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Title: Two Guys from Verona: A Novel of Suburbia by James Kaplan ISBN: 0-8021-3623-0 Publisher: Publishers' Group West Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (20 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: interesting characters, but 2 guys need a life and an editor
Comment: i grew up in new jersey territory covered by book. found moods and characters evocative and often moving. james kaplan can clearly write--often beautifully and lyrically. he is way too in love with his own voice, however, his description of places and things and people often painfully overdrawn and convoluted. we get it: he knows language. but sometimes a sentence fewer than 10 lines long, with fewer than 6 parentheticals and dashes, isn't a tragedy. it's exhausting reading the sometimes overblown and tediously and needlessly complexly woven sentence structures around secondary and terciary characters and story elements. there were times i wanted to shout, get to the point, say it more simply and clearly. one less adjective please; use 6 adjectives in the sentence instead of 11. this isn't graduate school fiction writing in which you're trying to impress your colleagues and professor.
having said that, kaplan's observations about suburban life--its foibles and flaws and eccentricities--are often sharp and great fun. so are some of the nuances of his core characters. sometimes his references and comments dazzle.
what's not so sharp are some of the critical plot developments and resolutions. too neat and simple and quick. why, for example, wouldn't core character joel have investigated more carefully the disappearance of his beloved girl friend (cindy) years earlier? it makes no sense that he would have waited so long to visit the hospital from which she disappeared just after high school. and why, when "relatively" early in the story he learned that cindy had a local daughter, didn't he jump all over that, and confront the "supposed" very accessible father. joel's life transformation after finally finding and meeting cindy--from borderline schizophrenic and complete screw up to proprietor of a suburban coffee house--is equally implausible. it all happens way too fast and without necessary development.
the ending, and the weaving together of various plot lines, reads too much like a hollow hollywood movie. kaplan clearly can do better than that.
he's created the edges of something very special here. i was hooked; i read much of the book eagerly. i just wish he filled in more of the content with a little less attention to style and a little more to reality--the real shapes and patterns of real human interactions and dynamics.
Rating: 4
Summary: beautiful and troubling
Comment: "Two Guys From Verona" is a beautifully written book about a couple of characters so realistic you could probably lift samples of their DNA from the typeface. Like most worthwhile works of art, however, it leaves the reader pondering some troubling questions. For instance, I wasn't sure why one of the characters, who is portrayed as kind and decent, agreed to allow a rapist to adopt her newborn daughter. Also, Kaplan's odd couple -- Will Weiss and Joel Gold -- seem throughout the book to be acting out a virtual parable of the wages of materialism: Weiss is made miserable by his constant need for more money, while Gold appears to be slightly happier because he prefers simple pleasures (cruising in his Impala, writing poetry) to the obsessive quest for money and material gain. Thus the revelation in the end that Gold is actually the more materially wealthy of the two seems a bit confusing. Is Kaplan telling us that it's okay to amass large sums of money as long as you don't let its accumulation rule your life? At any rate, there is plenty of ambiguity in the book, which makes it all the more enjoyable to read. I suspect one could read this novel a dozen times and never fathom its depths entirely. James Kaplan's "Two Guys From Verona" is one of the few books about the end of this century that is likely to be around for the end of the next one as well.
Rating: 5
Summary: Middle-aged, surburban angst
Comment: As a fellow boomer, the characters of "Two Guys" drew me in. The trials and tribulations of the very different yet long-term friends, Joel and Will, are colorful, realistic and oh so painful to someone of the same era.
Kaplan has an indirect, poetic flourish. He notes and vividly describes colors, sounds and smells. These visceral aspects of his style complement and round out the development of characters and scenes. At times the non-linear exposition and delayed description of characters can be frustrating, but it is worth the wait. These are characters worth discovering.
Who hasn't left behind some deep-seated memories, ones you'd just as soon avoid as pursue? What middle-aged male has not looked twice at younger women? And what same male has not anguished over lost hair, an expanded waistline, a looming mortgages, and or spousal distance? Well-worn subjects brought to life by a skilled author.
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Title: The Lost Legends of New Jersey by Frederick Reiken ISBN: 0156010941 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 05 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Little Children by Tom Perrotta ISBN: 0312315716 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: A Friend of the Family by Lisa Jewell ISBN: 0525947345 Publisher: Dutton Books Pub. Date: 29 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Aloft by Chang-Rae Lee ISBN: 1573222631 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: 08 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Just One Look by Harlan Coben ISBN: 0525947914 Publisher: Dutton Books Pub. Date: 26 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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