.
From as early as he can remember, the hopelessly unreliable—yet hopelessly earnest—narrator of this ambitious debut novel has wanted to become a writer.
From the jazz clubs of Manhattan to the villages of Sri Lanka, Kristopher Jansma’s irresistible narrator will be inspired and haunted by the success of his greatest friend and rival in writing, the eccentric and brilliantly talented Julian McGann, and endlessly enamored with Julian’s enchanting friend, Evelyn, the green-eyed girl who got away. After the trio has a disastrous falling out, desperate to tell the truth in his writing and to figure out who he really is, Jansma’s narrator finds himself caught in a never-ending web of lies.
As much a story about a young man and his friends trying to make their way in the world as a profoundly affecting exploration of the nature of truth and storytelling, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards will appeal to readers of Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists and Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize–winning A Visit from the Goon Squad with its elegantly constructed exploration of the stories we tell to find out who we really are.
251 pages, Hardcover
First published March 21, 2013
123 people are currently reading
8247 people want to read
About the author
Kristopher Jansma
6 books371 followersKristopher Jansma is the author of the forthcoming novel Our Narrow Hiding Places (Ecco, 8/13) as well as the book Revisionaries: What We Can Learn from the Lost, Unfinished, and Just Plain Bad Work of Great Writers (Quirk, 10/15).
His previous novels are Why We Came to the City and The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards. He is the winner of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award and a Pushcart Prize, as well as the recipient of an honorable mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Kristopher is an associate professor of English and the director of the creative writing program at SUNY New Paltz.
More at http://www.kristopherjansma.com/
His previous novels are Why We Came to the City and The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards. He is the winner of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award and a Pushcart Prize, as well as the recipient of an honorable mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Kristopher is an associate professor of English and the director of the creative writing program at SUNY New Paltz.
More at http://www.kristopherjansma.com/
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 769 reviews
May 1, 2013
The prose in The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is exceptional, and often exquisite. The composition is reckless, daring, innovative, exuberant and self-assured. It's a book that I should have loved, but my heart felt atrophied from lack of use. It almost seemed as though the book was so keyed into its own cleverness that it neglected to care about the characters.
I think my desire for some emotional connection is behind my impression that the writing was uneven. There were moments where I couldn't have cared less what happened next, and others where I couldn't put the book down. That all of the characters underwent a continual transmogrification throughout the story—changing while remaining the same—was delightfully clever, but probably served to further alienate me from those characters.
If I could sum up this book in just a few words, it would be "clever but aloof." There are lightning flashes of genius here, but they never really penetrate beyond the superficial. Without the necessary grounding they remain bursts of brilliance that leave no mark.
I think my desire for some emotional connection is behind my impression that the writing was uneven. There were moments where I couldn't have cared less what happened next, and others where I couldn't put the book down. That all of the characters underwent a continual transmogrification throughout the story—changing while remaining the same—was delightfully clever, but probably served to further alienate me from those characters.
If I could sum up this book in just a few words, it would be "clever but aloof." There are lightning flashes of genius here, but they never really penetrate beyond the superficial. Without the necessary grounding they remain bursts of brilliance that leave no mark.
April 3, 2013
But without fingers I couldn't hit the keys on the typewriter or grip a pen. At first I think this may be some sort of sweet relief--a reprieve from writing the same scene over and over. But the writing over and over again isn't a sign of madness. It's the only thing letting the madness out.
This is a first time novel about a writer who has yet to be published.
A treacherous genre filled with many books that I think appeal to people younger than myself, and which once appealed to me more than they do now.
See, for example All the Sad Literary Men , or Indecision . Even though now that I think of it neither of those might be about being a young writer, but it's sort of the same feeling.
Or maybe this song, which is maybe sort of what is good and awful all rolled into three minutes and forty two seconds of some chords and words that strikes me as being both pretty amazing and terrible all at once.
You hear advice to write what you know. And people take that to heart. And then they write about what they know best, and what they think is most interesting in the world. Themselves.
I admit it's a fun topic to write about even if it's not necessarily any fun being oneself.
(See I just did it right there, and now just did it again. It's like crack-if I wanted to make it literary then I'd just write he in front of everything that I, I mean He would do, or just continue to use I but call it a 'novel' and make the setting something really fucking absurd, like a disgusting burrito fast food restaurant filled with a collection of people some so far fetched that they couldn't possibly be real, but also peopled with some people who might seem to be too stupid to be real, but who are actually fairly representative of real people.)
Howard Jacobson, in his vapid novel Zoo Time, writes about a writer trying to write a book, while saying witty things about once a writer is writing a book about writing they are washed up. He says a lot of things in the book, many that make him sound similar to the grumpy old man that Philip Roth sounds like whenever he launches his newest attack on something like those gosh-darned kids and their wikipedia. I never got around to writing a review for the Jacobson book, but it wasn't very good. Oh well.
But in light of his remarks, what to make of first time novelists writing about young writers?
What can you say? It's not like it's a new genre. Some fairly respectable authors have gone this route.
Some very shitty books have been written following this route.
This book wasn't shitty. It was actually quite charming, something that can be difficult to pull off when dealing with characters who inherently are fairly unlikable and self-obsessed wienies (this is just an unfair generalization of many twenty-something yearolds who were sort of like myself, but who were probably just that much less neurotic, and armed with even the smallest knowledge of grammar to try their hand at setting the world ablaze with their words and ideas).
Maybe it was the slight touch of precociousness of the supporting characters, which gave it that ol' Secret History feel, without delving full on into Donna Tartt land. Maybe it was the the narrator wasn't precocious, or a tortured genius just waiting for the world to recognize him, and give him what was due to him. Rather he's somewhat of a phony. A liar who is aware of his lies and fiction that he's based his life around, but not in the way that one can imagine an Eggers like play of this idea to work itself out.
I'm just chucking names around. Maybe because I'm not really sure what to say about the book. Because I don't have anything to say about books anymore. I just like or don't like things and leave the thinking to those abler than I.
(See, it's like crack-laced with meth, with maybe some PCP stuck in there someplace so you can act out in some painful self-loathing without feeling the consequences)
Or is the reason we sometimes hate books like this is because while they aren't necessarily any good, they are stories we think we could tell, books we could have written, contracts we could have snagged from big publishing houses, even if in the end we were just destined to meet our readers in the bargain bins.
But this book doesn't need to be hated. It can be enjoyed, because it sidesteps the tripwires that clodding self-obsessed feet plod right into when the authors stop starring at their feet long enough for some navel gazing.
So many words to say I enjoyed the book, I haven't enjoy some other writers who have written similarish books. Thank you Natalie for lending me this. I wouldn't have read it otherwise.
And for this imperfect immortality, what prices have been paid? How many lives, lungs, and veins? Shredded, polluted, shot? How many children deserted, family secrets betrayed, sordid trysts laid for strangers to see? How many wives and husbands shoved to the side? How many ovens scorched with our hair? Gun barrels slid between our lips? Bathtubs slowly reddened by our blood and twisting rivers drowned that drowned us? How many flawed pages burned in disgust and reduced to ashes? How many flawless moments observed from just a slight distance so that, later, we might reduce them to words? All with an unspoken prayer that these hard-won truths might outlast the brief years of our lies.
January 17, 2015
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
That quote from Emily Dickinson is the driving force behind this masterful, creative, spectacular debut novel from Kristopher Jansma, and he never lets you forget that, even for a second.
It’s divided into two halves: What Was Lost and What Was Found, each of which is structured as a sort of collection of interconnected stories. While reading the first half, I was struck by how realistic it felt; I assumed that this was surely an almost-true account of Jansma’s own journey to becoming a writer: the first time, at age eight, he shared his work with someone else. Competing with his friend Julian to see who can write a better short story for a college competition, each feeling envious of the other’s talent and ashamed of his own. Meeting Evelyn, who will never cease to be The One That Got Away, witnessing her marriage to someone else and wishing he’d had the courage to stop it. A falling out that sends the three in different directions. The details in the stories pop in such a way, the emotions resonate so clearly that I was sure that Jansma had just changed the names to protect the innocent and we were headed towards another in a series of the increasingly popular genre in which Writer and Unreliable Narrator are one and the same (see: Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles).
But then you get to the second half and find many small details have changed: it’s now Jeffrey instead of Julian, Luxembourg instead of India, Charlotte instead of Raleigh. The story is essentially the same: there’s still the would-be writer whose college roommate was always going to be the more successful, if less psychologically stable, of the two and there’s still the woman that he can’t talk himself out of loving despite the fact that she’s married to a minor royal.
And yet, things are different. They’re slanted. The narrator, having never become a successful writer, instead becomes someone else, over and over again. He assumes the identity of another writer sent abroad on assignment in order to teach a class on New Journalism, then travels to Dubai. He travels to Sri Lanka and meets two young women – one of whom just happens to have been the editor on his old friend Jeffrey’s wildly successful, critically acclaimed novel. He then travels with the editor to Ghana to impersonate his old friend to trick Jeffrey’s senile grandfather into providing information for a new biography on the now-reclusive literary giant. Then it's off to Iceland to follow Jeffrey to a writer's retreat before the story folds over on top of itself...and I mean in the most awe-inspiring way possible.
Because of all themes of truth and half-truth, fiction and slanting, there are many ways to read this book. At first, I was convinced that the What Was Lost half was the “true” story, and that the second half must be a fantasy about what the narrator imagined for himself after his dreams of being a writer never came to fruition. The details of the second half are so fantastic that it can’t possibly be what “really happened” – there’s no way it can be that easy to get a passport in someone else’s name, the coincidence of meeting the editor on a train on the other side of the world. After a while, though, I began to read the Found half as the “truth,” and the beginning as the narrator’s polished, studied version of his youth, a sort of meta example of the stories based upon his own life with the details slanted just enough that they can be considered fiction.
There are times when Jansma’s work shines through a little too much. He can be a little adjective happy – a perfectly unblemished arm, a nicotine-scarred lung – but he also draws incredible verbal pictures – a waterfall of hair, a woman too awe-inspiring to be contained within four Anglo-Saxon names.
There are also times when it feels like he’s hitting the metaphor-and-symbolism button a little too hard on the nose. Repeated references to the titular leopards, instances in which the narrator offers up false names in place of the real one we never learn, arguments between the two friends about using the details of each other’s lives in their own stories – it feels as though there isn’t a single image or phrase or symbol that Jansma hasn’t carefully planted with a very specific purpose in mind.
Approaching some of the stories as individual pieces makes this stand out more. The third story, in which Julian and the narrator have a run-in with Evelyn’s Micahel-Phelpsian boyfriend over Sunday brunch, felt very studied, like Jansma was mimicking the style and tropes of another writer (but whom, I couldn’t quite put my finger on; he references so many writers throughout the course of this book and I haven’t read enough to pinpoint the similarities precisely). But approaching the book as a single piece, I found it easy to forgive what might be otherwise considered the errors of an unpolished writer. Jansma is playing around with styles and ideas – at one point, we’re given an excerpt of a novella written by the character of one of the narrator’s short stories, all of which reflect events that Jansma has woven into the story about the writing of that short story, which in turn makes up a piece of Jansma’s own novel. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a better example of “meta” than that. It sounds crazy, even kind of pretentious, but it worked. I was blown away.
This is the kind of book that makes me miss working in a bookstore. I got to the end of it and all I wanted to do was find someone to discuss it with, someone to recommend it to, someone to share it with. It’s dense, twisty and complicated -- but in a good way. I got this as a freebie from NetGalley, but I want to run out and grab my own copy so I can underline all the wonderful passages as I try to peel back the layers upon layers upon layers and see what other ideas I can find lurking underneath. Two of my favorite excerpts:
This is one that is gonna stick with me. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to stop wondering what’s real and what’s fiction.
ETA: I got to meet Jansma at an event this weekend at the fantastic Politics and Prose bookstore. He could not possibly have been nicer, and listening to him talk about how he approached this book makes me appreciate it all the more. I really want to sit down and read it all over again.
That quote from Emily Dickinson is the driving force behind this masterful, creative, spectacular debut novel from Kristopher Jansma, and he never lets you forget that, even for a second.
It’s divided into two halves: What Was Lost and What Was Found, each of which is structured as a sort of collection of interconnected stories. While reading the first half, I was struck by how realistic it felt; I assumed that this was surely an almost-true account of Jansma’s own journey to becoming a writer: the first time, at age eight, he shared his work with someone else. Competing with his friend Julian to see who can write a better short story for a college competition, each feeling envious of the other’s talent and ashamed of his own. Meeting Evelyn, who will never cease to be The One That Got Away, witnessing her marriage to someone else and wishing he’d had the courage to stop it. A falling out that sends the three in different directions. The details in the stories pop in such a way, the emotions resonate so clearly that I was sure that Jansma had just changed the names to protect the innocent and we were headed towards another in a series of the increasingly popular genre in which Writer and Unreliable Narrator are one and the same (see: Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles).
But then you get to the second half and find many small details have changed: it’s now Jeffrey instead of Julian, Luxembourg instead of India, Charlotte instead of Raleigh. The story is essentially the same: there’s still the would-be writer whose college roommate was always going to be the more successful, if less psychologically stable, of the two and there’s still the woman that he can’t talk himself out of loving despite the fact that she’s married to a minor royal.
And yet, things are different. They’re slanted. The narrator, having never become a successful writer, instead becomes someone else, over and over again. He assumes the identity of another writer sent abroad on assignment in order to teach a class on New Journalism, then travels to Dubai. He travels to Sri Lanka and meets two young women – one of whom just happens to have been the editor on his old friend Jeffrey’s wildly successful, critically acclaimed novel. He then travels with the editor to Ghana to impersonate his old friend to trick Jeffrey’s senile grandfather into providing information for a new biography on the now-reclusive literary giant. Then it's off to Iceland to follow Jeffrey to a writer's retreat before the story folds over on top of itself...and I mean in the most awe-inspiring way possible.
Because of all themes of truth and half-truth, fiction and slanting, there are many ways to read this book. At first, I was convinced that the What Was Lost half was the “true” story, and that the second half must be a fantasy about what the narrator imagined for himself after his dreams of being a writer never came to fruition. The details of the second half are so fantastic that it can’t possibly be what “really happened” – there’s no way it can be that easy to get a passport in someone else’s name, the coincidence of meeting the editor on a train on the other side of the world. After a while, though, I began to read the Found half as the “truth,” and the beginning as the narrator’s polished, studied version of his youth, a sort of meta example of the stories based upon his own life with the details slanted just enough that they can be considered fiction.
There are times when Jansma’s work shines through a little too much. He can be a little adjective happy – a perfectly unblemished arm, a nicotine-scarred lung – but he also draws incredible verbal pictures – a waterfall of hair, a woman too awe-inspiring to be contained within four Anglo-Saxon names.
There are also times when it feels like he’s hitting the metaphor-and-symbolism button a little too hard on the nose. Repeated references to the titular leopards, instances in which the narrator offers up false names in place of the real one we never learn, arguments between the two friends about using the details of each other’s lives in their own stories – it feels as though there isn’t a single image or phrase or symbol that Jansma hasn’t carefully planted with a very specific purpose in mind.
Approaching some of the stories as individual pieces makes this stand out more. The third story, in which Julian and the narrator have a run-in with Evelyn’s Micahel-Phelpsian boyfriend over Sunday brunch, felt very studied, like Jansma was mimicking the style and tropes of another writer (but whom, I couldn’t quite put my finger on; he references so many writers throughout the course of this book and I haven’t read enough to pinpoint the similarities precisely). But approaching the book as a single piece, I found it easy to forgive what might be otherwise considered the errors of an unpolished writer. Jansma is playing around with styles and ideas – at one point, we’re given an excerpt of a novella written by the character of one of the narrator’s short stories, all of which reflect events that Jansma has woven into the story about the writing of that short story, which in turn makes up a piece of Jansma’s own novel. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a better example of “meta” than that. It sounds crazy, even kind of pretentious, but it worked. I was blown away.
This is the kind of book that makes me miss working in a bookstore. I got to the end of it and all I wanted to do was find someone to discuss it with, someone to recommend it to, someone to share it with. It’s dense, twisty and complicated -- but in a good way. I got this as a freebie from NetGalley, but I want to run out and grab my own copy so I can underline all the wonderful passages as I try to peel back the layers upon layers upon layers and see what other ideas I can find lurking underneath. Two of my favorite excerpts:
"Time passes strangely in Africa. When we arrived, in our safari gear, we both thought we'd be like Bogey and Hepburn; she'd be irascible and I'd be thick-skinned, and we'd play games with each other for a while before falling madly in love during a vulnerable moment on a steamboat ride down the Nile. Instead, we're here talking about what I keep trying to forget."and
“I considered this, but then I noticed my roommate, having removed all his clothing, running through the bramble and dust...The best thing to do–usually–was to let him play these things out. Who was I to tell a genius it was time to put his clothes back on?”
This is one that is gonna stick with me. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to stop wondering what’s real and what’s fiction.
ETA: I got to meet Jansma at an event this weekend at the fantastic Politics and Prose bookstore. He could not possibly have been nicer, and listening to him talk about how he approached this book makes me appreciate it all the more. I really want to sit down and read it all over again.
August 6, 2017
One of The Best Books I have read so far this year
This book is under the category of Mind blown
The story follow the perspective of an Unknown Narrator and throughout the whole book we get snippets of his life and pieces of his writing and they are all kind of bundle up, so it’s really hard to discern the truth from the fiction and he never reveals his name to the reader or the other characters in the book. As he tries to grow into his writing and loose himself into his work, we witness how this journey of self-identity affects his relationship with his only friend (another talented writer) and the girl he's desperately in love with. The plot sounds a bit over played but trust me, this book was brilliantly executed.
In just 250 pages the author plays with the trope of “The Unreliable Narrator” in such a unique way that will literally blow your mind. I am planning to do a review once I get my thoughts in order but this has to be one of the best books I have read this year so far
This book is under the category of Mind blown
The story follow the perspective of an Unknown Narrator and throughout the whole book we get snippets of his life and pieces of his writing and they are all kind of bundle up, so it’s really hard to discern the truth from the fiction and he never reveals his name to the reader or the other characters in the book. As he tries to grow into his writing and loose himself into his work, we witness how this journey of self-identity affects his relationship with his only friend (another talented writer) and the girl he's desperately in love with. The plot sounds a bit over played but trust me, this book was brilliantly executed.
In just 250 pages the author plays with the trope of “The Unreliable Narrator” in such a unique way that will literally blow your mind. I am planning to do a review once I get my thoughts in order but this has to be one of the best books I have read this year so far
March 22, 2023
The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is a highly entertaining story about writers and writing. Two young men, both aspiring writers, find themselves in the same college writing class and become competitors and unlikely friends. One queer, filthy rich, and enormously talented but hampered by mental and physical illness, alcohol and prescription drug abuse. The second, the narrator, poor and alone with writing skills that pale in comparison to his friend. He finds that he is an exceptionally good liar and uses it to his advantage but along the way even he has trouble determining what is true and what is fiction.
There are so many smart and engaging features in this book:
lost and stolen manuscripts,
a true love that got away,
a betrayal,
hidden identities,
a doppelganger, and
globe trotting adventures and misadventures,
and of course lots of writing.
I recommend it to you unconditionally.
There are so many smart and engaging features in this book:
lost and stolen manuscripts,
a true love that got away,
a betrayal,
hidden identities,
a doppelganger, and
globe trotting adventures and misadventures,
and of course lots of writing.
I recommend it to you unconditionally.
June 27, 2013
If Jansma meant for this book to satirize itself, then it's funny. If not, then it's not very good. It's a book about writers struggling to write well by an author who is struggling to write well. He clearly wanted to do something clever and layered, all things I enjoy, but it was not done well. It felt like it was written by a precocious teenager who might eventually be a good writer but was not there yet.
April 20, 2013
“Somewhere in this empty space, between my lies and fictions, is the truth.” With those bold and arresting words, Kristopher Jansma – certainly one of the most inventive and imaginative writers I’ve read lately – launches his ode to storytelling.
He starts with a basic template that most of us have read in various iterations: an aspiring boy from a not-so-great background falls under the spell of a far more worldly and insanely talented friend. Both would-be writers identify each other as worthy competitors. And to complicate things, our narrator begins to develop feelings for a mesmerizing stage actress – a friend of his competitor – who has ambitions of her own.
So far so good. Been there, done that. But now the story begins shifting. The talented classmate becomes, in turn, Julian, Jeffrey or Anton. The actress? In any given part of the novel, she may be married to a famous Indian geologist (whom she exchanges vows with at the rim of the Grand Canyon!), a Japanese royal, or a Luxembourg prince in line for the throne.
The narrator, too, shifts identities. At one point, he is a debutante’s escort…in another, he’s a professor of journalism, teaching under an assumed name…in still another, he’s Outis – a Greek name from The Odyssey – who writes false term papers for spoiled Dubai scions. His personal odyssey follows a path from North Carolina to a city college in New York City…from Dubai to Sri Lana and Ghana…and finally, to an obscure writer’s colony in Iceland.
This is a writer’s book and a reader’s book as well. We see the narrator struggling with his creative muse and even peek over his shoulder as he writes stories within stories. There’s subtle humor (one of his earlier rejected stories gives a nod to Dorothy Allison, with the title Just Another Bastard Out Of Carolina.)
As the novel progresses, it begins to tilt towards zaniness as it lets loose its moorings. The effect is a sort o gimmicky distancing, which makes this novel – for me – a 4.5. Yet the book is so fresh and original, so fascinating as it shines its spotlight on truth and storytelling, that I am upping it to a 5. Who can NOT love a book that starts this way: “If you believe you are the author of this book, please contact Haslett & Grouse Publishers (New York, New York) at your first convenience.” It’s all uphill from there.
He starts with a basic template that most of us have read in various iterations: an aspiring boy from a not-so-great background falls under the spell of a far more worldly and insanely talented friend. Both would-be writers identify each other as worthy competitors. And to complicate things, our narrator begins to develop feelings for a mesmerizing stage actress – a friend of his competitor – who has ambitions of her own.
So far so good. Been there, done that. But now the story begins shifting. The talented classmate becomes, in turn, Julian, Jeffrey or Anton. The actress? In any given part of the novel, she may be married to a famous Indian geologist (whom she exchanges vows with at the rim of the Grand Canyon!), a Japanese royal, or a Luxembourg prince in line for the throne.
The narrator, too, shifts identities. At one point, he is a debutante’s escort…in another, he’s a professor of journalism, teaching under an assumed name…in still another, he’s Outis – a Greek name from The Odyssey – who writes false term papers for spoiled Dubai scions. His personal odyssey follows a path from North Carolina to a city college in New York City…from Dubai to Sri Lana and Ghana…and finally, to an obscure writer’s colony in Iceland.
This is a writer’s book and a reader’s book as well. We see the narrator struggling with his creative muse and even peek over his shoulder as he writes stories within stories. There’s subtle humor (one of his earlier rejected stories gives a nod to Dorothy Allison, with the title Just Another Bastard Out Of Carolina.)
As the novel progresses, it begins to tilt towards zaniness as it lets loose its moorings. The effect is a sort o gimmicky distancing, which makes this novel – for me – a 4.5. Yet the book is so fresh and original, so fascinating as it shines its spotlight on truth and storytelling, that I am upping it to a 5. Who can NOT love a book that starts this way: “If you believe you are the author of this book, please contact Haslett & Grouse Publishers (New York, New York) at your first convenience.” It’s all uphill from there.
April 19, 2013
GoodReads is asking me "What did you think?" about the book. Well, I wish I could answer that coherently, but The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is so different to anything I've read in a long time that I don't know what to think. My mind boggles.... days after finishing it, I still can't work out what is really is about! Is it about a writer's journey to publishing his first book? Some tongue-in-cheek memoirs by the author? Is it magical realism where nothing is what you think it is and everyone changes in a fluid way, though "their spots" never do? Is it a bizarre love story? I honestly don't know.
It is such a bold, confident, crazy, cheeky debut novel - the author has balls, and an uncanny ability to put some gorgeous sentences together. A winning combination!
The writing is lovely and creative at the same time. I suspect that there were many hidden metaphors and references I simply didn't get. Presumably, other writers or better educated readers than myself would get a lot more out of this book, a case of 'pearls before swine' with me, I'm afraid. In fact, the only thing I didn't like about this book is that it made me feel a bit stupid (well, I probably am) and confused, especially in the second half of the book where names and locations changed faster than I could say "leopards' spots".
Perhaps I made it more difficult for myself for spreading this out over three weeks - this is a book that should be read within three days at most, or else one risks losing the plot.... literally! ;-)
As soon as I finished the book I started it again - and when you read it, you may very well do the same. It's a very clever structure, at least I thoroughly enjoyed it.
One of the many fun things about the book is the "publisher's note" in the beginning: “If you believe that you are the author of this book, please contact Haslett & Grouse Publishers (New York, New York) at your first convenience.” I love it!
The audio book is performed by one of my favourite narrators, Edoardo Ballerini, who already did an outstanding job for Beautiful Ruins, and once again he nailed the narration perfectly.
It is such a bold, confident, crazy, cheeky debut novel - the author has balls, and an uncanny ability to put some gorgeous sentences together. A winning combination!
The writing is lovely and creative at the same time. I suspect that there were many hidden metaphors and references I simply didn't get. Presumably, other writers or better educated readers than myself would get a lot more out of this book, a case of 'pearls before swine' with me, I'm afraid. In fact, the only thing I didn't like about this book is that it made me feel a bit stupid (well, I probably am) and confused, especially in the second half of the book where names and locations changed faster than I could say "leopards' spots".
Perhaps I made it more difficult for myself for spreading this out over three weeks - this is a book that should be read within three days at most, or else one risks losing the plot.... literally! ;-)
As soon as I finished the book I started it again - and when you read it, you may very well do the same. It's a very clever structure, at least I thoroughly enjoyed it.
One of the many fun things about the book is the "publisher's note" in the beginning: “If you believe that you are the author of this book, please contact Haslett & Grouse Publishers (New York, New York) at your first convenience.” I love it!
The audio book is performed by one of my favourite narrators, Edoardo Ballerini, who already did an outstanding job for Beautiful Ruins, and once again he nailed the narration perfectly.
April 13, 2013
I loved his writing and I was going to rate it a 5 star up to the middle. At the middle, it became nonlinear and a bit acerbic, more acerbic than need be. Also, it became so nonlinear that it became hard to follow. Yet, it was so well written that it deserves a 4 star rating….that alone is a feat. So, it's a story of a kid, who learns he might just have an ability to write after an unexpected evening with the love of his high school life. She encourages him to write about the evening with her, which he does, which then leads to his college life The writing is funny and spot on about his college life and experiences. It's part two, "What was found" that I have difficulty with. He was so writing on a 5 star level until he went into this nonlinear "guess what I want you to wonder about" mode. A great work about writers and how difficult it is to write a novel. A great book about growing up and becoming an adult through turbulent college years. His editors should have worked with him more about the second part of his book………….
April 7, 2013
Not all the leopards are metaphorical…
Look, I won’t claim there aren’t disappointments, but after decades of selecting books for myself, I’ve gotten pretty good at guessing what I’m going to like. And from the first time I heard even the briefest description of The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, it was high on my must-read list. I mean, seriously, the title alone--somehow it just spoke to me. And I wasn’t disappointed.
But the odd thing is, when I read the jacket copy, the part that I really honed in on was about the rivalry between the two writers. And while certainly that is an element of the novel’s plot (such as it is), that’s not the part that I should have been paying attention to. No, it was phrases like “search for identity,” “web of lies,” and “exploration of the nature of truth and storytelling” that are really at the crux of Kristopher Jansma’s exciting debut novel.
Let’s back up… There have been some fantastic novels that blurred the lines between fact and fiction through a variety of narrative devices. In Life of Pi, Yann Martel opened the novel in direct address to readers, eventually becoming the character of The Writer. And when The Bridges of Madison County was published a few decades ago, so many readers wrote to the National Geographic believing the tale was true that they made a museum exhibit of the correspondence. I digress, but the opening of The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards brought these examples to mind, because the first page after the table of contents says this: “If you believe that you are the author of this book, please contact Haslett & Grouse Publishers (New York, New York) at your first convenience.”
Interesting. We move on, but that opening note is never quite forgotten.
And this tale begins, again, in direct address to readers in the form of an author’s note. It launches, “I’ve lost every book I’ve ever written.” And the narrator tells the tale of that first loss. You will learn of others along the way. The last line, incidentally, of that author’s note is this: “These stories all are true, but only somewhere else.” And this coming after not one, not two, but three separate epigraphs on the nature of truth. Interesting.
The novel’s first-person narrator seems earnest enough, but be prepared for sleight of hand—or whatever the literary equivalent might be. The storytelling here is unconventional, it’s meta-fictional, it’s challenging, it’s non-linear, it’s literary, and, oh yes, it is always interesting. Jansma’s characters are… Well, to be honest, they’re not all that likable when you get right down to it, but they’re well-drawn enough for familiarity to breed contempt. (And in the scheme of unlikable characters, these ones are not so unpleasant as to put you off from following their journey.) You’ll note that I did not describe them as “believable,” because there’s a heightened quality about the trio at the center of the tale, and the circumstances they find themselves in, as they chase and/or flee each other around the globe. Jansma isn’t trying to replicate reality. There is artifice throughout, and it’s very intentional.
His writing is fantastic! It’s read-aloud, eminently quotable, just a pleasure to absorb. Everything about this novel is stylish, stylized, and sophisticated. It’s also very funny. It’s gonzo, romantic, clever, and the sort of book to remind readers and writers both why they do what they do. In short, this is an exhilarating debut novel. My instincts were right on this time. Score one for me.
Look, I won’t claim there aren’t disappointments, but after decades of selecting books for myself, I’ve gotten pretty good at guessing what I’m going to like. And from the first time I heard even the briefest description of The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, it was high on my must-read list. I mean, seriously, the title alone--somehow it just spoke to me. And I wasn’t disappointed.
But the odd thing is, when I read the jacket copy, the part that I really honed in on was about the rivalry between the two writers. And while certainly that is an element of the novel’s plot (such as it is), that’s not the part that I should have been paying attention to. No, it was phrases like “search for identity,” “web of lies,” and “exploration of the nature of truth and storytelling” that are really at the crux of Kristopher Jansma’s exciting debut novel.
Let’s back up… There have been some fantastic novels that blurred the lines between fact and fiction through a variety of narrative devices. In Life of Pi, Yann Martel opened the novel in direct address to readers, eventually becoming the character of The Writer. And when The Bridges of Madison County was published a few decades ago, so many readers wrote to the National Geographic believing the tale was true that they made a museum exhibit of the correspondence. I digress, but the opening of The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards brought these examples to mind, because the first page after the table of contents says this: “If you believe that you are the author of this book, please contact Haslett & Grouse Publishers (New York, New York) at your first convenience.”
Interesting. We move on, but that opening note is never quite forgotten.
And this tale begins, again, in direct address to readers in the form of an author’s note. It launches, “I’ve lost every book I’ve ever written.” And the narrator tells the tale of that first loss. You will learn of others along the way. The last line, incidentally, of that author’s note is this: “These stories all are true, but only somewhere else.” And this coming after not one, not two, but three separate epigraphs on the nature of truth. Interesting.
The novel’s first-person narrator seems earnest enough, but be prepared for sleight of hand—or whatever the literary equivalent might be. The storytelling here is unconventional, it’s meta-fictional, it’s challenging, it’s non-linear, it’s literary, and, oh yes, it is always interesting. Jansma’s characters are… Well, to be honest, they’re not all that likable when you get right down to it, but they’re well-drawn enough for familiarity to breed contempt. (And in the scheme of unlikable characters, these ones are not so unpleasant as to put you off from following their journey.) You’ll note that I did not describe them as “believable,” because there’s a heightened quality about the trio at the center of the tale, and the circumstances they find themselves in, as they chase and/or flee each other around the globe. Jansma isn’t trying to replicate reality. There is artifice throughout, and it’s very intentional.
His writing is fantastic! It’s read-aloud, eminently quotable, just a pleasure to absorb. Everything about this novel is stylish, stylized, and sophisticated. It’s also very funny. It’s gonzo, romantic, clever, and the sort of book to remind readers and writers both why they do what they do. In short, this is an exhilarating debut novel. My instincts were right on this time. Score one for me.
March 27, 2013
"These stories are all true, but only somewhere else."
So says the narrator of Kristopher Jansma's appealing yet frustrating novel-in-stories, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards. From an early age, he wanted to be a writer, and he simply can't stop reinventing himself and the situations around him. As a teenager in North Carolina, he introduces himself as a character in a Wilkie Collins novel when pressed into service escorting a girl he is enamored with to her debutante ball. In college in the Berkshires, he meets the eccentric and talented Julian McGann, a flamboyant writer whose skill inspires rivalry and inspiration—Julian's career reaches great heights, while the narrator finds himself benefiting only when Julian's mania gets the best of him.
But in addition to the inspiration Julian provides, he also introduces the narrator to the beautiful Evelyn, a world-weary actress with whom he becomes quickly enamored. Evelyn is certainly fond of the narrator, but enjoys the control she has over him, and the two have an on-again, off-again relationship for years. When Evelyn finally decides to get married, the behavior of Julian and the narrator lead to the trio having a falling out that lasts for more than 10 years.
That's where the book falls off the rails, in my opinion. Suddenly the narrator is impersonating a college professor, telling tales to a newlywed couple in Dubai, writing papers for college students in Sri Lanka, searching for his Salinger-esque friend in Ghana and at a writer's retreat in Iceland, and tracking his one true love (or is she?) in Luxembourg. Julian McGann is now inexplicably called Jeffrey Oakes, and Evelyn's wedding to an Indian scientist somehow is transmogrified into a wedding with a prince from Luxembourg. And the conclusion, in the same airport where the book began, is a little magical but a little perplexing.
I think Jansma is a terrific writer, and I loved the first half of the book. The relationships between the characters, the adventures they found themselves in, the rivalry between writers, all were compelling and enjoyable. But when you have a main character who is more enamored with reinventing the truth at every turn, you don't know what to believe, or when what you're reading will suddenly turn into something else. I kept waiting for some sort of explanation about which parts were true—was his friend's name Julian or Jeffrey? Who did Evelyn marry? But the narrator, and the book, were mum on these details.
I love books that leave you guessing, and I love those that challenge the truth, but I struggled with this book because it never tied things up for me. Perhaps it was never meant to. But in the end, I thought this was a book with tremendous potential that sadly (and somewhat frustratingly) was never realized.
So says the narrator of Kristopher Jansma's appealing yet frustrating novel-in-stories, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards. From an early age, he wanted to be a writer, and he simply can't stop reinventing himself and the situations around him. As a teenager in North Carolina, he introduces himself as a character in a Wilkie Collins novel when pressed into service escorting a girl he is enamored with to her debutante ball. In college in the Berkshires, he meets the eccentric and talented Julian McGann, a flamboyant writer whose skill inspires rivalry and inspiration—Julian's career reaches great heights, while the narrator finds himself benefiting only when Julian's mania gets the best of him.
But in addition to the inspiration Julian provides, he also introduces the narrator to the beautiful Evelyn, a world-weary actress with whom he becomes quickly enamored. Evelyn is certainly fond of the narrator, but enjoys the control she has over him, and the two have an on-again, off-again relationship for years. When Evelyn finally decides to get married, the behavior of Julian and the narrator lead to the trio having a falling out that lasts for more than 10 years.
That's where the book falls off the rails, in my opinion. Suddenly the narrator is impersonating a college professor, telling tales to a newlywed couple in Dubai, writing papers for college students in Sri Lanka, searching for his Salinger-esque friend in Ghana and at a writer's retreat in Iceland, and tracking his one true love (or is she?) in Luxembourg. Julian McGann is now inexplicably called Jeffrey Oakes, and Evelyn's wedding to an Indian scientist somehow is transmogrified into a wedding with a prince from Luxembourg. And the conclusion, in the same airport where the book began, is a little magical but a little perplexing.
I think Jansma is a terrific writer, and I loved the first half of the book. The relationships between the characters, the adventures they found themselves in, the rivalry between writers, all were compelling and enjoyable. But when you have a main character who is more enamored with reinventing the truth at every turn, you don't know what to believe, or when what you're reading will suddenly turn into something else. I kept waiting for some sort of explanation about which parts were true—was his friend's name Julian or Jeffrey? Who did Evelyn marry? But the narrator, and the book, were mum on these details.
I love books that leave you guessing, and I love those that challenge the truth, but I struggled with this book because it never tied things up for me. Perhaps it was never meant to. But in the end, I thought this was a book with tremendous potential that sadly (and somewhat frustratingly) was never realized.
did-not-finish
July 17, 2017Within the first 50 pages, this was starting to remind me too much of a book I hated and bailed on, Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon. I am deeply, deeply allergic to modern satirical novels. I'm done.
February 19, 2013
This book must be so satisfying for any novelist who has ever been asked, "So what was truth and what was fiction?" Kris Jansma is clearly having so much fun playing with storytelling as his unnamed and unabashedly unreliable narrator baldly lies his way around the globe, trying on new identities at every stop. The fun is infectious, even though the characters are often quite miserable. In one chapter there is a novel within a story within the novel. Or something like that. After a while, you'll stop worrying about what's true and false and let the storytelling wash over you, because something honest can be discovered within a lie. While flexing his writerly muscles, Jansma manages to keep the heart and truth of his antihero in the same place as a parade of made-up names and settings marches by.
An exercise in meta and loaded with literary references, this book is a reader and writer's playground, but the message extends far beyond bookish folks. As we tell the stories of our own lives -- even if just to ourselves -- how many lies do we tell?
An exercise in meta and loaded with literary references, this book is a reader and writer's playground, but the message extends far beyond bookish folks. As we tell the stories of our own lives -- even if just to ourselves -- how many lies do we tell?
May 15, 2017
A contender for the title of "cleverest book I have read". This novel combines the ideas of meta-fiction and the unreliable narrator to create something that is a joy to read. I think at one point I was reading excerpts from a novel within a short story, within a novella within a novel! But I’m not 100% sure. It’s the humour of the book that stops it from feeling overly pretentious or forced (because it could so easily have headed down that path).
It is Jansma’s first novel and it’s narrated by a young aspiring novelist. This is yet another opportunity for things to go horribly wrong but which Jansma seems to manage admirably.
On the face of it, it’s about a young man who wants to be a writer. He becomes friends with another young man who wants to be a writer but who is much, much more talented than our narrator. Further opportunities for everything to fall apart or turn into something that has been done many times before. And it’s about our narrator’s love for someone he meets via his friend and the developments (or lack of them) that their relationship takes over the years.
It could be simply a story about growing up, trying to be a writer, falling in love.
But it is so much more than that. At its heart is a quote from Emily Dickinson: "Tell all the truth but tell it slant". What we get is a series of connected episodes that refer back to one another and build upon each other, but also call into question over and over again the truth of the episodes we have read so far. Our narrator’s friend is presented to us as Julian, as Anton, as Jeffrey. The object of his love marries an Indian geologist, a member of the Japanese royalty and a prince in Luxembourg. Or maybe one or more of those don’t actually happen. It’s a bit confusing! But it is always tremendous fun.
Add to all of this that episodes are set in North Carolina, New York, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Ghana, and Iceland. In the Iceland episode, I discovered, to my amazement, that The Imagine Peace Tower is a real thing and there are pictures of it that you can find with Google. I’d never heard of it and I thought it was made up until I looked on the Internet! It’s actually rather beautiful.
I guess the real subject of the novel is writing itself. I think I missed a lot of the clever references to other literary works, but I understand they are there for people who have read more books that I have. But it is also about change. The penultimate chapter begins with a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change."
Perhaps the most memorable metaphor in the book is drawn from the game of checkers. By battling across to the other side, a piece gains the right to be "kinged" which Jansma explains as “gaining the ability to reverse course. To go against the tide, as it were, back to where you've begun.” This is what the narrator hopes for in this wonderful page-turner of a book and which is contrasted with Luxembourg’s motto of "We wish to remain what we are."
This is a book that gave me a lot of pleasure and a lot to think about.
It is Jansma’s first novel and it’s narrated by a young aspiring novelist. This is yet another opportunity for things to go horribly wrong but which Jansma seems to manage admirably.
On the face of it, it’s about a young man who wants to be a writer. He becomes friends with another young man who wants to be a writer but who is much, much more talented than our narrator. Further opportunities for everything to fall apart or turn into something that has been done many times before. And it’s about our narrator’s love for someone he meets via his friend and the developments (or lack of them) that their relationship takes over the years.
It could be simply a story about growing up, trying to be a writer, falling in love.
But it is so much more than that. At its heart is a quote from Emily Dickinson: "Tell all the truth but tell it slant". What we get is a series of connected episodes that refer back to one another and build upon each other, but also call into question over and over again the truth of the episodes we have read so far. Our narrator’s friend is presented to us as Julian, as Anton, as Jeffrey. The object of his love marries an Indian geologist, a member of the Japanese royalty and a prince in Luxembourg. Or maybe one or more of those don’t actually happen. It’s a bit confusing! But it is always tremendous fun.
Add to all of this that episodes are set in North Carolina, New York, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Ghana, and Iceland. In the Iceland episode, I discovered, to my amazement, that The Imagine Peace Tower is a real thing and there are pictures of it that you can find with Google. I’d never heard of it and I thought it was made up until I looked on the Internet! It’s actually rather beautiful.
I guess the real subject of the novel is writing itself. I think I missed a lot of the clever references to other literary works, but I understand they are there for people who have read more books that I have. But it is also about change. The penultimate chapter begins with a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change."
Perhaps the most memorable metaphor in the book is drawn from the game of checkers. By battling across to the other side, a piece gains the right to be "kinged" which Jansma explains as “gaining the ability to reverse course. To go against the tide, as it were, back to where you've begun.” This is what the narrator hopes for in this wonderful page-turner of a book and which is contrasted with Luxembourg’s motto of "We wish to remain what we are."
This is a book that gave me a lot of pleasure and a lot to think about.
September 22, 2023
The unnamed narrator starts writing at a young age while he waits in the airport for his mother, who is a flight attendant. The storyline follows him as he comes of age, goes to college, develops a relationship that does not last, and becomes friends with a fellow talented writer. He believes that writing is the equivalent of being good at telling lies. This belief bleeds over into his personal life, and he finds himself taking on different personas. He travels the globe and writes various manuscripts under different aliases. In each country, he adopts a different identity. His life becomes a series of adventures in North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe.
It reads almost like a series of short stories linked together by a common protagonist and supporting characters. The same (or very similar) story is retold in different circumstances. The protagonist is the quintessential unreliable narrator, and an accomplished liar. His continuous reinvention of himself means that we never really get to know him. As he says early in the novel, “These stories are all true, but only somewhere else.” It is intentionally disjointed and does not flow very well but the writing is witty and occasionally humorous. The author is riffing on the nature of storytelling. I found it reasonably entertaining, but it wears out its welcome fairly quickly.
“Maybe an idea, like love, cannot ever be stolen away, just as it cannot ever have belonged to me and only me.”
It reads almost like a series of short stories linked together by a common protagonist and supporting characters. The same (or very similar) story is retold in different circumstances. The protagonist is the quintessential unreliable narrator, and an accomplished liar. His continuous reinvention of himself means that we never really get to know him. As he says early in the novel, “These stories are all true, but only somewhere else.” It is intentionally disjointed and does not flow very well but the writing is witty and occasionally humorous. The author is riffing on the nature of storytelling. I found it reasonably entertaining, but it wears out its welcome fairly quickly.
“Maybe an idea, like love, cannot ever be stolen away, just as it cannot ever have belonged to me and only me.”
December 5, 2017
This is a brilliant book written by a 21st century author who redefines and restores the novel to what it should be: an imaginative romp through time and space while being allegorical, metaphorical and engaging, where the mantra of “tell the truth but slant it” is followed to the letter.
The unknown and unreliable narrator (he has many aliases throughout the novel, and is therefore not worth naming here) is trying, unsuccessfully, to write his break-out novel while all the while being enamoured and envious of his more gifted but eccentric friend, Julian, and being hopelessly in love with an actress, Evelyn, who herself has loftier aspirations for a husband, such as a crown prince in the duchy of Luxembourg, rather than a struggling writer who is only good in bed.
Starting with the unlikely situation where our young narrator is raised by a single mother who leaves him in an airport lounge every time she flies out to work as a cabin attendant, we are taken on a tour of the world—America, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Iceland and Luxembourg— places where I have lived in or visited—which made it all the more impactful to me—as the narrator goes on his elusive quest to discover himself, save Julian from self-destruction, and find love. He is partially successful in all but the last, for he is not particularly fond of attachment and commitment.
The book breaks into two parts: the first is grounded in the narrator’s early life in America and the second half covers his travels around the world during his odyssey of discovery. The first part is more grounded while the second part is fantastical where he even gets to meet and interact with his doppelganger, requiring a higher level of suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader.
There is clever writing here, though not often honest writing. We get lots of craft-related loose threads that are sprinkled throughout the narrative only to be reeled in for maximum impact later on. The characters are however superficial and we do not get an understanding of their motives, and this is partially due to the fact that they fuse in and out between reality and make believe. Given the wide geographic terrain being covered, I take it that the author had travelled and immersed himself in the atmosphere before writing about the various locales. And yet, he is subject to the perfunctory observations of an outsider rather than the lived experiences of the insider, In Sri Lanka, for example, where I was born and raised, I had difficulty imagining the epauletted blazer, and I wondered whether it was the Tigers who used civilians as human shields instead of the military.
While the ending ties up more loose threads, it left me less than enthused. And despite this being an imaginative novel, I felt I was required to imagine too much to make the ending acceptable. I wish the ending had gone through another draft.
Yet, overall, this is a very satisfying novel. It is a plotter’s textbook, for the number of plots and subplots are legion, all weaving and bobbing in and out of each other. And it raises some interesting questions: (1) Where does a writer’s life intersect and merge with his fiction? (2) Can the effort required and the expectation anticipated from a sophomore novel drive a successful novelist over the edge? (3) Does America no longer desire the truth, but only a facsimile thereof? (4) Can two writers, fiercely envious of each other, collaborate?, and (5) Can a writer who abhors publicity turn on a dime and read out his work in the most public of places, a town square in a foreign country?
I look forward to reading more of this young author’s future work and hope that his sophomore novel doesn’t take as much time and effort as poor Julian’s.
The unknown and unreliable narrator (he has many aliases throughout the novel, and is therefore not worth naming here) is trying, unsuccessfully, to write his break-out novel while all the while being enamoured and envious of his more gifted but eccentric friend, Julian, and being hopelessly in love with an actress, Evelyn, who herself has loftier aspirations for a husband, such as a crown prince in the duchy of Luxembourg, rather than a struggling writer who is only good in bed.
Starting with the unlikely situation where our young narrator is raised by a single mother who leaves him in an airport lounge every time she flies out to work as a cabin attendant, we are taken on a tour of the world—America, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Iceland and Luxembourg— places where I have lived in or visited—which made it all the more impactful to me—as the narrator goes on his elusive quest to discover himself, save Julian from self-destruction, and find love. He is partially successful in all but the last, for he is not particularly fond of attachment and commitment.
The book breaks into two parts: the first is grounded in the narrator’s early life in America and the second half covers his travels around the world during his odyssey of discovery. The first part is more grounded while the second part is fantastical where he even gets to meet and interact with his doppelganger, requiring a higher level of suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader.
There is clever writing here, though not often honest writing. We get lots of craft-related loose threads that are sprinkled throughout the narrative only to be reeled in for maximum impact later on. The characters are however superficial and we do not get an understanding of their motives, and this is partially due to the fact that they fuse in and out between reality and make believe. Given the wide geographic terrain being covered, I take it that the author had travelled and immersed himself in the atmosphere before writing about the various locales. And yet, he is subject to the perfunctory observations of an outsider rather than the lived experiences of the insider, In Sri Lanka, for example, where I was born and raised, I had difficulty imagining the epauletted blazer, and I wondered whether it was the Tigers who used civilians as human shields instead of the military.
While the ending ties up more loose threads, it left me less than enthused. And despite this being an imaginative novel, I felt I was required to imagine too much to make the ending acceptable. I wish the ending had gone through another draft.
Yet, overall, this is a very satisfying novel. It is a plotter’s textbook, for the number of plots and subplots are legion, all weaving and bobbing in and out of each other. And it raises some interesting questions: (1) Where does a writer’s life intersect and merge with his fiction? (2) Can the effort required and the expectation anticipated from a sophomore novel drive a successful novelist over the edge? (3) Does America no longer desire the truth, but only a facsimile thereof? (4) Can two writers, fiercely envious of each other, collaborate?, and (5) Can a writer who abhors publicity turn on a dime and read out his work in the most public of places, a town square in a foreign country?
I look forward to reading more of this young author’s future work and hope that his sophomore novel doesn’t take as much time and effort as poor Julian’s.
July 4, 2019
What a corker of a little book this was. I'm not even sure how to review it. I mean, I don't even know how much of it is 'real'. This is a book about writing, lying, storytelling, and a whole lot of metaphor. If you like a book with an unreliable narrator then you need to read this because this guy is the most unreliable of them all. I've just read a whole book about him and I only know a bare minimum about him, not even his name. I think this is going to be one I revisit in the future. I had such a good time reading it.
September 3, 2017
This book was hysterical! Completely different story telling and most enjoyable.
January 9, 2019
I almost rated this one star, and that was factoring in my Debut Star Bump. I decided to go with two because, in contemplating this, I believe Jansma is probably a better author than this book suggests. Also, because I read an advance, I wanted to allow for the fact that, perhaps, there was a final rewrite that made this better than what I read.
This felt as if the author was trying way too hard to be clever, inventive and witty..., as if he could just see the reviews saying "... witty", "inventive..." In the end, the only thing he came up with that was inventive was the title. This was confusing, if it was anything.
For example, why did one of the main character's names change half way through it? Why did the country of the Prince change? Was it because I was reading an uncorrected proof? I certainly hope so, otherwise it made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
One review I read suggested that perhaps this was written for "writers". Okay. But, aren't writers also readers? In fact, I dare to postulate that the best writers are also great readers -- they know what appeals to them in a story. I don't see this being as "successful" in the longterm as this initial buzz would seem to indicate. I know I, for one, am glad I read an advance and didn't waste the money on this. Wish I could say the same about my time.
This felt as if the author was trying way too hard to be clever, inventive and witty..., as if he could just see the reviews saying "... witty", "inventive..." In the end, the only thing he came up with that was inventive was the title. This was confusing, if it was anything.
For example, why did one of the main character's names change half way through it? Why did the country of the Prince change? Was it because I was reading an uncorrected proof? I certainly hope so, otherwise it made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
One review I read suggested that perhaps this was written for "writers". Okay. But, aren't writers also readers? In fact, I dare to postulate that the best writers are also great readers -- they know what appeals to them in a story. I don't see this being as "successful" in the longterm as this initial buzz would seem to indicate. I know I, for one, am glad I read an advance and didn't waste the money on this. Wish I could say the same about my time.
April 19, 2013
Another in a recent series of audiobooks that can best be described as "exhausting" I'm afraid, with a plot that careens and lurches like a pinball game. Eduardo Ballerini's excellent audio narration helped with my resolve to get to the end, which was sorely tempted around halfway through, with the trio dissolved, and the self-identified unreliable narrator going his own way. Jeffrey (a/k/a Julian) was almost endearing, reminding me a bit of Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited, so my flagging interest revived upon his reappearance around the 3/4 mark.
The storeyline itself aside, I felt I'd been asked to suspend disbelief far too many times ("Things An Editor Should've Caught"): Two crates of caviar in the trunk of a Jaguar? Boxes I might've understood, but "crate" brings up an image of something large enough to need a crane to be moved, and a Jag trunk isn't exactly roomy; Jeffrey commandeers a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne on a flight from New York to Las Vegas - I've flown upfront on similar routes, and you're lucky they have champagne at all (or a decent white actually), no flight attendant is going to hand over a bottle to a passenger to serve himself; Grace Kelly and Queen Nur (of Jordan) married reigning monarchs - here we have a glamorous American married to a fifth son, which is pretty far removed from all the hoopla, moreover, said fifth son is hardly likely to go on overseas trips to cement trade relations regularly (I don't think). Finally, the snotty rich kids at the beginning would have been at a prep school, not the same public high school as our narrator.
My verdict: Jansma's a terrific writer, with a great sense of place and character, but here things got out of hand. I'd be quite interested in another offering from him, hopefully shorter and tighter. Meanwhile, I'd recommend this book, but wouldn't fault folks who couldn't go the distance.
The storeyline itself aside, I felt I'd been asked to suspend disbelief far too many times ("Things An Editor Should've Caught"): Two crates of caviar in the trunk of a Jaguar? Boxes I might've understood, but "crate" brings up an image of something large enough to need a crane to be moved, and a Jag trunk isn't exactly roomy; Jeffrey commandeers a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne on a flight from New York to Las Vegas - I've flown upfront on similar routes, and you're lucky they have champagne at all (or a decent white actually), no flight attendant is going to hand over a bottle to a passenger to serve himself; Grace Kelly and Queen Nur (of Jordan) married reigning monarchs - here we have a glamorous American married to a fifth son, which is pretty far removed from all the hoopla, moreover, said fifth son is hardly likely to go on overseas trips to cement trade relations regularly (I don't think). Finally, the snotty rich kids at the beginning would have been at a prep school, not the same public high school as our narrator.
My verdict: Jansma's a terrific writer, with a great sense of place and character, but here things got out of hand. I'd be quite interested in another offering from him, hopefully shorter and tighter. Meanwhile, I'd recommend this book, but wouldn't fault folks who couldn't go the distance.
August 4, 2013
I loved this book!
I can see its flaws -- a writer writing about a writer struggling with writing -- but I love it despite its hyper "self-awareness." I appreciated the spiraling stories within stories that Jansma creates and even the moments of confusion as names and identities constantly switch. It's a smart thought-provoking novel about storytelling, identity, love and literature.
This is the second book I've read recently in which the author points out that the best stories start in the middle (the other being another 5-star We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves). In both, the narrator is not completely trustworthy as lies/stories come out as easily as they breathe. But they appeal to me because they force me to think about the entire concept of "truth."
"How did I wind up in Dubai? Well it's certainly an interesting story - one of my better ones. Unless, of course, you want the truth. The truth is only slightly less interesting than the story. But, then again, it's the truth - so it has that unique quality. Of all the possible stories out there, from the fantastic to the mundane, only one of them qualifies as the truth."
Best of all, inermixed in the philisophical questions, is a good solid story about a triangle of unhappy people, just trying to figure out how to move forward.
I can see its flaws -- a writer writing about a writer struggling with writing -- but I love it despite its hyper "self-awareness." I appreciated the spiraling stories within stories that Jansma creates and even the moments of confusion as names and identities constantly switch. It's a smart thought-provoking novel about storytelling, identity, love and literature.
This is the second book I've read recently in which the author points out that the best stories start in the middle (the other being another 5-star We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves). In both, the narrator is not completely trustworthy as lies/stories come out as easily as they breathe. But they appeal to me because they force me to think about the entire concept of "truth."
"How did I wind up in Dubai? Well it's certainly an interesting story - one of my better ones. Unless, of course, you want the truth. The truth is only slightly less interesting than the story. But, then again, it's the truth - so it has that unique quality. Of all the possible stories out there, from the fantastic to the mundane, only one of them qualifies as the truth."
Best of all, inermixed in the philisophical questions, is a good solid story about a triangle of unhappy people, just trying to figure out how to move forward.
April 9, 2023
pretentious. if this was satire, it would be funny, but i’m pretty sure this is dead serious.
November 24, 2014
If you like books about books and meta-level fiction, you will love Jansma's novel.
And it's not so high concept that it's difficult to read. It's actually quite fun.
The protagonist of Jansma's novel is an aspiring writer, and as such he is consumed with the task of writing and its affiliated tasks: reading great works of literature, having adventures so that he can "write what he knows," workshopping with other writers, taking creative writing classes, writing drafts, revising and despairing that one's work isn't original enough.
But don't despair. The book's setting isn't restricted to a writer's garret. You get to tag along to airport terminals, Manhattan night clubs, train travel in Asia, open air markets in Africa, and the theater in Luxembourg. With some additional stops in Vegas, Iceland with a few more stops in between.
But more than anything, the novel considers the adage that all good writers are liars who have trouble keeping fiction to the realm of writing and nonfiction to the realm of their lived experience. Both tend to merge.
For a while, I tried to keep straight what was fact and what was fiction, and then *facepalm* I decided to just sit back and enjoy the ride because OF COURSE there is no fact in this novel. The whole book is a work of fiction! And it's a big old celebration of the ability we have to just make things up as we go along (in real life as well as in the pages of a book).
The structure is a series of short stories that end up folding in on themselves. The character names change, events in the protagonist's life become fodder for his fiction, and the authorship of the entire novel itself comes into question as we go along but particularly by the conclusion. These little puzzles tease the reader throughout, and I'm still trying to figure out "What did Jansma just do there?"
And this is his first novel. I can't believe this, because his satire and his musings are very mature. And his allusions are skillfully deployed. He has an amusing section set in Africa where the protagonist and a fiction editor flirt/discuss the use of doppelgangers in fiction. Oh, be still my heart!
It's fun to get lost in all the literary allusions and the snarky and angst-ridden psyche of the protagonist and his best-friend writer while thinking about the wacky and whimsical world of fiction writing.
And it's not so high concept that it's difficult to read. It's actually quite fun.
The protagonist of Jansma's novel is an aspiring writer, and as such he is consumed with the task of writing and its affiliated tasks: reading great works of literature, having adventures so that he can "write what he knows," workshopping with other writers, taking creative writing classes, writing drafts, revising and despairing that one's work isn't original enough.
But don't despair. The book's setting isn't restricted to a writer's garret. You get to tag along to airport terminals, Manhattan night clubs, train travel in Asia, open air markets in Africa, and the theater in Luxembourg. With some additional stops in Vegas, Iceland with a few more stops in between.
But more than anything, the novel considers the adage that all good writers are liars who have trouble keeping fiction to the realm of writing and nonfiction to the realm of their lived experience. Both tend to merge.
For a while, I tried to keep straight what was fact and what was fiction, and then *facepalm* I decided to just sit back and enjoy the ride because OF COURSE there is no fact in this novel. The whole book is a work of fiction! And it's a big old celebration of the ability we have to just make things up as we go along (in real life as well as in the pages of a book).
The structure is a series of short stories that end up folding in on themselves. The character names change, events in the protagonist's life become fodder for his fiction, and the authorship of the entire novel itself comes into question as we go along but particularly by the conclusion. These little puzzles tease the reader throughout, and I'm still trying to figure out "What did Jansma just do there?"
And this is his first novel. I can't believe this, because his satire and his musings are very mature. And his allusions are skillfully deployed. He has an amusing section set in Africa where the protagonist and a fiction editor flirt/discuss the use of doppelgangers in fiction. Oh, be still my heart!
It's fun to get lost in all the literary allusions and the snarky and angst-ridden psyche of the protagonist and his best-friend writer while thinking about the wacky and whimsical world of fiction writing.
March 25, 2013
(Note: Viking Press provided me with a copy of The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards for the purpose of this review.)
Grade: B+
L/C Ratio: 90% Literary / 10% Commercial
Thematic Breakdown:
30% - Writing
25% - Friendship
20% - Love
15% - Identity
10% - World travels
Addictiveness: Medium
Movie Potential: 1 Thumb Down
Re-readability: Medium
As Kristopher Jansma proves in his debut novel, an experimental piece of fiction doesn't always have to feel like an experiment to its reader. The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is packed with literary innovation - in the form of plot, structure, setting, and character identity - but those elements don't detract from the book's emotional weight. In fact, they enhance it.
Jansma tells stories within stories that span the globe and build a fascinating personality for the novel's nameless narrator, an aspiring writer with a best friend who happens to be his literary rival. While that competitive relationship is a strength of the novel, the narrator's two primary love interests are somewhat underdeveloped. His obsession with them tries to be authentic, but the two women appear in so few scenes that the source of the passion feels forced.
There are moments of pure poetry in The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards (starting with the title), and Jansma's use of symbolism is restrained yet powerful. His novel may be a challenging puzzle, but solving it is both an enjoyable and gratifying experience.
Grade: B+
L/C Ratio: 90% Literary / 10% Commercial
Thematic Breakdown:
30% - Writing
25% - Friendship
20% - Love
15% - Identity
10% - World travels
Addictiveness: Medium
Movie Potential: 1 Thumb Down
Re-readability: Medium
As Kristopher Jansma proves in his debut novel, an experimental piece of fiction doesn't always have to feel like an experiment to its reader. The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is packed with literary innovation - in the form of plot, structure, setting, and character identity - but those elements don't detract from the book's emotional weight. In fact, they enhance it.
Jansma tells stories within stories that span the globe and build a fascinating personality for the novel's nameless narrator, an aspiring writer with a best friend who happens to be his literary rival. While that competitive relationship is a strength of the novel, the narrator's two primary love interests are somewhat underdeveloped. His obsession with them tries to be authentic, but the two women appear in so few scenes that the source of the passion feels forced.
There are moments of pure poetry in The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards (starting with the title), and Jansma's use of symbolism is restrained yet powerful. His novel may be a challenging puzzle, but solving it is both an enjoyable and gratifying experience.
March 30, 2013
The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards hits a reading sweet spot for me. It's a concise, well told narrative, a series of short stories that add up to a complete novel, all overlaid with a postmodern evaluation of the nature of fiction. So the book gets off to a great start. And the opening chapters/stories deliver on the initial promise. They are compelling, touching, and memorable, reminiscent of Michael Chabon's initial work.
However, as the book progresses, I felt a loss of momentum, and I had more of a "So what" reaction at the end of a section, instead of an "Oh wow!" Because the narrator is a habitual liar (the book is about the relation between lies and truth), I expected that the stories might wander far afield; but the latter portions of the book seem more absurd, more contrived, and thus less compelling. I enjoyed the book; I gained insight into the nature of fiction and how truth can be woven from lies. That said, I was disappointed.
So how to rate the book? It began as five stars for me, and then I (reasonably) took away a star for the latter portion. But then I (irrationally) took away another star for my disappointment; I wanted the book to be much more than it turned out to be.
This is Jansma's first novel. I'll certainly keep my eye out for his next, which may more fully deliver on his initial promise.
However, as the book progresses, I felt a loss of momentum, and I had more of a "So what" reaction at the end of a section, instead of an "Oh wow!" Because the narrator is a habitual liar (the book is about the relation between lies and truth), I expected that the stories might wander far afield; but the latter portions of the book seem more absurd, more contrived, and thus less compelling. I enjoyed the book; I gained insight into the nature of fiction and how truth can be woven from lies. That said, I was disappointed.
So how to rate the book? It began as five stars for me, and then I (reasonably) took away a star for the latter portion. But then I (irrationally) took away another star for my disappointment; I wanted the book to be much more than it turned out to be.
This is Jansma's first novel. I'll certainly keep my eye out for his next, which may more fully deliver on his initial promise.
April 26, 2016
"....[it] had the rare quality of seeming like a classic on the day it was first published, with a clever consortium of low-lying postmodern puzzles to occupy the highbrow and heartfelt hijinks to captivate the lowbrow. It is the rare sort of book that resembles nothing else and yet somehow seems intensely familiar. From the first line you feel your own heart begin to beat differently. Once it's over you want to begin it again. It is a love letter; it is an atom bomb; it is literature we'd forgotten could be written." (p.168).
Such is the description of the mega best selling novel of the unnamed narrator's best friend/rival, yet it is also an apt one for Jansma's debut novel. If I SLIGHTLY preferred his recent second book, it is only because I have a personal low tolerance for whimsicality, and this sometimes borders dangerously on being just this side of twee.... and his second novel is both more realistic and mature. Be that as it may, this is a book I can guarantee I will reread at some point, probably after a spate of less distinguished novels leads me to want to read something to restore my faith in the written word.
Such is the description of the mega best selling novel of the unnamed narrator's best friend/rival, yet it is also an apt one for Jansma's debut novel. If I SLIGHTLY preferred his recent second book, it is only because I have a personal low tolerance for whimsicality, and this sometimes borders dangerously on being just this side of twee.... and his second novel is both more realistic and mature. Be that as it may, this is a book I can guarantee I will reread at some point, probably after a spate of less distinguished novels leads me to want to read something to restore my faith in the written word.
April 5, 2013
It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to start this review. This is only because I am torn about this book. On one hand I like that Mr. Jansma played on the idea of deception and liars. Each chapter was like a mini story that just added and built onto the next story. Kind of like a movie within a movie. Also, I liked all the different places that I traveled in this book. However on the flip side of this book, I never really connected with the characters. For the same factor as to why I liked this book…the deception. Because the characters played with deception, this made them less likable.
Another factor was that this book while they were short stories/chapters, I was not instantly drawn into the book. It moved somewhat slowly. However Mr. Jansma is a good storyteller. He gets into your mind and makes you try to separate the truth from the lie. The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is a thought-provoking book.
Another factor was that this book while they were short stories/chapters, I was not instantly drawn into the book. It moved somewhat slowly. However Mr. Jansma is a good storyteller. He gets into your mind and makes you try to separate the truth from the lie. The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is a thought-provoking book.
October 7, 2016
Tak jo, tuhle knihu jsem dočetla tak před měsícem, přinejmenším... Zkrátka mám za sebou pár chaotických týdnů, ale teď snad bude víc času na čtení a dumání o knihách a moc se na to těším :)
Zatím k tomuhle příběhu řeknu, že se mi líbíl fakt moc. Uvažovala jsem i o pěti hvězdičkách, ale zatím takhle. Až o něm sepíšu článek na blog, možná hodnocení ještě poupravím. Tak snad brzo!
Zatím k tomuhle příběhu řeknu, že se mi líbíl fakt moc. Uvažovala jsem i o pěti hvězdičkách, ale zatím takhle. Až o něm sepíšu článek na blog, možná hodnocení ještě poupravím. Tak snad brzo!
August 19, 2016
Romanzo originale e a tratti divertente sul rapporto tra due scrittori conosciutisi all’università, in cui realtà e finzione si mischiano continuamente. Godibile.
March 28, 2023
Update - this is a re-read of a good little book! I initially gave this a 4 star rating, but not sure why. It is really good from start to finish. See below for my original review.
What a great read! Excellent story telling from an unreliable protagonist. This initially felt like a short story collection with interweaving characters, and each "chapter" could be read as a stand alone story, but taken together they do represent a somewhat chronological story of a life not so well lived. Not only is our hero unreliable, he is, at times, unlikeable due to some unsavory characteristics and practices. Still, the stories were, for the most part, fascinating and a bit overboard. I was reminded at times of Daniel Wallace's great novel,
in its absurdity, and the unlikely situations the protagonist finds himself in. I was close to giving this a 5 star rating, and I may upgrade it after some time has passed. A great book to start the new year!
What a great read! Excellent story telling from an unreliable protagonist. This initially felt like a short story collection with interweaving characters, and each "chapter" could be read as a stand alone story, but taken together they do represent a somewhat chronological story of a life not so well lived. Not only is our hero unreliable, he is, at times, unlikeable due to some unsavory characteristics and practices. Still, the stories were, for the most part, fascinating and a bit overboard. I was reminded at times of Daniel Wallace's great novel,
in its absurdity, and the unlikely situations the protagonist finds himself in. I was close to giving this a 5 star rating, and I may upgrade it after some time has passed. A great book to start the new year!Displaying 1 - 30 of 769 reviews