Ben Loory's Reviews > The New Life

i don't really know what to say about this one. i think i will be thinking about it for a while. i will say this: i found it both compulsively readable and boring as hell, both at the same time, all the time, beginning to end. despite all the great writers pamuk is compared to on the cover blurbs and inside (kafka, marquez, borges, proust, etc.), the writer he most reminds me of here is thomas pynchon. both come off as almost retardedly intelligent & way too clever, both are more interested in playing games and laying out a view of the world as a paranoid (in pamuk's case metaphysical) delusion/illusion than they are in writing about actual human beings and the things that happen to them, the things they feel and desire. they are also both very good writers of sentences. the thing is, i just keep thinking, what if i just ripped this page out? what if i just read every other sentence? what if this chapter was written in invisible ink? what if the book ended here? what if it never began? i think in general i found the book useless. i just didn't know what to make of it. emotionally. i can understand how some can get caught up in the voice, the style. it's just the feeling i don't care for, or the lack of it. it's just one note all the way through. people live, love, fight, learn, run, hide, die, laugh... all in the exact same register... all without MY feelings changing one bit. like watching a film in fast motion... only it takes a really long time... that being said, i know a guy in a foreign country who seems to have been absolutely overwhelmed by its power, so who knows... maybe the angel only comes to those who aren't expecting it...