Rating: 
Summary: I can't believe all these negative reviews!
Review: I just finished this book. Like others here, I kept wanting to save some for later, so I wouldn't eat the whole thing at once. I finally had to stay up till 2 am one weeknight to finish it. So I came here to see what others thought. I was surprised at the negative reviews! So I thought about them, and OK, I agree about the slightly silly way women were portrayed (I've never known anyone who got laid as much as Robert Hampton!). I agree that a lot of the characters were stereotypes (Austen, Hank, June, Mr. Landry). But all that being said, I still adored the book. I think the abbreviated sentences and other literary devices were made to portray Hampton as the person he was...an unlikely hero, a goofy and basically goal-less young man in LA in 1996. Life just *happened* to him, and he's as flabbergasted as any of us about how it all turned out. And the stuck-up grant requests made me howl with laughter after I re-read them on finishing the book. The whole thing is a joke, folks! All these scholarly types running around trying to annotate the life of this "great" artist, when all along he was just a regular schlub like you and me. How could anyone not like this entertaining, rollicking, silly book filled with colors and laughter? I adored it, but I seem to be in the minority here. Go figure.
Rating: 
Summary: This book was a great surprise. I loved it.
Review: My wife bought this book and loved it -- I was a bit skeptical, but I'm really glad I read this novel!I loved the way the simple and semmingly random events of a young man's life can be seen from the perspective of the future as having been part of a larger plan. It made me think about things that have happened in my life to make me the person I am. So its a simple story, but extremely profound, about art, about friendship, about love but mostly about life. Buy this book! Its an excellent (and quick!) read.
Rating: 
Summary: HORRIBLE - THIS HAS TO BE A HOAX
Review: After suffering through this pathetic ragbag novel, I, a lover of good literature both modern and traditional, have come to the unmistakeable conclusion that the critical raves for "The Handyman" must be one of the century's greatest hoaxes. I just wonder who is trying to fool the public. I implore anyone reading this to beware! Carolyn See's novel is the most inept, pathetic excuse for literature imaginable. This book was so poorly written, so depressing in its shallow conception, that it is offensive to the intelligence of the average reader. I was amazed that See cannot write a complex sentence, let alone a sentence of more than five or six words. High School stuff this is. Unbelieveable!
Rating:
Summary: A lousy book.
Review: A trashy, amateurishly written book that views its main character as a cross between Alan Alda and Jean-Claude Van Damme, and its women as either hopeless incompetents or sex-obsessed Madonnas. The only good thing about it is it's fast reading so you'll finish it quickly enough.
Rating:
Summary: The Absolute Worst !!!
Review: I simply hated this inept novel. How literature has sunk in the last few decades. Everything about The Handyman was poorly done. The characters are so shallowly drawn that they're only flimsy, lifeless cartoons. There is virtually no dramatic narrative or plot. The initial concept was a clever one, but as soon as the author begins executing it, its absurd and amateurish. What a tragedy that a good basic idea like this fell into the hands of a thoroughly unskilled writer who can only assume a flip and hackneyed technique.
Rating:
Summary: A FAKE, PRETENTIOUS BORE !
Review: I've just finished reading this extraordinarily disappointing novel. What on earth is all the critical hype and fuss about?! This is surely one of the dullest and most artificial books I've ever come across. For me, all of the characters were very poorly drawn stereotypes - each one contrived with forced, hip bizarreness and tedious predictability. They weren't real - and they weren't either interesting or entertaining. I realize that the author has tried to wrap her story in an uplifting idealism, but it just doesn't come off - and I don't see how any mature and sophisticated reader could praise it. There is a depressing and rancid air to this whole story and the phony world it creates. Dull, boring, off-putting in the extreme - this book is the darling of the literary elite who also praise bizarre artistic canvasses and the other meaningless abstractions of our confused age.
Rating:
Summary: "The Handyman", we should all have one just like him!
Review: Carolyn See's "The Handyman" caught me off guard. Even thought I've been very comfortable with the concept of spending my life as a single woman, I suddenly have a hopeless crush on this goodhearted, inept lad. Robert Hampton may have been out to make a decent living, but with his [not so random] acts of kindness, he ended up making decent lives. Those he touched, in the most basic of ways, unexpectedly find the light they needed as the artist surprisingly finds the color and inspiration he needed. This is a deceptively casual book. As the story unravels and good continues to generate good the only challenge is to wipe the smile off ones face. Goofy and touching. "The Handyman" is full of hope and is a winner.
Rating:
Summary: Lifechanges Gifted To Ordinary People By An Itinerant Artist
Review: I'm not quite sure what drew me to this book, not only examine it in the bookstore, but to then buy it and then quickly consume it in the course of a few days.I know that I found it lyrically simple and compelling. It is a storyof holiness cloaked in ordinary deeds and unconscious acts of kindness. Carolyn See has created a character In Robert Hampton who while seeming to be a down and out painter, has a remarkable ability in his role of handyman to bring a a completely unconscious and remarkably simple selflessness that has a kind of curative effect on the many unhappy people he encounters in the course of his odd-job life. While he himself doesn't have much self esteem and doesn't see himself as doing anything remarkably well, his ability to lift people out of their own wreckage toward a kind of path of salvation is his captivating gift -- perhaps it is his 'artistry'. There is an element of the Jesus story retold in See's work. Her futuristic grant proposal prepared after her character's odd job life portrays him as a critically acclaimed 'artist' who went unrecognized in the latter years of the twentieth century. There is a "testament" quality to the proposal -- much as we read the seeminly unremarkable things which Christ did while he walked on earth in human form in the New Testament. For this reader, See's work brings me to ask myself whether I would know Christ if he entered my life today in some gentle and seemingly unimportant way. I'm not sure these parallels were intended by the author, yet, clearly, this is an inspirational and mystical story. There is another piece of inspiration in this story for me personally. We don't have to do great things to make a difference in this world; instead, he need to realize the potential greatness of small acts of kindness, charity and an ability to transcend our own often myopic worlds. However I brought this book home, I'm really glad I did. It continues to resonate through my mind after a few weeks since I've read it! There is something truly special in See's 'failed artist.' A great read!
Rating: 
Summary: Cardboard characters and fantasy plot
Review: I feel as though I've read a completely different book from the one given five stars by other readers. The character development was non-existent, the handyman was a totally unrealistic saint-like man. This is basically a Harlequin Romance for middle-aged literate women. Please, a handyman who goes around sleeping with all of his lonely housewife customers. Totally disapoointing and definitely not worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Great concept unrealized
Review: Loved reading how it all turns out in the first chapter and then reading how it all began. Great literary device! However, since I couldn't care about any of the characters including the hero, it engaged my writer's/reader's mind but not my spirit. I still don't understand the creative process even though we lived inside the artist. I still don't understand the love process of the key characters even thought we're told it exists. The author just didn't bring it to life. Most of the characters were cartoons and uninteresting ones at that. As always, wish it could be better since there's nothing so great as finding a good book by a talented author. This isn't one.
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