franschulman9's review
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
ringofkeyz's review
i kept trying to get into this book from sheer power of will (i don't enjoy "dnf-ing" books) but just could not succeed.
the characters are insufferable in a way that i couldn't bring myself to care about any of their perspectives. it just felt like the two primary male characters were in a dick measuring contest while one tried to get the attention of the one female friend who couldn't care less.
the characters are insufferable in a way that i couldn't bring myself to care about any of their perspectives. it just felt like the two primary male characters were in a dick measuring contest while one tried to get the attention of the one female friend who couldn't care less.
melissahoward's review against another edition
4.0
I don't generally write reviews, for many reasons. However, this book was good. I loved it for some reasons. I strongly disliked a few conclusions that it made and was drawn to others. It left me thinking which is always a good thing. It was internally polarizing for me in a way few books really are. The author wrote with a true compassion that surprised me because some of it doesn't become apparent until near the end of the book. Consequently, I didn't quite know how many stars I wanted to give it, which is why I actually wrote this abbreviated review. It might deserve five - it could deserve three.
storytimed's review against another edition
3.0
I think this book lives and dies on its distance from the narrator. Eric is a total Nice Guy, and The Collective is worse when it feels like it's a book from him and better when it feels like it's a book about him. Halfway through the novel, nestled in his poor-little-me Gen Xer perspective, I hated it. As I finished reading, having seen him grow the fuck up a little and called out by Jessica, I thought to myself: maybe I actually liked reading this after all.
The prose is v. readable and good at capturing the little pinprick gradations of human discontent. The long scene where the 3AC try to come up with a mission statement is 100% true to life. Esther's success despite Eric's little bitch baby resentment of her was pretty delicious. There's a tenderness that Eric has for Josh, this difficult awful man, that almost makes me like their relationship, despite Joshua being an absolute trashbag of a human being. I very much liked how Eric is just, at his core, not a very good writer and uncomfortably aware of it.
OTOH, sometimes The Collective dips into typical male-protagonist self-inserty narcissism. Jessica Tsai is often the voice of reason and I liked that she ended up with another woman after all, but some of her scenes get way too indulgently Chasing Amy about her presumed sexual access for Eric. Nobody brings up intersectionality, which may have just been how it was in the 2000s (probably not? this is post-Margaret Cho!), but that definitely narrows the perspective of a novel whose main protagonist spends twenty years incredibly aggrieved about race. Noklek is a total nonentity & stereotype - makes me want to write something about how Asian-Americans Other Asians from Asia.
Also: despite the focus on race, somehow The Collective is not at all in conversation with Asian American culture at large. Eric's third-gen SoCal heritage is meant to make him a sort of blank slate who's never had to think about his culture in his life, but that's completely not accurate to the vibrant Asian-American identity in SoCal, and it just makes him a generic everydude. He and Joshua only vaguely interact with Asian-ness on the "complaining about stereotype" level. The sum total of literary references is a running joke about Murakami, even though they live in a time period that's post-Maxine Hong Kingston and contemporary to Amy Tan. I mean, that totally tracks with the portrayal of Eric and Joshua as pretentious dilettantes, but it still kind of pisses me off.
This book could have been so much more interesting with some distance. I wanted more than an one-off observation from Jessica to tease out the mutual expectations and toxicity and idealization between Joshua and Eric. I wanted a bit more of the other 3AC members, or an idea of how this collective fits into the larger Asian-American media landscape. I wanted Noklek to be treated like a fucking person instead of the underage Southeast Asian refugee/prostitute stereotype (fuck, that's noxious). I wanted a book that was really about a collective, not just its least interesting member.
The prose is v. readable and good at capturing the little pinprick gradations of human discontent. The long scene where the 3AC try to come up with a mission statement is 100% true to life. Esther's success despite Eric's little bitch baby resentment of her was pretty delicious. There's a tenderness that Eric has for Josh, this difficult awful man, that almost makes me like their relationship, despite Joshua being an absolute trashbag of a human being. I very much liked how Eric is just, at his core, not a very good writer and uncomfortably aware of it.
OTOH, sometimes The Collective dips into typical male-protagonist self-inserty narcissism. Jessica Tsai is often the voice of reason and I liked that she ended up with another woman after all, but some of her scenes get way too indulgently Chasing Amy about her presumed sexual access for Eric. Nobody brings up intersectionality, which may have just been how it was in the 2000s (probably not? this is post-Margaret Cho!), but that definitely narrows the perspective of a novel whose main protagonist spends twenty years incredibly aggrieved about race. Noklek is a total nonentity & stereotype - makes me want to write something about how Asian-Americans Other Asians from Asia.
Also: despite the focus on race, somehow The Collective is not at all in conversation with Asian American culture at large. Eric's third-gen SoCal heritage is meant to make him a sort of blank slate who's never had to think about his culture in his life, but that's completely not accurate to the vibrant Asian-American identity in SoCal, and it just makes him a generic everydude. He and Joshua only vaguely interact with Asian-ness on the "complaining about stereotype" level. The sum total of literary references is a running joke about Murakami, even though they live in a time period that's post-Maxine Hong Kingston and contemporary to Amy Tan. I mean, that totally tracks with the portrayal of Eric and Joshua as pretentious dilettantes, but it still kind of pisses me off.
This book could have been so much more interesting with some distance. I wanted more than an one-off observation from Jessica to tease out the mutual expectations and toxicity and idealization between Joshua and Eric. I wanted a bit more of the other 3AC members, or an idea of how this collective fits into the larger Asian-American media landscape. I wanted Noklek to be treated like a fucking person instead of the underage Southeast Asian refugee/prostitute stereotype (fuck, that's noxious). I wanted a book that was really about a collective, not just its least interesting member.
lola425's review against another edition
3.0
Joshua is like a modern-day Gatsby. Great writing. If you've ever been young and had a dream or a vision and tried to really, truly live that vision only to find it doesn't live up to your ideal, then The Collective will resonate with you. If you ever loved and admired someone who was in some ways wholly undeserving of those emotions, and yet still in desperate need of them (without ever admitting it), then Joshua and Eric will make perfect sense to you.
kailaelders's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
rachelini's review against another edition
3.0
I feel like Asian American is not a perspective you find in fiction that often, so the parts that were about that experience and the Asian American artist experience were very interesting. But I found the general plot a bit boring.
mgreco5's review against another edition
3.0
For as much as I want to give this book a higher rating, I'm honestly torn. "The Collective" was well-written and had some great passages I know I'll come back to later, but I really didn't like the character of Joshua. He was didactic, opinionated...and yet I realize why he was that way and why he needed to be that way for the story. But, ultimately, I found him distracting. I also feel like I can't give this book a higher rating because I don't know that I would recommend it; not because it isn't written well, but because I feel a reader needs to be in a certain mindset. The book isn't really a light read and it deals a lot with the disillusionment of being an artist. There was also a point in the book where I felt I had to look up every other word. Additionally, from the book jacket sleeve, I thought this would be about three friends, and it is. But many other characters are brought into this "collective" and I lost track of a bunch of them. What can I say? I like small groups.
This is a book I think I will re-read in, perhaps, five years or so and come to have a greater appreciation for.
This is a book I think I will re-read in, perhaps, five years or so and come to have a greater appreciation for.
larryc's review against another edition
4.0
Entertaining. Don Lee takes us into a subculture and reveals many of the issues relevant to Asian Americans that aren't widely discussed. Sometimes the dialogue gets a little to political for my tastes, as when the radical activist Joshua goes into long diatribes that sometimes sound more like written than spoken words. However, the book still contains many interesting characters and it's certainly an enjoyable and insightful read.