Venus Drive

Rating:
Summary: Best of 2000
Review: I've read numerous (probably too many) short story collections this year which were very good, but Venus Drive gets my vote for the best collection of short stories published in 2000. Why wasn't one of these included in the O'Henry Anthology or The Best American collection? Idiots! I can't wait for Lipsyte's next book. Go, Sam, Go!

Rating:
Summary: Poetically Raw & Honest
Review: It has been several years since I've read something so poetically raw and honest, not since Jesus' Son and Fight Club. However, there is a grave wisdom behind these tales, a knowledge of what's real, what hurts, and what counts. In other words, there is more going on here than the act itself, the performance. This book will become a classic. Sam Lipsyte's stories are worth reading again and again.

Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining
Review: Jonathan Swift he ain't. Somehow Lipsyte's satire here is too quirky and contrived to skewer human foibles or fates with any telling resonance.

I will, however, stay tuned--in the future he may find some plot device worthy of his talents. As to craft, he is master of the one-liner, the joyously lunatic phrase, and the reading itself provided many, many laughs.

Rating:
Summary: Recommended
Review: Sharp, taut, seriously funny and tremendously sad. Comparable in many ways to Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, but with greater range. A beautiful book that I just can't stop reading and re-reading.

Rating:
Summary: Unremittingly Grim
Review: This book is dark and ugly. While reading it, I felt like I was wallowing in excrement, much like Renton did in the outhouse in "Trainspotting." The narrator fondles his dying sister and shoots up his mother's remains. What's next: his dad, a plunger, and a well-oiled gerbil?!

There's some good writing here, especially the story about the poor fat kid ruthlessly tortured at summer camp. But this book is the ugly runt cousin of books like "Jesus' Son," and maxxed out my limit on smack-shooting sibling-molesting misery.

Rating:
Summary: Unremittingly Grim
Review: This book is dark and ugly. While reading it, I felt like I was wallowing in excrement, much like Renton did in the outhouse in "Trainspotting." The narrator fondles his dying sister and shoots up his mother's remains. What's next: his dad, a plunger, and a well-oiled gerbil?!

There's some good writing here, especially the story about the poor fat kid ruthlessly tortured at summer camp. But this book is the ugly runt cousin of books like "Jesus' Son," and maxxed out my limit on smack-shooting sibling-molesting misery.