Brock ClarkeRecensioni

Fabulous title and an interesting premise, writing is easy to read and follow, but ultimately unsatisfying. Sam Pulsifer (nice name choice, btw) is the unfortunate narrator, with an even more unfortunate history of killing two people accidentally in a house fire.

Thie is supposed to be funny in the way that "all of life is trying to kill me" sort of way, but I got only a few smirks out of this book, and no belly laughs. The guy is too pathetic. Laughing at him is, for me, like crushing a slug.

For those who like a pathetic anti-hero who has life continue to fall on him, this would be a fun read. It is well-written and makes internal sense. It simply isn't to my taste.

I did enjoy the series of people who really wanted to line up to burn down writer's homes. I would have liked more on why they felt so strongly about their destruction. Lots of funny stories in there....

While I found the premise interesting, I found most of the characters inauthentic. There was a lot of unrealized potential in this book. Miller's voice felt particularly unreal. No 10 year old, no matter how precocious, talks like Miller does. I enjoyed the novel, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

This is a quirky book about Calvin Bledsoe, who after both his parents die within weeks of each other ends up on a trans-Atlantic journey with an aunt he never knew existed. I don’t think this book gets the credit it deserves, and it may not be for everyone, but if you enjoy novels told from the point of view of non-neurotypical characters who may not be reliable narrators, this may be for you.½

Did not finish reading

Well, I completely agree with everyone who was annoyed by this novel, BUT I also completely agree with those who liked it. It was not a bad book by any means, though the plot seemed overly contrived and there are plenty, plenty of moments where you think, "Why doesn't he just tell the truth?" "Why didn't he just DO that?" and other moments that are similar to those in movie theaters showing horror movies. You want to yell (well, maybe I wasn't so passionate about the book to yell) at the screen and tell them what to do. Ugh. But! I thought the book held some great stuff, and, had the writing not been so ... heavy-handed, so treated-me-like-I'm-not-smart-enough-to-catch-on-without-having-things-over-explained-to-me-esque, perhaps I really would've felt strong emotions toward the especially beautiful writing in the last couple of pages.

However, I was affected by this book. In a good way. I DID enjoy it. Clarke has some good insights, there are some quotable lines, there is a lovable character or two in there (Sam's mother, for example), but I wish I could've gotten to know Sam better. I wish the MAIN character could've been more personalized, more attractive as a human being, more sympathetic. Regardless of all the negative criticism, though, I am glad I read this book. I was engaged in it (some times more than others ... another point I won't delve into is the consistency of the book on a few different levels), it really had some good stuff in it, and Clarke clearly is a talented writer.

Lastly, I'll say this: I think Clarke hits the reader over the head with/re-re-re-states things that are, to most, abundantly clear and obvious parts of the plot, but remains vague and slightly ambiguous on the emotional specificity and background of his main characters and their motives. And I always prefer character-richness to plot-richness (especially in cases such as these, where the plot is so ... plotty).

So, that's my mixed and all-over-the-place review of a novel that was, well, likewise, much the same.

Ugh. I don't know how to even describe this book. This is a perfect example of a book that I think the author was going for something that I just didn't get. I realize it may just be me that wanted to throw this book across the room, but that is how I felt.

The kid pissed me off constantly. The completely detached and horrible parent the mother was pissed me off. The ridiculousness that the therapist engaged in pissed me off.

This book was initially compelling and well written but became annoying less than half-way through. The same joke becomes trite if repeated too often as was the case here. The writing was too glib and vapid for my taste and the characters were annoying or wholly dislikable. I dragged myself to the end but really couldn't care less about what happened to anyone in the story, one way or another.½

Overwritten for my taste--too purposefully eccentric, too self-conscious, too full of quirky 'wisdom'.

I received an ARC from Goodreads, and found this book a mixed bag of stories. There were some interesting characters in the book, but most of them did not hold my interest.

Made it 40% through, but it just didn't connect with me. Random stuff happening is hard to care about. Didn't hate it, but didn't feel invested enough to continue. Abandoned.

Calvin Bledsoe, son of a high school coach and a dour Calvinist minister, has a quiet life as a blogger. His very boring job is to extol the virtues of pellet stoves by making up stories that have little in common with reality. Then an unknown aunt enters his life, and she is a force that cannot be reckoned with. So he is off on adventures, all due to his very manipulative aunt.

This novel is a bit of a train wreck, or rather, like looking at one. Calvin just lets life wash over him. You just want to yell at him to take some control, grow up, be an adult, and quit depressing me. It is an entertaining book in a rather sad way. I liked Calvin but am eternally grateful I am not Calvin.

There was a bit that was too graphic for my tender sensibilities, but I can deal with that. Some very bizarre circumstances that left me a bit unsettled. But mostly I was just sad that the fictional Calvin has such a hard tine finding himself.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, and I found myself very pleasantly surprised! This odd coming-of-age tale revolves around the almost fifty year old Calvin, whose life is in major upheaval after his mother's death. The zany plot and the quirky characters were very engaging - there were even some laugh out loud bits! I recommend this entertaining book to anyone who wants something truly out of the ordinary.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

A funny book that had so many witty one liners. Calvin Bledsoe is about to turn fifty and is sort of coming of age. He is recently divorced from Dawn and is a blogger for the pellet stove industry (what?). His mother dies, and at her funeral Calvin meets an aunt he didn't know he had. Aunt Beatrice convinces Calvin to go to Europe with her, and thus begins this hilarious journey filled with strange, interesting characters. This story is so quirky that I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. But it was an entertaining read that I savored.

This is normally the type of book I love - a quirky funny protagonist telling their story. But this just didn't appeal to me that much. The characters were a little too over the top and I found it hard to believe Calvin was almost 50 and leading the sort of life he was living. The story was all over the place - literally and figuratively. I won a copy of this book from LibraryThing.½

This book was quirky, to say the least. The beginning of the book contained some unexpectedly humorous passages that had me snorting, like "My father has left this life, and he is also about to leave this story, so before he does, let me tell you a few things about him." This particular passage is on page 2, so I was eager to be fully entertained throughout the entire 293-page book. Unfortunately, the humor started to wear thin about a third of the way through the book and actually grew tiresome and was no longer funny but tedious by the time I got halfway through.

Calvin Bledsoe is the main character. His mother, a famous theologian, author, and John Calvin expert, has died in a freak accident. At his mother's funeral, Calvin meets an aunt he never knew he had. From that point forward, Calvin and his Aunt Beatrice go on a wild traveling adventure all over Europe.

I felt that author Brock Clarke wanted Calvin to be like Ignatius J. Reilly, the odd-beyond-quirky protagonist from the Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Confederacy of Dunces." But whereas Ignatius was very weird and mostly unlikable, he was incredibly funny in his unlikability. In contrast, Calvin is quirky but otherwise very vanilla, not a memorable person at all. Sometimes his quirkiness feels forced, as if Clarke wanted very much for Calvin's oddness to be endearing, but Calvin just comes across as a doormat who is trying too hard to BE someone.

Aunt Beatrice is very strange, and her behavior could conceivably be construed as fun and spontaneous, unpredictably amusing. Her way of carrying on a conversation in non sequiturs that would circle back to the original topic started out as an entertaining character trait, and then it just got frustrating. After a while, every time she talked, I wanted to shake her and say, "Just answer the damn question and tell Calvin what the hell is going on!"

The majority of the book is about Calvin and Aunt Beatrice's travels and all the people -- strangers and non-strangers -- whom they meet along the way. The reader is just as much in the dark as Calvin is as to Aunt Beatrice's goal of taking Calvin along as she traipses all over Europe. Then suddenly in the last 1/4 of the book it's no longer about their travels and becomes like a mystery novel resolving itself. The pace suddenly picked up so that the book could show how all the different characters up until that point somehow intersected. It read like a different book, being more plot-focused than character-focused.

I think this is one of those books that will polarize readers. Some will love it, some will hate it. As for me, I'm right in the middle. I'm all for quirkiness, but it should never get to the point where it becomes tiresome. And the author needs a better editor, because there were quite a few typos and misprints in the book, and I was NOT reading an ARC.

Brock Clarke explains in his acknowledgments that his latest novel “Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?” was inspired by Graham Greene's 1969 novel “Travels with My Aunt,” although anyone who has read Greene's book will realize this within the first few pages.

Calvin Bledsoe is a tame middle-aged man who meets an aunt he never realized he had after the death of his mother. As in Greene's version, the mother's sister is a very different sort of woman, one very experienced in the world who views laws as challenges and breaking them as sport. She takes Calvin on a trip, during which he does things he could have never imagined doing in his former life.

So far the story follows Greene's blueprint, but Clarke soon veers off into his own wild territory.

While Greene was a Catholic writer, Clarke puts the reformer John Calvin at the center of his own story. Calvin Bledsoe's mother was a pastor of a Calvinist church and the author of a world-famous book about Calvin. Her son, who makes his living as a blogger for the pellet stove industry, quotes John Calvin frequently in his narrative, at least at first. Later on he quotes his Aunt Beatrice more frequently.

The lessons he learns from his aunt include the following: 1) thou shall avoid conflict unless the other persons wishes to avoid conflict, and in that case thou shall pursue it, 2) someone is always also someone else, or at least has the capacity to be someone else, if someone else is indeed what he wants to be, 3) pretty much everyone has an illicit lover and 4) thou shall never apologize.

Calvin and his aunt start in Ohio but are soon in Europe, traveling from city to city. Beatrice seems to have a plan in mind, which eludes Calvin. Soon they are joined by a variety of other characters, including Calvin's former wife, Beatrice's former lover, his mother's lover, Beatrice's son, a neighbor from back in Ohio and an Interpol agent with whom Calvin falls in love.

Much of what happens is totally unbelievable, although nothing is as unbelievable as the popularity of that book about John Calvin. In Europe, everyone seems to have read it. As in his earlier novel “An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England,” Brocke uses dark humor and tall tales to create his art, sort of in the manner of Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut. He doesn't totally succeed (I prefer Greene's version), but he does offer some entertaining reading.½

Who Are you Calvin Bledsoe? is quirky, cryptic, (I'm sure there is a hidden message in there somewhere) and a bit meandering. I just couldn't finish Calvin's story. I have been reading it for 10 days and have to force myself to pick it up and continue reading. It's just not for me, it has interesting quotes from John Calvin and Calvin has the strangest job that has ever been created, (I thought was quite amusing), but I just don't care what happens to him and his Aunt Beatrice. Too many times I am thinking 'uh?' where is this going; I realized I just don't want to go along for the ride. It's just not for me, if you like quirky and cryptic you probably will love this book. I'm thinking perhaps the audio book is the way to go to hear Calvin's story. I'm giving it 3 stars because I think it is well written, just not my kind of book....

This is the story of a man from a small town New England, leading a small life, being pulled out of that life by forces beyond his control. Mainly, that force is an aunt he never knew he had, and he tags along with her as she tours around Europe. Most of the time he doesn't know where they are or what they're doing, but the entire time he feels as if they are being pursued by hidden agents, with likewise mysterious motives. Calvin, the main character, named for John Calvin, and well-steeped in Calvinist teaches by his strict religious mother, learns more about himself as he learns more about the world outside his hometown, which, most probably, is also outside the experiences of most people. This was an interesting and fast-paced story, not exactly a thriller, but certainly one I enjoyed watching unfold, being as in the dark about the end as Calvin was.

I almost liked one of Brock Clarke's earlier book, so I requested this one hoping that it had whatever I had felt was missing in, The Happiest People in the World: A Novel. Unfortunately, this book as well was almost enjoyable.

What a fun ride! At almost 50 years old, Calvin meets his unknown Aunt at his mother's funeral. She take him on a wacky trip through Europe where Calvin finally learns what it means to grow up and be an adult. So many turn and twists to wrap your head around.

This was a lot of fun. A coming of age (even though the guy is nearly fifty years old) romp through Europe with a nutty aunt and a lot of mysterious weirdos. There's a lot of mystery, murder, and mayhem -- all done with a light touch. As for coming of age? Well, no one really grows up in this book but that's not really the point. Who is Calvin? He's the son of a female Calvinist minister and a multi-sport high school athletics coach. Calvin, who never really left home, is orphaned as an adult hence the jaunt to Europe with an aunt he didn't know existed until she shows up at his mother's funeral.

A light read, nothing too taxing here.½

If you are looking for a fast paced read that is not terribly taxing and yet still thought provoking this might be the book for you! Somewhat based on the classic Travels with my Aunt, by Graham Greene, this book fits the definition of "Zany Caper" - a term not much in use anymore, but very apt. The novel is funny, engaging and also a mystery. The characters are over the top and their behavior is kinda crazy, but it all makes for a fun easy read. On top of all that I learned a lot about John Calvin - crazy!

Thanks to LibraryThing and Debra Linn of Algonquin Books for the reviewer copy!

This was an interesting read. It wants to be the literary version of Henry Fool, but ends up being Fay Grimm. It's good, but just falls short of being really good.

Who are You, Calvin Bledsoe? by Brock Clarke is a fun trip through both a highly unlikely series of events and the everyday thoughts we all have. It is that juxtaposition that gives this novel its strength and fun.

The title probably sets up the book as well as anything I could write. Obviously, in asking that question, you know the person is Calvin Bledsoe. So on one level it is a question that contains its own answer. Yet when we ask that question of someone we know, we mean something different, we mean something along the lines of "what type of person are you?" or maybe "what is the essence of your being?" This novel delves into both the obvious (which is not always so simple as it seems) fact he is Calvin Bledsoe as well as the process of becoming who someone is, that core that is always becoming yet never really becomes.

While the events of the story are fun because they are so far-fetched, the novel would probably be just so-so if that was the main aspect. But Calvin's thoughts and, sometimes, comments are the things of everyday life. Observations and assumptions, ponderings and musings. In Clarke's hands these are expressed in wonderful terms, sometimes with startlingly appropriate analogies and sometimes with phrases that make you pause to consider the underlying thoughts.

The frequent quoting of John Calvin is also an important part of the enjoyment of the book. A text, no matter what the writer's intention, can be interpreted and used in ways opposed to that intention. First from Beatrice's mouth and then, more and more, from Calvin's, we see John Calvin's words used to explain or justify almost anything. This is yet another fun element of the book.

I don't think this will appeal to everybody (but what book does) though I think most readers, if they can bracket their usual desire of a realistic plot and "likeable" characters, will find a lot to enjoy. This is not genre fiction, so any tropes from whatever your usual genre is won't be present here. Take the plunge, just let the trip take you where it goes, much as Calvin does in the story.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

This was a quirky but enjoyable book. Calvin i in his 40's and is trying to cope with the loss of his parents and figure out his life in general. He has pretty much just been swept along by life and upon meeting his newly found aunt he is dragged along on her mission with little resistance. It was a bit all over the place at times but I was able to just go along with the story to see where it went even if I was not overly curious what would happen to the characters in the end,½