A review by trin
Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich

2.0

Rich’s books of humorous sketches—especially [b:Free-Range Chickens|2714071|Free-Range Chickens|Simon Rich|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1267046870s/2714071.jpg|2739617]—totally cracked me up. However this, his debut novel, disappointed me. The plot sounded promising: Seymour, an unpopular nonentity at his New York private school, is befriended/falls into the clutches of rich, deeply fucked up con artist Elliot Allagash. Sounds sort of like [b:The Great Gatsby|4671|The Great Gatsby|F. Scott Fitzgerald|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1273944449s/4671.jpg|245494] if Gatsby were evil, or [b:The Catcher in the Rye|5107|The Catcher in the Rye|J.D. Salinger|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517671s/5107.jpg|3036731] if Holden had the emotional energy to scheme. (Note: I said sort of.) I usually love that type of thing. But this book is just...airless. It’s predictable and not that funny—certainly nowhere near as amusing as anything in Free-Range Chickens. Rich propels the narrative along pretty well, and the book is a fast read, but when I finished I realized that he had never made me care about the eponymous character at all. I think that’s a problem: if Elliot managed to charm Seymour enough to suck him in, he should be able to do the same for the reader. Otherwise Seymour is just a chump, and Elliot Allagash isn’t worth having a novel named after him.