I don't know what to say about this book. I liked. If you look at how much I liked it w/r/t how low my hopes were before starting it, I guess you could say I really liked it. But all things being equal, I mainly liked it.I think if I'd read this in college I would have wanted to write a paper about it. Although, maybe not because I feel like the book is in despearate need of critical exploration, maybe just because it seems like the kind of book that a college student could fairly easily write a paper about. There are so many stories within the stories, you can draw all kinds of parallels between them without to much fuss. You would definitely get a B, at least, and still make it to that party on Saturday.
Like I said, I don't know what to say about this book.
I really liked what the author did with the story he was writing in the notebook, and how it ended up. I *really* liked the part where the character in the story turns out to be friends with the same author that the character telling the story is friends with. I was hoping that would lead to all kinds of mysterious back and forth between the stories, and a sudden litany of questions about what's real and what's the story, but this turned out to not be that kind of book. Ah well.
I thought the narrator was kind of slow in seeing what was going on, so in a sense his stunning conclusion at the end was a confirmation of what I'd been thinking all along. But that's not bad writing, that's a bad narrator. Which is good writing.
Anyways I liked this. Probably I'll add more stars later.