beatrice_k's review
4.0
For the first few hundred pages, this feels schizophrenic and frenetic with its two page chapters and almost constant change of narrators. But, it never feels out of Peter Orner's control.
So let me gush about him for a minute: Peter Orner is such a good writer! So visceral! So charming! So fun! When he gets a grip on humanity, from precocious child to lonely old man, you see all that talent and it's shocking and wonderful and addictive. Yes, I found myself getting annoyed with the novel's pace, but I could never seriously consider putting it down, it was just too rewarding. When the story hits its stride and the narrator and the reader find themselves on the same page, it's such a wonderfully self-aware and beautiful moment. It's so fun to read a writer that knows what he's doing, especially when you doubt his abilities for the majority of the book. Keep reading.
So let me gush about him for a minute: Peter Orner is such a good writer! So visceral! So charming! So fun! When he gets a grip on humanity, from precocious child to lonely old man, you see all that talent and it's shocking and wonderful and addictive. Yes, I found myself getting annoyed with the novel's pace, but I could never seriously consider putting it down, it was just too rewarding. When the story hits its stride and the narrator and the reader find themselves on the same page, it's such a wonderfully self-aware and beautiful moment. It's so fun to read a writer that knows what he's doing, especially when you doubt his abilities for the majority of the book. Keep reading.
runkefer's review
4.0
Insightful, beautifully written family saga-in-snippets. The narrative functions much in the same way memory does, in seemingly disconnected vignettes that slowly assemble themselves into a multifaceted collage.
hillarybeth's review against another edition
2.0
I couldn't finish this book... just couldn't do it. I read about 200 pages and still didn't care about the characters, their stories, how they were connected, or what happened to them. I did, however, like the illustrations, which is why I'm rating this book 2 stars instead of 1.
harrietnbrown's review against another edition
3.0
Just didn't hold my interest enough to keep reading. Maybe it was me.
themster's review against another edition
2.0
It isn’t enough to have great sentences, Orner. They have to make sense together.
jeanetterenee's review against another edition
UGH! Contemporary novelists should never try to channel Richard Brautigan.
bookishlibrarian's review against another edition
3.0
I almost gave up on this book several times, but I'm glad I stuck with it to the end. This is the story of several generations of the Popper family. Instead of the sweeping epic you might expect, it's told in short bursts, collections of small, mostly ordinary moments among ordinary people. Most of the big events that happen to the family occur offstage or are referenced obliquely. Some of the set pieces are so well-done that minor characters--a music teacher, an old-boys-club judge--are more memorable than the Popper family. I got a little Stuart Dybek feel (one of my favorite writers)at times, although that may be because Chicago is featured so prominently, although Orner's Chicago is heavy on the Democratic political subculture (with a defense of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis)instead of Dybek's Polish Catholic neighborhoods.
With the constantly shifting time periods and perspectives and sections not longer than a couple of pages, so much of the story of this family seemed to take place in the gaps, what wasn't said or explicitly spelled out in the book and what the family members didn't say to each other. As a result, the characters in the book seemed to repeat the same patterns of the previous generation. It made for a sometimes frustrating reading experience, but more resonant in retrospect.
With the constantly shifting time periods and perspectives and sections not longer than a couple of pages, so much of the story of this family seemed to take place in the gaps, what wasn't said or explicitly spelled out in the book and what the family members didn't say to each other. As a result, the characters in the book seemed to repeat the same patterns of the previous generation. It made for a sometimes frustrating reading experience, but more resonant in retrospect.
lezbianna's review against another edition
5.0
I usually write in all my books, but couldn’t bring myself to do so in Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love. It seemed wrong somehow, like taking a Sharpie to someone’s family photo album. Tightly crafted, both in language and structure, Orner’s chapters don’t speak so much as sting. Even when the narrative slaloms back and forth through time and point of view, the shotgun pace keeps you deeply wedded to the characters, their struggles, their almost triumphs. His lyrical, melancholic descriptions of Chicago also echoed the stolid prose of Stuart Dybek’s Coast of Chicago, and after reading, I almost wished I still lived there. LASAL made me want to have a love affair once more with the Second City, which is no easy feat, even if one is prone to masochism, which I am.
LASAL is about moments. In sparse, episodic bursts, the book muscles through four generations of a Jewish family in Chicago, the Poppers. Certain chapters are so A.D.D. they can barely even be considered paragraphs. Some people might find this style jarring. For me though, the absence was the point. The gaps, the drop-offs, which somehow also end up being clinging-ons, the memories loosened by time, and perhaps, willful neglect, all of these serve to further the book’s anthem of loss, the vivid, hypnotic nostalgia for a world, a life, a love, that never existed.
Here’s a too-long quote that illustrates this:
“One day she put on Bach's cello suites and wept without tears. Popper watched her, gripping his recorder. She trembled. He couldn't feel what she was feeling. He squinted and hummed a little, tried to follow some notes. Mrs. Gerstadt reached for him and dug her fingers into his shoulder blade as if to say, Don't twitch, listen, just listen, you little oaf, listen. And the sound in the room got deeper and more terrible, a long dire moaning and he tried to feel it, in his gut he tried to feel it---
A forgotten afternoon in a too hot room and Mrs. Gerstadt has just taken her hand from his shoulder and given up on him completely. Not only doesn't he have talent, he doesn't even have ears. Bach, and to him it could be the toilet flushing. And then--as now, this minute--all he wants is to jump on Mrs. Gerstadt and crush her sadness with his confusion and his sick sick wants, in the sunroom with the dead plants.”
Despite the brevity, or maybe because of it, I found myself reading certain chapters over and over again, savoring the minutia, which felt at times like being tenderly bludgeoned. The above vignette about Mrs. Gerstadt caused me to set the book down and write my own blog post about music and regret. This, to me, is the best kind of novel, the kind that compels you into creative action. This is where LASAL excels, all while beautifully capturing the tragic ordinariness of human existence.
The Popper clan, but especially Alex, whose version of the world we see most, beg to know the answers to questions they can’t quite articulate, and cling frantically to the things they’ve never truly achieved—love, belonging, purpose. It’s a testament to Orner’s abilities as a writer that these twingey bouts of depressing don’t fester in their own cynicism.
LASAL will break your heart, but in the best possible way.
LASAL is about moments. In sparse, episodic bursts, the book muscles through four generations of a Jewish family in Chicago, the Poppers. Certain chapters are so A.D.D. they can barely even be considered paragraphs. Some people might find this style jarring. For me though, the absence was the point. The gaps, the drop-offs, which somehow also end up being clinging-ons, the memories loosened by time, and perhaps, willful neglect, all of these serve to further the book’s anthem of loss, the vivid, hypnotic nostalgia for a world, a life, a love, that never existed.
Here’s a too-long quote that illustrates this:
“One day she put on Bach's cello suites and wept without tears. Popper watched her, gripping his recorder. She trembled. He couldn't feel what she was feeling. He squinted and hummed a little, tried to follow some notes. Mrs. Gerstadt reached for him and dug her fingers into his shoulder blade as if to say, Don't twitch, listen, just listen, you little oaf, listen. And the sound in the room got deeper and more terrible, a long dire moaning and he tried to feel it, in his gut he tried to feel it---
A forgotten afternoon in a too hot room and Mrs. Gerstadt has just taken her hand from his shoulder and given up on him completely. Not only doesn't he have talent, he doesn't even have ears. Bach, and to him it could be the toilet flushing. And then--as now, this minute--all he wants is to jump on Mrs. Gerstadt and crush her sadness with his confusion and his sick sick wants, in the sunroom with the dead plants.”
Despite the brevity, or maybe because of it, I found myself reading certain chapters over and over again, savoring the minutia, which felt at times like being tenderly bludgeoned. The above vignette about Mrs. Gerstadt caused me to set the book down and write my own blog post about music and regret. This, to me, is the best kind of novel, the kind that compels you into creative action. This is where LASAL excels, all while beautifully capturing the tragic ordinariness of human existence.
The Popper clan, but especially Alex, whose version of the world we see most, beg to know the answers to questions they can’t quite articulate, and cling frantically to the things they’ve never truly achieved—love, belonging, purpose. It’s a testament to Orner’s abilities as a writer that these twingey bouts of depressing don’t fester in their own cynicism.
LASAL will break your heart, but in the best possible way.
libreean's review against another edition
4.0
I love love Orner's writing style. But I can't say I love this book as much as his last one.