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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Creative, 10 Nov 2004
The period of Joseph's life spent living with his girlfriend Cyn and her family is part-opera and part-twelve-step-programme. Is what Joseph thinks is happening REALLY happening, or just the work of his dirty mind? And is Mimi Glass' golem (a clay creature that rises to do its master's bidding) really killing people, or is Joseph the one who's a monster? Daniel Handler is the master of American black comedy, and this was a very creative book. (A+)
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Relatively" Interesting....., 10 Dec 2003
I came across this book by complete accident one afternoon in Waterstone's, read the first few pages, by which I was very impressed, and decided to give the book a chance. Everything was great for the first 50 pages or so, I found the grand Opera metaphor strangely compelling; the theme of incest was, I thought, reasonably handled, the humour not to my taste but compensated by the delicious wordplay and clever use of language. Then the plot suddnenly took a new and completely RIDICULOUS turn which just ruined the whole thing for me... I won't spoil it incase you're planning on reading it, but if you are, be prepared to suspend your beliefs- big time. Oh, and the ending's quite infuriating too on first glance, although actually quite clever, if you really think about it. Overall, I loved the style and would be interested to read Handler's other novels, but have a sneaking suspicion I shoudn't have read this as an introduction to his work. Probably not his best.
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3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Jewish Book I've Ever Read, 28 Jun 2003
I picked up this book after hearing about it from a good friend of mine, who had raved about it. I, frankly, didn't see what she was on about. This book has an incoherent plot, one-dimensional characters, and struggling humor. The fact that it's presented as an opera only confuses things more, as the main character knows nothing about opera, and neither, it seems, does the author (who it happens also wrote the brilliant Series of Unfortunate Events books, so he can't be all bad). It tries to deal with the disturbingly real subject of incest, but it does it in a mocking way that leads us to believe that the author has just created this complex of the mind in his head (it is related to the Odipious and Electra complexes, thought up by Freud). This is a fine summer read if you want to be confused, especially by the abrupt and unclear transitions.
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