Book: YOU DON’T LOVE ME YET by Jonathan Lethem


This book was pretty much pants.

“Smart, funny and hip . . . I love this book” said the Independent. A publication that clearly needs to smoke a good deal less crack. There were lots of other similar reviews. Many emphasized the books ‘coolness,’ and my theory is that many of the reviewers were sort of older – like maybe in their fifties. As this is a book clearly written for/about people in their twenties and thirties, the reviewers must just have thought that while the book was blantantly crap, that crap must be how the kids roll these days. Let me tell you what, we definitely don’t roll as follows: “…. the indolent hours unfurled”. What the hell IS that?

Essentially the novel told the story of Lucinda, a 29 year old in a band that is on the cusp of success. The book opens with her having just broken up with the band’s lead singer. She then gets involved in a strange, not very believable and very sexual relationship with an older man(maybe that’s why the critics like it). Meanwhile, her ex-boyfriend has abducted a depressed kangaroo from his day job at a zoo. Surprising though this plot line sounds, it goes nowhere. Eventually the relationship with the older man kind of fizzles out and she ends up back with the lead singer.

I really can’t think of anything much I like about this book. Particularly irritating was the way the book and the characters are both so totally in love with the idea of the hipster, and with themselves as hipsters. Also irritating was the way people never eat in this book, they only ever ‘gobble’ or ‘wolf’ or ‘choke down’ or ‘slurp.’ Yuck. Anway, it was only like 223 pages. Onwards and upwards.

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