A Ship Made of Paper : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: No one writes about love as well as Scott Spencer.
Review: I finished A SHIP MADE OF PAPER not fifteen minutes ago. I've been reading Scott Spencer since ENDLESS LOVE was first published. I'm stunned by the power of this novel, by the bravery with which Spencer wrote each and every page, every graph, every line. It is easily his best, most mature, book to date. He writes not from group-speak, from political or racial correctness, but from what is true both for him and in the lives of his characters. No one in the long history of this unwieldy beast we call literature has written about love more powerfully or passionately than Scott Spencer. And I mean no one. Over the past twenty-five years, he has shown us (taken us inside) the rawsorrowfulbeautiful truth of love for adolescents and now for those of us in our forties and fifties. I hope that, in another twenty years, he'll do the same for those of us who will then be in our seventies and eighties. If there is literary cosmic justice, as long as there are human beings, people will be reading Scott Spencer and taking his stories, and his wondrously scarred lovers, deeply into their lives. Throbbing and humming with this miracle of a book, I can't wait to turn to the beginning and start reading it again.

Davis Miller, author

Rating:
Summary: Hmmm...
Review: I was very excited about reading this novel (the reviews were great), but from the beginning I had a problem with the style and tone. For one thing, Daniel was way too taken with Iris. Iris was written as weak and a little ditzy, so I immediately wondered what Daniel found so amazing about her. His feelings for her were overwritten and ultimately annoying to read about.

Throughout I was torn between being insulted by the way Iris was depicted and impressed by Spencer's nerve. He has created a black woman we rarely see in fiction. While I commend him for writing someone we rarely see and probably does exist, I couldn't help wondering if she is a dangerous stereotype. The fact that Iris tries so hard to fit in a white community that clearly would prefer she disappear made her a sad, pathetic character to me. Daniel even feels saddened by her eagerness to belong early in the book, which made me dislike him. Actually, his nearly-uncontrollable desire for Iris rang false to me. While I believed Daniel was attracted to her, the desire he could barely contain in front of Kate and Iris' son was annoying. I'd really had it with Daniel when he ran into Iris and her family at the gym. Iris was clearly uncomfortable and wanted him to go away, but he refused. Almost like he wanted to get caught. That moment heightened my dislike for him to a level that nearly made me stop reading the book.

At one point, Iris said something like "black people really just want to be liked by white people." On one hand, I wanted to read this as an individual statement made by an individual like Iris. At the same time I shuddered at the idea that some people would read this and believe Iris was speaking for all black people.
Kate and Hampton (the significant others) are despicable and I wondered what kind of book this would be if they hadn't been so awful. Bringing in their very staunch views on race didn't help matters. They were so hateful that it almost made it a requirement to side with Daniel and Iris. Again, I commend Spencer for adding some dialogue that some of us will probably never hear in real life. Some things Kate said made me cringe, but at the same time I was impressed that Spencer had the guts to put them in the mouth of a character he created.

I had a major problem with the first time Daniel and Iris "get together." I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying their coupling simply doesn't appear on the page and it needed to. Not because we needed something graphic to confirm their attraction to one another, but because Spencer took us through a four-page chapter about a snow storm to set up the scene that brings Iris and Daniel together for the first time, not to mention an even longer scene in Iris' house to get us to the actual coupling. You can't take forever to get there only to fast-forward to the "morning after."

Overall, I don't think this book succeeded in bringing us an interesting interracial love story. There's nothing new here. Nothing that will make people who are against interracial couples think twice about their own feelings. Maybe Spencer's goal wasn't to change the way people see love between people of other races. Sadly, though, there's yet another story out there about interracial love that only confirms for most why they are against it.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I too, was very anxious and excited to read "A Ship Made of Paper" after reading many reviews in various magazines and newspapers. I had also recently read Scott Spencer's "Endless Love" (the book on which the movie with Brooke Shields was based) and thoroughly enjoyed that one.

I have to admit at this point that I have not yet finished this book, and I just can't seem to. I do not feel a connection with any of the characters, and the storyline does not seem interesting to me. I hesitate to judge a book based on the fact that I personally am not interested in it, but since that is the very purpose of this review forum, I will.

I really wanted to love this book! I plan to start it over from the very beginning and give it another chance.

Rating:
Summary: The Book of the Year
Review: Spencer's novels have usually been emotional experiences --funny, sharply intelligent, and he writes like an angel. But A SHIP MADE OF PAPER might be his finest work thus far. I have never read a more clear-eyed depiction of the confusion between African-Anericans abd whites,and you'd have to go back to the Russians --Chekhov, Tolstoy --to read something as true and unsettling about the rapturous war between men and women. Four of my closest women friends --two of color, two white --have read this novel and we talk about it all the time. It's that kind of book --it just won't let go of you.

Rating:
Summary: This Ship Sinks!!
Review: It took me two very long weeks to read this book. I felt no connection whatsoever to any of the characters and I felt the writing was just one cliche after another. I got the feeling that the author himself felt that a bi-racial romance in this day and age was still a scandalous thing and that really made me angry.

This would have been a much better book in my opinion, if it was just about two people looking for happiness who got in over their heads. I did not appreciate the emphasis on the black/white issue. Sure, a black woman and a white man can embark on an affair, fall in love, but I don't have to be hit over the head with the difference in their races in every other sentence of the writing.

Rating:
Summary: Did not live up to the reviews
Review: After the review in Newsweek, I could not wait to read A Ship Made of Paper. I was so disappointed. The story line was so implausible that I kept thinking (hoping?) that the scene in the woods, searching for Marie, was a dream sequence.

I began to realize that the sex scenes between Iris and Daniel were the author's adolescent fantasies of white on black sex, and the ones between Iris and Hampton were those he has about black on black sex. Such stereotyping, and such a blatant racist attitude.

So much did not ring true: Daniel's parents were not believable characters. The situations that all characters found themselves faced with were not credible. Daniel accidentally injures Hampton - and no one charges him with anything; he is not even sued by the Welles family. He is found with a gun that has just been discharged - no problem, the cop who is his friend, just lets it go. Kate, who was insanely jealous and possessive, accepts Daniel's leaving and calls him a good man - in whose world, I would like to know?
Overall, a big letdown...

Rating:
Summary: A different take
Review: I am in awe with the wonderful reviews! I had an interesting experience with this book. "What a bunch of nonsense!" I first said to myself and decided to put the whole reading experience out of my mind. But that proved impossible. I suppose I lacked control as did our characters in book. From somewhere I discovered this well written, poetic at times book a fascinating comment on sex. And I remembered my own young compelling passion (I am eighty years old)which was, fortunately for me, perfectly acceptable socially and morally. I still remember its strengh and beauty. I believe this power from passion is far more than physical and that our two main characters became more than they ever would have alone. At the end we see our hero happy, even though parts of his life are going downhill. It seems to me he and Kate and Iris and her husband would NEVER have made it anyway. I cannot see this adulterous love as evil. We are too stringent in our judgments. Passion and love can create great beauty and good.

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular writing
Review: Interesting that most of the reader reviews here are either five-star raves or one-star expressions of disgust. For Spencer's readers, as for his characters, there seems to be no middle ground. This is a risky, ambitious, provocative book about lovers who are finally not up to the challenges heaped upon them by their headlong affair. Not every detail of plotting rings true, but the subtleties of relationship dynamics are wincingly accurate, and Spencer's prose is supple, playful and often drop-dead gorgeous. There are sentences here that made me gasp. Well worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: A missed opportunity.
Review: I would have given this less than one star if I could. It took me weeks to read this book. It made me so angry that I would put it down for days. To his credit, I had to continue reading it to the end to see if Mr. Spencer would somehow redeem himself. Sadly,he did not.

As a reader, this book was such a huge disappointment. Billed as a love story, the plot was weak and plodding. The characters and setting were boring and the lovers (all of them) had NO chemistry.

As a black woman this book was offensive and truly irritating. I am so sad that many folks will pick this drival up and confirm their stereotypes of African American people. Every black person in this book is dreary, unimaginative and negative. The author managed to cover every stereotype imaginable...

The successful but angry black man who is an unfeeling, sexual beast with his 'woman' on the weekend while cheating on her with prostitutes during the week. And naturally he is a distant father to his 'aggressive' son, the only black child in the school who is beating up all the white kids. The black 'gang' of juvenile home escapees who terrorize, Miss White Lady. How is it that in a town with no black people you manage to have a whole 'gang' of young black men incarcerated?

The depiction of Iris is the most disturbing of all. A woman who hated being black because it was such a burden and yet loved living in a small town where the waitresses wouldn't even serve her coffee did not ring true. Yet she claimed she loved it there because "there were so few neighborhoods with African-Americans where she could live with her family and garden and ski... News flash, Mr. Spencer, a black woman whose husband worked on Wall Street and could afford to have an apartment in the city and a house in the country could well afford to live in a number of communities with sizeable A-A populations right outside of New York City. Montclair, South Orange, Maplewood, Summit, Short Hills (in Jersey alone). How about New Rochelle in NY? And by the way, most of the Black folks out here in the suburbs garden, ski, golf, play tennis, go antiquing...and don't think twice about being black on a daily basis. We're too busy worrying about our children, our marriages, our parents, our friends, the furnace that needs replacing and so on... just like everyone else.

Most disturbing were the love scenes between her and her black husband. Her request that he rape her? Anal sex? No loving tenderness between such animals, huh?

This author should be ashamed of himself. If not, I'm ashamed for him.

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT NOVEL
Review: I read it twice in three days. The first time because the engine of this beautiful novel is torqued so high I couldn't stop myself. The second time to savor the humor, the intellect, and the graceful, gorgeous writing. Spencer cuts pretty close to the bone and there are some who will be made uncomfortable by the plain truth of this book. But no matter what buttons A SHIP MADE OF PAPER pushes in you, this is a book you will not soon forget. When was the last time you wished a novel was longer??