Rating: 
Summary: Watch out! Devilish irony is dripping off the pages!
Review: This book was one of the best I've read lately. Funny, absurd, ironic, and mostly satisfying. The premise: Cal Cunningham wins fame, fortune, and romance by plagiarizing his own life story. Cal, who calls himself a writer, doesn't actually write. He's too busy bedding New York's female population and toiling at a menial job. His law-student roommate, Stewart, regularly asks to hear the juicy details. It's not, as Cal assumes, to live vicariously through his roommate. It's so Stewart can use it in the novel he's writing. Shortly after Cal discovers the novel, Stewart dies. Feeling justified because it is, after all, his own story, Cal presents the manuscript as his own, and soon becomes the next big literary sensation. But someone knows the truth, and she threatens to topple Cal's house of cards. How far will he go to keep her quiet? As another reviewer pointed out, we don't get many of the details of Cal's new-found wealth and fame. He goes from walking out of his job to living in a roomy loft. We don't read about his receiving his advance check, buying fancy new clothes, or even telling his family he just hit the jackpot. And while at first that disturbed me, it's in keeping with Colapinto's very tight writing. By tight, I don't necessarily mean terse; he can be quite descriptive and meditative when he needs to, but tight in the sense that just about everything he introduces into the story will be important later. Nothing is mentioned that doesn't move the story along. He reincorporates it, usually with a satisfyingly ironic twist. This goes for large twists of plot as well as short, seemingly unimportant passages. For example, Cal hides the very story we are reading in his kitchen garbage can, underneath eggshells and coffee grounds, and mentions that he feels deja vu. I had almost forgotten the earlier passage where he hid manuscripts in the trash he shared with Stewart. I never realized that that little paragraph would come back around. It was a very small moment, and there were many like that. While every book needs a satisfying ending, this one needs it more than most, so all that irony and foreshadowing must come to a head. I don't want to give it away, but the ending was the exact opposite of what I expected. Not that that's wrong, but it did make me stop and wonder if it was the 'right' ending. I'm willing to say that it was. Despite a few implausibilities, this book was a wickedly fun ride and one I've recommended to all my friends.
Rating:
Summary: highly recommended fun page turner
Review: After reading a negative review, i feel the need to stand up for this book. "About the Author" had me in its grips from page 1. it was the most suspensful, fun book i've read a long time. I now humbly consider myself a John Colapinto fan, and will share this book with everyone i know. By the way, this book is reviewed by Stephen King as being unable to put down. How could you go wrong? Bottom line, its excellently written and has stayed with me all week since finishing it. thanks john for this book. I loved it! :)
Rating:
Summary: A Great Ride!
Review: This is simply one of the best books I've read in years. Because of it's unique twist of suspence and humor, its path is fresh and unpredictable - resulting in a great read. The main character's adventures give new meaning to the question, "What's the worst that could happen?" Read it and find out.
Rating: 
Summary: Caveat emptor, folks
Review: If you were to take the first thirty pages of About the Author and hand them to, say, Christopher Buckley, you'd almost certainly end up with a marvelous and witty novel. Unfortunately the author of these first thirty pages, John Colapinto, decided to finish up the remaining 224 and the result is this lifeless, boring and largely pointless book.
What's it like to steal your dead roommate's novel and then attend book signings, author interviews, parties in your honor? Don't look for the answers here; these rich possibilities are skipped (warning; spoilers) in favor of a remarkably flat love story as our hero, Cal Cunningham, falls for the dead writer's fiancée. (Really.) Cal himself is rowboat wooden but his new and none-the-wiser sweetie is about as interesting and believable as one of those singing robots in the It's A Small World ride. From there the story stumbles and swerves until the fairly desperate Mr. Colapinto, obviously with no better ideas, ends with a drug deal and a shootout. Of course a novel about literary theft climaxes with a drug deal and a shootout. Of course it does.
Unfortunately, that's not even the worst of it; the worst occurs in the last few tidying-up-here's-what-happened-to-everybody chapters. Cal's justification for stealing the novel was that he himself was its unwitting subject, and that's not bad; thieves need excuses, teenagers downloading Britney Spears MP3s tell themselves they're striking a blow for the First Amendment. However, the dead writer's ex, on learning that a> Cal stole the novel and b> has been lying to her all this time, decides that, gosh, he's right; he was perfectly justified in stealing it, since it was really "his story." And that's when it hits you--the real con has been sitting right there in front of you. You believed the come-on and you read this [darn] novel to the end. You've been had.
Rating:
Summary: Mystery abounds...
Review: Great read. It went quickly and was very captivating. If you are looking for something a little out of the ordinary, this is a great book. The ideas are fresh and exciting. I liked the premise and how it was all dealt with. There was a great sense of mystery and unknown.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed character brilliantly conceived
Review: The cover blurbs and book reviews position Colapinto's first novel as a suspense thriller, but I hate to see it tossed into such an overcrowded, underachieving genre. Likewise, I think the critical comparisons to Hitchcock are only valid insofar as Colapinto's careful attention to character development make the protagonist's increasingly outrageous behavior believable. My primary impression of this book, in fact, is that it is a character study, more akin to books like "A Confederacy of Dunces," "Illywhacker," and "Tomcat In Love" than it would be to an Elmore Leonard or James Patterson "suspense thriller." And what a character Cal Cunningham is! At turns pathetic, sympathetic, despicable and delusional, I thoroughly enjoyed (and related to) his callous rationalization process as he basically steals another writer's work and muse -- and not just any other writer, but his dead roommate! When a woman from his past shows up with proof that he is not the author of the book that has propelled him to literary fame, and subsequently threatens to ruin him, his paranoia goes supernova, and in my opinion that is when this book really hits full stride. Although I thought that things concluded a little too tidily, the story is generally so cynical and the character so depraved that to me it was a comparatively small blemish on an otherwise brilliant book. I'm recommending it to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of a good idea
Review: What spoils Colapinto's first novel's chances of being a read-in-2-sessions pageturner of a thriller, ideal for taking to the beach or keeping you awake on the dreary commute to work, is that the first part of it is so good. It stimulates the reader's appetite and imagination with intelligent and, on the whole, well-written prose. Sadly, instead of continuing in such a vein, it descends into ludicrous and implausible farce which is, quite frankly, just boring. It's almost as if the beginning of the novel really had been stolen from its author and then finished off by somebody far less talented.
Rating: 
Summary: Sophisticated idea, mediocre execution
Review: Sophisticated idea; mediocre execution. Everything is overstated and hammered home and the novel thus loses the promised elegance of the idea and becomes simply another trite thriller. But maybe that was Colapinto's aim? Whole idioms are set up nicely - the idea of a modern rural paradise being destroyed by an Apple Notebook is both funny and clever, but Colapinto overdraws this to the point where he seems to be condescending to the reader's intelligence and attention span (which he does throughout). And by the way, just because the thing that is stolen is a book does not make it a 'literary' thriller.
Rating:
Summary: Could not put it down!
Review: I read this wonderful novel in two evenings, and I am already imagining Tom Cruise as Cal in the movie version. If ever a novel lent itself to a film adaptation, this is the one. But don't wait for the premiere, read the book now.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring
Review: The beauty of Colapinto's work is that it inspires you to write. Cal Cunningham's frustration at not being able to create a world, and then wonderful rhetoric when describing his in cognito author of a roomate's writing is so full of awe that the desire to create just overtakes the reader.
This book is a must read for authors, readers, and thrill seekers. It is full of fast action, witty and complex characters, and surprising turns of events. I cannot recommend it with higher praise. Enjoy!
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