Michael Thomas (2) (1967–)

The unnamed narrator of this stream-of-consciousness novel must raise thousands of dollars in a short time to pay his children’s private school tuition and put money down on a new apartment. His excruciatingly WASP-y wife is away with their kids for the summer, visiting her mother whom the narrator dislikes. He is a recovering alcoholic, an Ivy graduate, and a writer who, instead of writing, is working a series of under-the-table construction jobs.

Ye gods I hated this. The narrative was full of flashes of beautiful writing in a murky stream of consciousness, and that style is just not my cuppa. The narrator’s voice also seemed annoyingly whiny considering this guy was able to go to college "in Boston." Some in my book club accused the narrator of over-emphasizing the role race played in his problems. I won’t say that, because it’s hard to over-emphasize the role that race and class play in the kind of “luck” you have in life. In some ways I have faced the same issues as our narrator. But if I wrote the book it would not be stream of freaking consciousness.… (meer)