Face-Time

Rating:
Summary: Rational adults in an irrational time.
Review: hmmm....
"Face Time" follows the story of presidential speechwriter Ben Krause as his career ascends, unfortunately with help from his girlfriend--she has an affair with the president. In light of the Lewinsky scandal, I can see how a satire may be appropriate, but this was somewhat "light". The characters were quite implausible for the circumstances, especially Ben and Gretchen(the girlfriend/mistress). It seemed that Tarloff was struggling to reveal the plot, and what he did state was especially brief. This book came off as a "summer reading" type, though I found it difficult to sit on the beach with a dictionary in my shorts. The narrator's vocabulary was pathetically and unconvincingly immense...not to mention placed in long, unnecessary sentences. Of course this is my opinion, and if anyone wants to support some new, pretentious author go right ahead...but I want no more face time.

Rating:
Summary: OK
Review: hmmm....
"Face Time" follows the story of presidential speechwriter Ben Krause as his career ascends, unfortunately with help from his girlfriend--she has an affair with the president. In light of the Lewinsky scandal, I can see how a satire may be appropriate, but this was somewhat "light". The characters were quite implausible for the circumstances, especially Ben and Gretchen(the girlfriend/mistress). It seemed that Tarloff was struggling to reveal the plot, and what he did state was especially brief. This book came off as a "summer reading" type, though I found it difficult to sit on the beach with a dictionary in my shorts. The narrator's vocabulary was pathetically and unconvincingly immense...not to mention placed in long, unnecessary sentences. Of course this is my opinion, and if anyone wants to support some new, pretentious author go right ahead...but I want no more face time.

Rating:
Summary: Rational adults in an irrational time.
Review: I liked this book for the simple reason that it assumed both main characters were intelligent. Sure it is difficult to understand infidelity: but the premise that it is infidelity with the President put a whole new spin on it.

I loved how you saw what both characters were going through, and the "adult" conclusion. I could see the viewpoint of both people, and understood how difficult it would be to say no to the president, and how the boyfriend could agree with that too.

Rating:
Summary: It takes talent to make a reader hate a book this much.
Review: I loved Tarloff's other book so much I ran out and got this one as soon as I finished "the man who wrote the book." It's hard to believe how much I wanted to tear the pages out of this one and throw it in the garbage... it takes talent to draw emotions out of a reader like that! However, who wants to feel that way for an entire novel? Not me, surely. I did stick with it and finished it just for the obvious ending - why? I dunno. It was like using your tongue to play with a painful cavity page after page after page.

It is a valid question in another review I saw here: is it tarloff's story? Why else would someone draw out such horrible pain with so little comic relief except as some form of payback?

It just made me sad.

Rating:
Summary: The flip side of presidential pecadillos...
Review: The characters are likeable, though they slip into the venal. No, you might not like the premise - infidelity spawned by power seduction (not rape!) - but Tarloff does a very good job of taking a 2 word cliche and developing it into an interesting story (the literary device is called a "conceit", I believe). He pens an all too plausible plot line and goes far enough to develop the characters well in this darker bedroom farce, and it has the ring of too much truth. It might cause you to think just one level beyond the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal as cartooned in the national press. It's a good enough read to keep you awake turning those pages and you probably won't disrespect yourself in the morning.

Hey Erik & Laura - is this your story????

Rating:
Summary: Neither black nor white nor much fun
Review: This sure sounded good. Joe Klein made an excellent novel out of similar material. Tarloff begins with an interesting premise and keeps his characters in the intriguing gray area of believable human behavior, their hats neither clearly white nor black.

So why is the novel not much fun, and eventually interminable, despite its brief length? Perhaps because it doesn't read like a novel, but rather like a prose outline for one: we are told everything, shown little. In theory, the story presented is interesting, but theory is all we get, and eventually it all gets kind of whiny and annoying. And although the book remains well-balanced, it almost never, ever funny.

Without humor, or anything resembling a satiric edge, we're left with an earnest sexual/political soap opera in which not much happens. This book feels as if it contains a good story struggling to break free, but it never quite manages to do so.