There are some vile bits in this book. If you don’t like vile bits don’t read this book or the rest of this review.
The book follows 45-year-old Matthew Harris who is “long, lanky, slightly underweight, now hung-over, semi-moneyed, tall, and medium slim, with no evident interest in shaving.”
He is going through a nervous breakdown thanks to his marriage to “unfaithful, unwieldy, retired fashion model wife” falling apart, and also because he was fired from the job he held for eleven years. The book follows him through this time where he “is in the midst of an endless and rudderless journey on rising seas of anxiety and receding tides of currency.”
(Vile bit) The beginning sees him basically living out of his car, spitting all over it, him going over the incident that made him lose his job where “suddenly taking a leak all over your office is a crime” plus he has a kidney stone which makes blood come out instead of the normal.
The book is written through Matthew’s over-thinking, active and self-destructive mind. This makes him not a nice person. For example, in addition to the above vile things, he goes to a meditation class and thinks, “The instructor has been brought here today to teach me how to relax and not let fear govern my life. I have been brought here today to teach the instructor how to be tense and afraid again.” And his depression makes him “ponder the very real and very urgent shadow of death that seems to come to mind when there’s too much silence.”
He refuses help. “This is what Matthew’s head does every time help comes along… it looks for holes in the argument.” But eventually he comes to realise that he can’t run away from the pain forever and it is time to get his life in order, deal with his kidney stone etc. “Let’s get rid of some of the crutches; let’s ask for help when it is needed; learn to have a little faith that there’s still time, no matter how much was wasted.”
So overall not a book for me, as a happy-go-lucky person, but maybe for others.
Publication date: 28th May 2013
(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed HERE.)
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