Three Dollars

Rating:
Summary: A nice find
Review: I just picked this book up in a bookstore in London, on the shelf of "staff picks" (which more and more, I am finding, can be a great source of referral). It is a charming book- I don't think any of the reviews so far have liked it as much as I did. In particular, the main character Eddie brings much as much insight and depth as humour to his rambling thoughts on how things ended up the way they did. His great love for his depressed wife and singing daughter is one common theme throughout the book...and one feels like a genuine portrait is drawn, of a chemical engineer who adheres to high moral standards (therefore loses his job) and loves too much but cannot find ways to express it. Yes there are lots of cliches and devises, people popping up like bad dreams, but its a story, right?

Rating:
Summary: Gimmicky in a good way!
Review: Perlman's book is full of gimmicks that work! illuminating the effect that randomness has in our lives. In the raging bull market, it is easy to forget how much chance plays in our lives. "Three Dollars" strength reveals that even when making the "best" decisions we can we sometimes end up on the short end. His characters are of the type how could they be so stupid, but you can completely identify with them since they make the decisions that we so often do. A strong book that reminds you to be kind and to be grateful. I'm glad it got picked up by an American publisher, since I picked up my copy of the F&F British Edition in Taiwan.

Rating:
Summary: Tell us something we don't know...
Review: This is the most irritating book I've read in a long time. Where other readers have obviously found it resonate with them, I found its concerns trivial and unremarkable.
Meanwhile, the prose is written in the longest, most circuitous sentences imaginable; it's like someone buried a bunch of cryptic crossword clues next to a nuclear waste dump, and the terrible mutated zombie-monster that resulted lurched into the printing presses at the Picador factory.
And finally, his clever-smug cultural quips are exclusive and obnoxiously snobbish. And as for quoting Joy Division to illustrate a relationship breakup? Puh-lease! It's like Judy Blume has decided to rewrite Rememberance of Things Past.
For me, it all comes down to one paragraph where he laments all the good things in his life that have vanished, including "Everything But The Girl before they had a drum machine". EVERYONE knows that EBTG were absolute rubbish before Todd Terry remixed "Missing"; only absolute GOOMPAHS were into their schmaltzy early stuff.