meredithw20's review against another edition
4.0
This was my first experience with Sloane Crosley, though I reserved her memoir at the library before I reserved The Clasp... but I guess the length of those respective lines is telling? I dunno. I liked this book, despite stated objections to many of its elements in the abstract -- like I sort of roll my eyes when a work of modern fiction is presided over by the characters' obsession/intersection with a classic author, the way Whitman holds court in Paper Towns, but for whatever reason the Maupassant thing read as charming. I don't like stories where men have conflicting attractions to one woman (and I guess that's still true of The Clasp, because I didn't dig the way this ends). I am really done with mopey techie boys as book characters, but I followed Victor across the ocean. I was compelled to read this pretty quickly, despite a relatively low-stakes plot and characters I found irritating, I guess because their motivations had such a strange twist in application? Or because I liked the language so much? God, I have never written this long a Goodreads review. tl;dr: I don't know why I liked this book so much. Maybe you can tell me.
mary_clark's review against another edition
1.0
I wanted to like this book, but I'm not a fan of dialect. In this case, upper-class millennial dialect that prevented me from liking or caring about what happened to any of the characters.
aobrien23's review against another edition
3.0
I adore Sloane Crosley's non-fiction (and I might slightly want to be her), but this didn't have the same verve.
jaclynday's review against another edition
2.0
I should have known this book would be insufferable when I saw it reviewed in every glossy magazine I picked up, and even then—even then!—I still read it. It’s ploddingly, horrifically slow, with characters that seem straight out of Instagram imaginings. All the humor and life is methodically sucked out of the story as Crosley continually strives to slam literary weight into a book that ultimately has nothing much to say.
eric_roling's review against another edition
2.0
This wanted to be literary fiction playing off Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace", but the author bit off more than she could chew. Unlikeable characters go where ever the author needs them to go. Two characters come together for no discernable reason (other than lots of alcohol - maybe the author thought that was reason enough). Some interesting scenery and locations, but overall not a very compelling story.
shogins's review against another edition
2.0
It was more interesting when I thought the necklace was real. And I didn't care about any of the characters, although I totally would've read a Devil Wears Prada-esque story about Kezia and the jewelry industry.
mehrangezmr's review against another edition
3.0
This was well written but i thought it went a little off the rails in the final chapters which take place in France. Really felt rather far fetched and as though I was reading a different book, one that was more melodramatic and picaresque. I did think the relationships between Kezia, Nathaniel and Victor ended up taking a poignant turn but it took too long I felt for them to actually get there.
jodyjsperling's review against another edition
4.0
I had heard that this book was perhaps an updated version of "The Necklace," by Guy de Maupassant, and certainly, the story revolves around Maupassant's classic story, but the novel is not a simple updated version.
At its highest points, The Clasp is one of the rare modern novels that has compassion for its characters. Crosley cares what happens to the people in her book. There is a hint of positive transformation in each of the three principle characters' lives. Anyone tired of reading one Nihilist novel after the next will enjoy this book greatly.
At its lowest points, the novel drags through overly-clever, narrative junk. At times I can feel the writer peeking through the fictional curtain and begging the reader to acknowledge that she made a good joke. An early example of this sort of wink occurred on the first page of chapter one when one of Victor's coworkers is seen holding a "press release" regarding Victor's firing. Crosley writes, "Nancy held the paper announcing Victor's departure in her hand, crushing it so that his last name, Wexler, melded with his first into VictorWe. Alas, he did not feel particularly victorweous today." This example among others suits the author more than the character whose perspective the chapter is filtering through. Victor, it's safe to say, would not be feeling so clever after discovering he's been fired.
Overall, I found The Clasp to be a refreshing read, a pleasant relief from the literary impulse away from plot. There's plenty of character development, but there's also things happening, a story, tension, stakes. I'll gladly look forward to Crosley's next novel.
At its highest points, The Clasp is one of the rare modern novels that has compassion for its characters. Crosley cares what happens to the people in her book. There is a hint of positive transformation in each of the three principle characters' lives. Anyone tired of reading one Nihilist novel after the next will enjoy this book greatly.
At its lowest points, the novel drags through overly-clever, narrative junk. At times I can feel the writer peeking through the fictional curtain and begging the reader to acknowledge that she made a good joke. An early example of this sort of wink occurred on the first page of chapter one when one of Victor's coworkers is seen holding a "press release" regarding Victor's firing. Crosley writes, "Nancy held the paper announcing Victor's departure in her hand, crushing it so that his last name, Wexler, melded with his first into VictorWe. Alas, he did not feel particularly victorweous today." This example among others suits the author more than the character whose perspective the chapter is filtering through. Victor, it's safe to say, would not be feeling so clever after discovering he's been fired.
Overall, I found The Clasp to be a refreshing read, a pleasant relief from the literary impulse away from plot. There's plenty of character development, but there's also things happening, a story, tension, stakes. I'll gladly look forward to Crosley's next novel.
kmrose's review against another edition
3.0
Probably closer to 2.5 stars. I would have liked it more had I not read the synopsis first. The inside flap described it as a "madcap adventure" but that was such a small part of the story. I sometimes thought it was satire, but I think it was trying to be mostly serious. An interesting story about college friends trying to stay friends into adulthood, but not as satisfying as I would have hoped.