A Ship Made of Paper : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Boom, but no bust
Review: Readers of Scott Spencer know the author is in the house when it blows up, catches fire, or -- at the very least -- becomes the scene of some grotesque accident. In A Ship Made of Paper, the domestic violence starts with the emotional variety and ends with a more literal wallop.
Fortunately, Spencer's mandarin prose and keen nose for cultural nuance just keep maturing. And the author must have moved around some, because in A Ship Made of Paper, he's working new ground: the old Hudson River town of Leyden, where manifest destiny is bringing Manhattan yuppies into collision with small-town burghers and the decadent remanant of old river aristocracy.
Leyden's a train wreck waiting to happen, and that's typical for Spencer's fictional universes (Endless Love, Waking the Dead), which tend to end with a bang and a whimper -- the latter from one of his peevish, underachieving male protagonists. For a Spencer man -- like Daniel in A Ship Made of Paper -- love is too hot to handle. Not knowing what to do when hit with a sudden, unprecedented coup de foudre, Daniel blurts the truth of his infidelity to his longtime lover Kate during what was supposed to be a relationship-saving weekend getaway. Later, he leaves the dishes from Thanksgiving dinner in the sink when he sneaks off to meet Iris, the married woman he has confessed to loving. Could a New Male do much worse?
Without giving away the denouement, the answer is yes, indeed. Trapped in chilly pseudo-marriage to a smart-mouthed alcoholic, Daniel (a white, downwardly mobile lawyer) yearns for authentic feeling and thinks he has found it in the person of Iris (an African-American perpetual grad student who can't decide on a dissertation topic but thinks Daniel is "just perfect").
This star-crossed, color-struck couple aren't especially great-looking, witty or accomplished. Their major attraction to each other seems to be relief at escaping their more judgmental (and successful)partners.
But it's the little things that add up to big trouble here: Daniel's lover Kate likes to sleep late, so he brings her daughter Ruby to day care, where he meets Iris. Kate accepts an invitation to attend a concert with the other couple to please the more sociable Daniel, thus lighting the fuse of their explosive passion.
Self-absorbed as the lovers are, they inhabit a landscape peopled with engagingly original minor characters -- among them, Daniel's parents, an American Gothic pair of chiropractors; and a descendant of patroons who performs snowmobile rescues and falls in totally inappropriate love with a servant's blind daughter.
As in most of Spencer's novels, mannered literary fiction is about to meet gory local news. For his powers of social observation -- tics of speech, brand names and feeding habits -- Spencer ought to be counted with Cheever and Updike as another masterly bard of the upper bourgeoisie. (It's actually classier, reasons the mistress of a spectacularly rotting mansion, to entertain with potato chips and store-brand soda, since a catered spread would indicate that one has not yet become jaded by fancier fare.)
A provocative subtext here is that Daniel and Iris have more in common -- with their comfortably apolitical acceptance of upper-middle-class culture -- than either of them has with some members of their own races. They're a club of two -- not quite measuring up to others' expectations of them, but more than good enough for each other.
This is surprisingly subversive stuff; no wonder they infuriate their spouses and shock the neighbors. But does their story have to end in literal detonation and irreversible tragedy?
Apparently so, because like his characters, Spencer isn't sure what to do with such big, sizzling,incendiary themes. Time and again, he has to toss them away like grenades.

Rating:
Summary: What tripe!
Review: What a disappointing book! I felt like I needed to take a shower after I closed it. I read it all--which says something for Spencer's ability to suck people in but I wish I hadn't. All the characters were weak and foolish. It had a totally implausible plot and unbelievable relationships between characters. Yuck!

Rating:
Summary: A Ship Wreck
Review: Based on reviews I read, I looked forward to reading A Ship Made Of Paper. I tried very hard to give the author every chance to make up for something stupid in the plot. He failed. While this book could have made some very positive statements about interracial love, it continuously plodded through very negative racial stereotypes. Many of the characters, not just the main characters, validated so much of the negative perceptions we have about each other. Although fiction, I wonder just how much of this was based on personal experience. The ending was miserable. I closed the book and said to myself, "what a waste of time!"

Rating:
Summary: Don't Cheat!
Review: The usual message about infidelity, delivered in very well-crafted prose. Nicely drawn characters and relationships. Lots of pathos. A good summer read that I jumped the gun on and read in May.

Rating:
Summary: Three Hundred and Fifty-two Pages of Pure Genus
Review: Three Hundred and Fifty-two Pages of Pure Genus
What Scott Spencer lacks in racial psychology he makes up for in character development (the best I've ever read). I don't know what else to say about this book. I read it in two days. Couldn't put it down although I did speed read through a few pages when this character Kate...the only one I really couldn't connect with...starts her philosophizing about the OJ case which is the only real annoying experience in the story. If you can stand to hear any more about that then you'll enjoy this story. A love story? Not really it's more like a murky, nasty, web of life story.

Rating:
Summary: Not sure what Scott was trying to say in this novel
Review: I'm not sure what to think of the book. As I was reading it, I kept thinking 'what is Scott saying to his readers?' with this text. I thought it was at times a little stereotypical. I was even suspicious of why the book gave attention to the O.J. trial. I didn't feel like the book redeemed itself in the end. (Speaking of the end, I didn't QUITE get it, but anyway...) I guess I was looking for the 'love conquers all' thing (or at least love will conquer what we want it to, not necessarily ALL). I think Spencer needed to do more research into interracial relationships before trying to write a novel about two people who were obviously terribly lonely (Iris) and curious about the other (Iris and Daniel). This was hardly a love story. It was incomplete and quite frankly, hopeless.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the Journey
Review: This is a maddening book. As you read it, you so want it to be more real yet you can't help but hope for a fairy tale ending. That's not realistic, but, then again, little in this book is, except for the passion. The passion--that's what Scott Spencer gets exactly right here again. And it's the passion and our desire to live within it, at least vicariously, that keeps us reading and rooting for Daniel and Iris despite the fact that we don't quite understand them or buy them as characters. Is it worth the read? I couldn't put it down. Still, I didn't feel particularly edified about race or any of the issues the reviews are touting. I just wanted for the characters to win, whatever winning is, and I wanted the book to keep going.

Rating:
Summary: Wild ride.
Review: Scott Spencer takes his readers on a greased roller coaster of wild twists and turns. You may want to wring their necks, but you will care about these characters. Great read.

Rating:
Summary: A Novel Made Of Excrement
Review: What an obnoxious piece of garbage. All of the black males are negatively portrayed; even the 5 year old son is portrayed as
a brute. The black female adultress says that blacks in the US
secretly want whites to accept them. Basically Scott Spencer had
a mid-life crisis; never got over OJ's acquittal and decided to write a masturbatory tale for him and other low-lifes of his ilk. Maybe he and Alice Walker should team up and write a book about a
black male psychotic murderer. And no, I didn't pay for this junk. I heard about the ridiculous premise in the paper and borrowed it from my library. The only interesting things about the novel are the passages at the start of each chapter and the
references to relatively obscure artists such as Don Covay (who in reality should sue for being associated with such tripe).

Rating:
Summary: Seriously...this was a really good book...
Review: And I, like some other readers, was very skeptical because it was on some "must read" list. Anyway, it IS a must read. It really is...romantic and sexy, and educated and surprising. I like a little bit of drama in my fiction, just a little bit. And this felt very real. Could not put it down! If you live in New York City, you will get this book from Page One. And it's GREAT subway reading...!