7 stories, only 1 wasn't that good. Klam has a good ability to focus on different types of relationships, giving the reader different sympathies for different sides. It's always amusing to peek into a life for a brief moment. ( )

Mostly stories about self centered jackasses, from their point of view. Nothing much happens, it’s more or less like you’re trapped in a conversation with a rich, white, entitled asshole who doesn’t really like women much and he won’t stop talking about himself. And repeat. I’m sure we’ve all had that experience in real life, but it’s not something I was looking to add more of to my life in fictional form.

It wasn’t as terrible as that sounds, I’m just not sure what the point was of most of it, but it was fairly well written, and some of it was interesting. I didn’t stop reading, I didn’t have much of a reaction at all except "huh". ( )

This much-acclaimed collection still may be one that average readers (and not book critics) will either love or hate. It's obvious why Klam has won so much critical phrase. He has a very distinct and unique voice. All of the stories are told in the 1st person except for the final story, "European Wedding," which rotates point of view among the bridge, groom, and an older man who thinks he's the bride's biological father. All of the narrators in the 1st person stories, and the groom in the final one, are disaffected young men - who have trouble connecting with their partners and the other people in their lives. They may worship their significant other's bodies, but there's little else about their partners that they take joy in.

That may be the problem for some readers - no one's dealing with tragic circumstances here. All the problems are of the navel-gazing variety - young men who can't be happy even though they're dating beautiful women, taking exotic vacations, getting millions of dollars from their father-in-law or getting married on a beautiful French estate. (We should all have such problems!)

If that doesn't bother you, and you're willing to read about the neuroses we all carry around that make it difficult to enjoy the good things life delivers, then you can't help but admire how effectively Klam explores male discontent. As many reviewers have noted he is absolutely fearless in exploring how far our darker sides can take us: a "yes" man whose only escape is beating on his dog, a fiancée who acts out his reservation about his marriage by sleeping with a women he's repulsed by, a guy who belittles and ridicules his best friend in a wedding rehearsal dinner toast when he should be paying tribute to him.

It's a chronicle of men behaving badly, driven by their angst and ennui. Ironically, the most likeable character here is one the who might have everyone scratching their heads. It's not clear whether the narrator in the opening story, "Sam the Cat," is gay or not gay, but his passion for a guy who has suddenly captured his interest and his willingness to take chances and make a fool of himself in the process demonstrates a drive, ambition and life force that many of the characters in the stories that follow don't possess.

The seven stories in the collection are:

1. Sam the Cat - 26 pp - A story that garnered a lot of attention when it first appeared in The New Yorker. Sam is a ladies' man who becomes obsessed with a guy he first mistakes for a woman. He brings the guy flowers and even puts on make-up, hoping he'll look better for him. It's not clear if Sam is realizing he's gay or is simply bored with his endless and easy conquests of women and is now excited by the opportunity to gain something he's never had - when the risks of failing and making a fool of himself are all still in the cards.

2. Not This - 35 pp - Vince, a man with women troubles, escapes from his New Haven home to spend Labor Day Weekend at his brother's in New Jersey. He's assumed his brother has it all - a good job, a beautiful wife, a nice home by the water. But when he spends more time with them, he discovers the grass isn't so green down in New Jersey - his brother does PR for the legitimate businesses run by a Mafia family and the brother and his wife may not be able to have children. His brother asks Vince if he'll be a sperm donor, which makes it harder to be around the beautiful wife, especially when she's in her bikini. The brother has to remind Vince, "The doctor does the transfer, not you."

3. The Royal Palms - 29 pp - A couple on a Caribbean vacation are struggling to get their marriage back on track. The wife, fearing she's put on too much weight to still be attractive, is no longer interested in sex. They meet another vacationing couple that seem to have it all together - they're fit, attractive, and have interesting careers. They get drawn into their circle only to discover their marriage is in worse shape than their own. The days and interaction with the other lost souls on the island offer some hope of renewal for their marriage.

4. Linda's Daddy's Loaded -- 28 pp - A young husband wonders if his wife has lost all her ambition and drive because her rich father - a TV news anchor - has showered them with money. They live an extremely affluent life, but the husband knows something's not quite right with everything coming so easy. When the father - whom they've had very little interaction with comes to visit - the husband's anger at being nothing more than the recipients' of his largesse angers him and he takes it out on their dog. Every problem he encounters - getting sick of his job - is addressed through the father's money and contacts. Even though he knows things were better when they were younger and struggling, the easy road is too hard to turn down.

5. There Should Be a Name for It - 22 pp - A young co-habiting couple very much in love had to deal with getting pregnant. The man wasn't ready and talked his girlfriend into getting an abortion. An argument that erupts while they're preparing a chicken dinner -- with the uncooked chicken feeling like a representation of the unborn baby -- makes it clear how upset the woman still is over what they did. While they remain together, it becomes clear the decision they made will continue to color their relationship.

6. Issues I Dealt With in Therapy - 48 pp - A young man travels with his doctor girlfriend to a lavish resort for the wedding of his good friend. He hardly sees him anymore because his friend has become a big-time wheeler/dealer in the Democratic party during the Clinton Administration. While the narrator still has a small-time job as an activist at a "nonprofit that attacked the military-industrial complex," the narrator can't help but feel jealous that his friend has accomplished so much more than he has, even though he sees the emptiness in his friend's life. The friend's main preoccupation during the weekend is whether Al Gore will helicopter in for the weekend and leave his friends duly impressed with how important and connected he is. The narrator's jealousy reaches a boiling point when he has to give a toast to the friend during the rehearsal dinner. While dealing with all this, the narrator also has to sort through the mixed feelings he has about the doctor he's involved with, whom he hardly ever sees because of the demands of her career.

7. European Wedding - 51 pp - A man flies to France to get married in a house that was in his future mother-in-law's family for centuries. The man has such deep misgivings about the wedding he sleeps with an overweight woman he has a business association with and who repulses him the night before he has to leave for France. Once at the family home in the French countryside, he is surrounded by women - mothers, sisters, cousins. All the men, who were scheduled to arrive later, get stranded in the United States because of a hurricane. The only other man on the premises is an older gentleman who suspects he may by the bride's biological father because he slept with the bride's mother when her husband was dying. Knowing nothing of this, but chasing her own demons, the bride keeps quizzing this man, looking for some tortured history about the house and her mother's family. She half hopes to discover her family might have been Nazi sympathizers, in the strained hope that such a legacy could explain why she is so unhappy. Surrounded by family, neither the bride nor the groom feels ready to take on the big adventure they both have deep reservations about.
( )

It's hard to think of a response to this book more eloquent than a shudder of revulsion.

This is a collection of short stories nominally about different people in different situations, but the stories are all so similar that they can be collectively summed up in one sentence: rich white douchebag talks about how disgusting all his girlfriends have been, and how beautiful and perfect his new girlfriend is, until he realizes that she too is disgusting, and he hates her. The only story that varies even slightly from that script is the title story, and it is by far the most interesting.

I don't want to suggest exactly that these stories are misogynistic, since clearly the author is trying to do some kind of social commentary type thing, and these protagonists are clearly not supposed to be appealing or sympathetic. But they aren't much fun to read about, either.

All in all, the stories remind me a lot of American Psycho, except without the absurd over the top-ness that made that book work. Just yucky people being blandly yucky at each other. ( )

One of my fellow KR workshop participants recommended this book to me because of the story "There Should Be a Name for It," which is brutal and devastating in the way that stories about peoples' relationships are brutal and devastating. The rest of the collection was very enjoyable, though, in a similar vein. The first person works well for this writer. ( )