Rating: 
Summary: Only worthwhile because of Selby's egregious style.
Review: Being an admirer of Selby's i was dissapointed with this book. It wouldnt be unfair to say that the "Waiting Period" is probably best meant for Selby's more dedicated fans.
It's an excellent idea that this novel is based on, one that should have served for a terrific platform for Selby to unleash his relentless narrative style as well as his unique mind but this simply fails to be the case.
As Selby lets us live into the mind of a veteran soldier turned killer and allows us to be privy to all his sinister thoughts and evil plotting as he plans and schemes about his victims it seems initially that this will be an immensely gripping book.
And it is for a while too.
But because this is basically a silent monologue it doesnt keep you hostage for too long. The story becomes too mono-dimensional and as the variables do not change and no other characters are introduced except for the killer himself it starts loosening its grip until you're 3/4s into the book and you're basically forcing yourself to read on.
That's still remarkable in itself because i dont see how any other author could keep you reading for as far as that with an idea as underdeveloped as that. But that's Selby and his way of laying out a bizzare and abysmally dark narrative in every book he's brought forth. This narrative of his is the only thing memorable here though.
If you are not familar with this outstanding author start with his classic "Last exit to Brooklyn". If you do i can easily see how you might be tempted to read "Waiting Period".
It still holds together enough for a good dark novel. But without the fanship factor it loses much of its appeal.
Rating: 
Summary: Unique but heavy handed
Review: Hubert Selby Jr has a style all his own. Sometimes it works, sometimes it seems like art imitating art. In his most recent book WAITING PERIOD, Selby constructs a 200 page story entirely based on interior monologue. There is action except in the mind of the narrator, a character who has about as much charisma as a putrifying egg. But that's the point, I think, that we are placed inside the mind of a misfit who seeks to resolve his victim role in life (after rejecting the plan of suicide) by killing those people who represent the bureaucracy of America. For example, his first victim is a benefits counselor at the VA hospital who refuses our narrator his benefits. When Selby infrequently steps out of the monolgue into a Greek Chorus moment of commentary we hear "...a sacred plea from the man as he experiences the anguish of the human condition. Have you not seen it everywhere, most especially within yourself? It is simply part of the dilemma............he is but a man." Reading this book can become boring and repulsive unless you take it in small bits. But again, I think this is the genius of Selby, for what are our minds when they go sour if not grounded by an intermittent dose of reality? WAITING PERIOD refers not only to the time between purchasing a gun and being able to use it: that PERIOD can also represent the time from the inception of a foul thought to the premeditated acting out. And if you've the stomach for that then this book will excite you. A well written experiment with words that is perhaps just too frightening to admit that even our own minds can conjure such tales!
Rating:
Summary: Unique but heavy handed
Review: Hubert Selby Jr has a style all his own. Sometimes it works, sometimes it seems like art imitating art. In his most recent book WAITING PERIOD, Selby constructs a 200 page story entirely based on interior monologue. There is action except in the mind of the narrator, a character who has about as much charisma as a putrifying egg. But that's the point, I think, that we are placed inside the mind of a misfit who seeks to resolve his victim role in life (after rejecting the plan of suicide) by killing those people who represent the bureaucracy of America. For example, his first victim is a benefits counselor at the VA hospital who refuses our narrator his benefits. When Selby infrequently steps out of the monolgue into a Greek Chorus moment of commentary we hear "...a sacred plea from the man as he experiences the anguish of the human condition. Have you not seen it everywhere, most especially within yourself? It is simply part of the dilemma............he is but a man." Reading this book can become boring and repulsive unless you take it in small bits. But again, I think this is the genius of Selby, for what are our minds when they go sour if not grounded by an intermittent dose of reality? WAITING PERIOD refers not only to the time between purchasing a gun and being able to use it: that PERIOD can also represent the time from the inception of a foul thought to the premeditated acting out. And if you've the stomach for that then this book will excite you. A well written experiment with words that is perhaps just too frightening to admit that even our own minds can conjure such tales!
Rating:
Summary: Not Selby's Best
Review: Hubert Selby Jr. is easily one of my favorite authors, yet his latest offering, The Waiting Period, seems to lack the potency of his previous works. What made me a fan of Selby in the first place was his ability to create characters and stories that affected a change in me--writing that made me step back in emotional exhaustion, hardcore material the way only Selby could write it. In The Waiting Period I find almost none of the dark zest that permeates and saturates such Selby masterpieces as The Demon and Requiem for a Dream--in its stead have been placed the stagnant and annoying bickerings of a bitter old man.
Rating:
Summary: Not Selby's Best
Review: Hubert Selby Jr. is easily one of my favorite authors, yet his latest offering, The Waiting Period, seems to lack the potency of his previous works. What made me a fan of Selby in the first place was his ability to create characters and stories that affected a change in me--writing that made me step back in emotional exhaustion, hardcore material the way only Selby could write it. In The Waiting Period I find almost none of the dark zest that permeates and saturates such Selby masterpieces as The Demon and Requiem for a Dream--in its stead have been placed the stagnant and annoying bickerings of a bitter old man.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting twist
Review: I have to admit, I was pulled into the plot by the hook - a guy wants to buy a gun to kill himself, but because of the waiting period, he ends up deciding to kill other people as well. While there's more to the story than that simple one line, the writing is so labored it makes it hard to get through the novel. I have heard good things about Selby's writing (Last Exit to Brooklyn) but I now believe I should have started there. This was a turn off...
Rating: 
Summary: This is the end.
Review: I was critical towards The Willow Tree, Selby's 1998 comeback, but compared to Waiting Period, it reads like Requiem For A Dream. After all, The Willow Tree still not only retained some of Selby's Naturalism, but also magnified the compassion that was always present in his work but was often somewhat difficult to see. And upon having read it, I thought that, its perceived weaknesses aside, perhaps Selby mark II, having spent twenty years in literary silence, would develop this kinder side further, that he hadn't lost the plot but merely changed it. Then I saw a blurb describing Waiting Period, learned that it tells the tale of a deranged veteran whose depression leads him to become a serial murderer, and became somewhat apprehensive, to say the least. Then I actually read the thing. Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed. Waiting Period is by far Selby's worst book. Crime And Punishment it definitely ain't. Selby's style has not changed at all since Last Exit To Brooklyn came out in the sixties. That lack of quotation marks and that abundance of run-on sentences that made Requiem For A Dream seem so feverishly vital are now just motions to go through. Waiting Period's only accomplishment is to dilute it to a stream of broken thought fragments, depriving it of any power it still had. Selby even plagiarizes himself at times - that "cops and robbers" bit on page 185 is lifted straight from Selby's 1971 novel The Room, word for word, and those depressed rants at the beginning are mighty similar to some of the ones in the aforementioned novel. Except The Room, difficult and often vicious as it was, _never_, _ever_ demanded that the reader approve of its character - on the contrary, it was a portrait of self-abasement of the lowest kind, and made sure to underscore it. Waiting Period, on the other hand, revels in it. Consider the fact that the main narrative - a stream-of-consciousness first-person monologue from the point of view of the main character - is occasionally interrupted with little paragraphs in italics that say things such as this: "Wonder upon wonder. The man is not only without fault, he is with virtue. His nobility brightens the night sky. Oh my son, my son, what joy you awaken in me and thus the world." (167) Then, a bit later, we get: "You are the aurora borealis of my life." (179) This delusional viciousness could have come from a Chuck Palahniuk novel; in fact, it's what fuels Palahniuk's entire career. It's bitterly ironic, since hacks like Palahniuk have made names for themselves aping, among other things, Selby's own The Room and The Demon. But you know how it goes - the student becomes the teacher, and they both ride home on the kindergarten bus. Or something. It occurred to me that these interludes were meant as some kind of Ironic Attack upon religion - the dedication ("To the Inquisition"! Oh, how _clever_!) seems to support this - but if so, it lacks any depth whatsoever. Much emphasis is placed on the fact that the murderer only murders those who "truly deserve" to die. Why - that's exactly like Raskolnikov, except without the whole point! At its worst, the writing is not only derivative, but just plain bad. "Feel like any moment now I/ll be so focused on the process that I/ll become a part of it and just flow through the ether and become a part of every atom, every proton and quark and resonate through the Universe...all of it...all, all... ...Oh, what a sublime thought, to float free of the body and mind, just a pulse in space...but it would be _my_ pulse, _my_ awareness, awareness of freedom, free from the vice-like oppression that has crushed me all my life..." (36-7) Every quark, eh? Right. I never thought I'd live to see the day when Hubert Selby Jr. would start sounding like a chapter in a self-help booklet, but there it is, right before your eyes. Honestly, I found myself looking at the spine of the book to make sure that this was really written by Selby. I mean, for crying out loud, this is Hubert Selby! This man wrote not one, but two triumphs of Naturalism! This man was one of America's outlaw poets! What happened? I don't recommend Waiting Period to anyone. Go read Selby's Requiem For A Dream. It's emotional, raging, dramatic and powerful, and it has much to say to you. All Waiting Period has to say is that it's over.
Rating: 
Summary: inside the mind of.....?
Review: I was not aware that Mr. Selby had continued to write, since most of his works were written in the 70s, but i am shure glad that he has not given up. "Waiting Period" is one of those books that if you only go by what's on the back cover, you would probabaly be prone to put it back on the shelf, but to the loyal few and general public who like Selbys work this is another must have. This novel has been brought to us in a time where things of this nature seem so common, i meen how hard is it to picture on the news, the events that have been written in this book. Basicaly the book is about a war veteran who is fed up with his life and decides to kill himself,on his way to purchasing a gun the "new" computer program gets jammed up, thus forcing out hero/villan to suffer a "waiting period". Our main guy then has a revelation that his life is not all that bad but the ones who deserve to die are the ones who have done him wrong, (i.e. the people who turned him down repeatedly for veteren benifits), and thus the book goes from there. I wont go on to tell the remainder because i urge everyone to read this book. Selby has the unique gift of traveling inside the characters mind and ripping out what we need to see. His sentance structure and dialogue tend to be slow and drawn out at times but maybee thats the way mentally insane people think. Hubert Selby has a gift that i am glad to share in, he doesnt write to make you feel good, he writes to make you feel real, holding nothing back, however if you are like me you always tend to find a glimmer of hope in all of his novels. they might be so far buried that you have to read and re-read but they are always there. Pick this up if you are not scared to read about the present.
Rating:
Summary: inside the mind of.....?
Review: I was not aware that Mr. Selby had continued to write, since most of his works were written in the 70s, but i am shure glad that he has not given up. "Waiting Period" is one of those books that if you only go by what's on the back cover, you would probabaly be prone to put it back on the shelf, but to the loyal few and general public who like Selbys work this is another must have. This novel has been brought to us in a time where things of this nature seem so common, i meen how hard is it to picture on the news, the events that have been written in this book. Basicaly the book is about a war veteran who is fed up with his life and decides to kill himself,on his way to purchasing a gun the "new" computer program gets jammed up, thus forcing out hero/villan to suffer a "waiting period". Our main guy then has a revelation that his life is not all that bad but the ones who deserve to die are the ones who have done him wrong, (i.e. the people who turned him down repeatedly for veteren benifits), and thus the book goes from there. I wont go on to tell the remainder because i urge everyone to read this book. Selby has the unique gift of traveling inside the characters mind and ripping out what we need to see. His sentance structure and dialogue tend to be slow and drawn out at times but maybee thats the way mentally insane people think. Hubert Selby has a gift that i am glad to share in, he doesnt write to make you feel good, he writes to make you feel real, holding nothing back, however if you are like me you always tend to find a glimmer of hope in all of his novels. they might be so far buried that you have to read and re-read but they are always there. Pick this up if you are not scared to read about the present.
Rating:
Summary: Only for the die-hard Selby fans
Review: I've read all of Selby's works, and must say that although I'm giving it three stars, it's my least favorite. Definitely a 'Selby' style. Still a bit touch to chew, but easier then 'The Room' to swallow. It's really hard to describe this book. If you've read the synopsis of the novel (which i never do before i read the book), you'll know everything that's going to happen. No surprises here. A little hard to read, because it's pretty much the ramblings of an old man. Hope that Hubert doesn't mummble like this in his mind. So like I said - for the die-hard fans. If you're new to Selby, try The Demon :)
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