quinndm's review against another edition
5.0
I loved every single moment, every page, and every character. It gave me a profound new perspective on family, especially our relationships with our fathers and brothers, and taught me about memories, mortality, and time. This beautiful book is grounded in poetic philosophy, and every element exists to bring it all together and deliver a powerful emotional journey.
I also came close to having an anxiety attack before the memorial service because Noah Hawley structured and paced and lined up everything so perfectly to make that moment such a tremendous climax… and it has become one of my favourite book moments ever.
I also came close to having an anxiety attack before the memorial service because Noah Hawley structured and paced and lined up everything so perfectly to make that moment such a tremendous climax… and it has become one of my favourite book moments ever.
monty_reads's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars.
There’s a kind of magic involved in taking a commonplace, seemingly unremarkable event and spinning it into an involving narrative. Our best authors do that, and based on the events of The Punch, we can add Noah Hawley to that list.
The title gives us the seemingly unremarkable event in question. When the book opens, two brothers – Scott and David Henry – are in the emergency room. One has a broken nose; the other has a broken hand. You make the connection. The book then backs us up several days to recount the events that led to the titular fisticuffs.
And that’s it.
But of course that’s not just IT.
Because what Hawley does is meditate on family – and especially family secrets – by filtering everything through the tricky nature of time itself. The punch is simply a jumping off point to dig into, as Douglas Adams calls, life, the universe, and everything.
So we have Scott, the younger brother, who’s sort of a ne’er do well, making his money as the supervisor of a customer service call center, and who’s unlucky in love while spending too much time at strip clubs.
His older brother, David, a pharmaceutical sales rep, is seen as the brother who has his life together. He’s got a wife and two lovely kids in California. But he also has – whoops – a second wife and child in New York.
And then there’s mom Doris, mourning the recent death of her husband, and the boys’ father, Joe, who’s harboring a devastating secret of her own.
Hawley deftly weaves these three storylines together, moving the characters inexorably toward a reckoning at Joe’s wake. But as I said earlier, he does this in a way that is as much about the nature of time as it is about family dynamics. To be fair, his digressions into the theories of Stephen Hawking (especially the Thermodynamic Arrow of Time) are a little heady, and I admit to having to reread those sections a few times. But those sections are what prevents this book from being yet another tiresome exploration of the psyche of the American male.
So: come for the family conflict, stay for a lesson on Kurt Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem. I promise it’s a lot of fun.
There’s a kind of magic involved in taking a commonplace, seemingly unremarkable event and spinning it into an involving narrative. Our best authors do that, and based on the events of The Punch, we can add Noah Hawley to that list.
The title gives us the seemingly unremarkable event in question. When the book opens, two brothers – Scott and David Henry – are in the emergency room. One has a broken nose; the other has a broken hand. You make the connection. The book then backs us up several days to recount the events that led to the titular fisticuffs.
And that’s it.
But of course that’s not just IT.
Because what Hawley does is meditate on family – and especially family secrets – by filtering everything through the tricky nature of time itself. The punch is simply a jumping off point to dig into, as Douglas Adams calls, life, the universe, and everything.
So we have Scott, the younger brother, who’s sort of a ne’er do well, making his money as the supervisor of a customer service call center, and who’s unlucky in love while spending too much time at strip clubs.
His older brother, David, a pharmaceutical sales rep, is seen as the brother who has his life together. He’s got a wife and two lovely kids in California. But he also has – whoops – a second wife and child in New York.
And then there’s mom Doris, mourning the recent death of her husband, and the boys’ father, Joe, who’s harboring a devastating secret of her own.
Hawley deftly weaves these three storylines together, moving the characters inexorably toward a reckoning at Joe’s wake. But as I said earlier, he does this in a way that is as much about the nature of time as it is about family dynamics. To be fair, his digressions into the theories of Stephen Hawking (especially the Thermodynamic Arrow of Time) are a little heady, and I admit to having to reread those sections a few times. But those sections are what prevents this book from being yet another tiresome exploration of the psyche of the American male.
So: come for the family conflict, stay for a lesson on Kurt Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem. I promise it’s a lot of fun.
rekhainbc's review against another edition
3.0
A fast and mostly mindless read. The author (who lives in LA) clearly wants to get a movie out of this. Reading the book is like watching a movie (think Little Miss Sunshine, only nowhere as good) about dysfunctional families and such, funny and interesting, but shallow.
fruitbat's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
sheamussweeney's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
skeptict's review against another edition
3.0
This is a slick, well-crafted book, but I was a little put off by the preposterousness (is that a word) of one of the character's situation; of course he's going to crash and burn, it's just a matter of when and how. When it finally happens it feels dull and inevitable. Still, the characters held my interest, and it was a quick read, and I could see myself reading another book by this author.
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