And Now You Can Go : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Cosmo Girl
Review: Aside from the language being as superfical and as workshopped as can possibly be, the book reads as a Readers Digest story drawn out into a novel. There is no weight here. There is no urgency here. It feels completely constructed.

There is a reason why American Fiction is on its deathbed with publications such as the New York Times pulling fiction reviews and replacing them with nonfiction reviews, and its because of these abominable MFA books.

I had a horribly difficult time doing this review because in the end, I just didn't know what to say about the book. There is nothing there. You come away with nothing. Maybe this is a new(or the reigning) genre of Anti-literature.

Rating:
Summary: clever prose
Review: I think that good reviews must be written based on things such as how quickly a book can be read. Maybe good is measured by how many pointless observations a narrator can make, or how shallow a character can be. It's embarrassing that such a boring, flimsy story can receive such positive reviews, but maybe the fact is simply that it's good to have friends in high places.

Rating:
Summary: More a superior longer story than a novel
Review: If you believe some of the reviewers here, creative writing (MFA) courses at American universities either remove any innate literary imagination and originality, or many of the students who successfully complete them don't possess any in the first place. At any rate, I'm not in any way competent to comment on the subject. I have grasped though that there's a lot of antagonism against Dave Eggers and the group of writers associated with his (defunct?) McSweeney's magazine, of which Vendela Vida is a part. Ignoring that, Vida's novel And Now You Can Go was interesting enough to me mostly because of the subtle humour and main character Ellis's inscrutability, which doesn't let up throughout the story. Vida's style has been passed off by some here as merely superficial and vapid, but I actually find that she convincingly describes a thoughtful, ironic woman in her early 20s, right about now. I think the story holds up as mild satire (the jaunt to the Philippines certainly contributes to that impression) but I agree with the oft-repeated criticism as to the choice of longer narrative form: And Now You Can Go would work better as a short story than a novel, or even novella. Some of the harsher critics go so far as to relegate this book to the 'Cosmo' or 'JANE' magazine fiction scrap heap. This I think is unfair: I would say Vida is a more serious, imaginative, talented writer than that.

Rating:
Summary: A novel in an almost-McSweeney's mode
Review: It's funny how infectious some of the little "tics" of the McSweeney's crowd are. For example, the title of this novel, "And now you can go," is very much in the McSweeney's idiom. It's kind of like the way the McSweeney's-ites think it's just a riot to end a letter with, "That is all." Beginning the title with "And" partakes of that same twee, ironic spirit.

If you love that twee, ironic spirit--if that's your idea of literary quality--this is just the novel for you.

Rating:
Summary: clever prose
Review: On the whole, depressing. Some great writing and clever lines interspersed in an "okay" story. I never came to care for any of the characters. And you'll certainly see why she and Mr. Dave Eggers get along - they write in the same style.

Rating:
Summary: Crazy World
Review: What do you do with yourself when something so terrifically frightening engages you & then walks away as if nothing happened? Would you go a bit kooky? Ellis does.

But, perhaps Vendela Vida lets Ellis get a bit too whacked out. A man points a gun at Ellis in the park, she talks him out of hurting her, & then every nutball in her universe, past, present & future begins clammoring the walls around her.

Her roommate writes poems about taking out the garbage, Ellis has sex with some questionable guys, she goes home to visit her strange (kind of unbelievable) family, she travels to the Phillipine's, her doorman is a drunk, she hides in cabinets, she cuts her hair into a mullet... it goes on & on & on- it's as if the author was afraid that if she didn't use all of her good ideas in this slim volume, they might fade away forever.

Although at times I was slightly aghast at the world Ellis inhabits, I had to admire the quirky prose & the author's ability to have fun with the page.

Be prepared to suspend your disbelief & enjoy!