I spent approximately half of last year reading and rereading
Against the Day and at times it almost completely possessed my mind -- it's so richly layered and rewarding, it really became an addiction at one point. I keep meaning to write a long review of it as many of the so-called reviews (positive and negative) seem to have been written by people who didn't actually finish the book.
My favourite review is indeed
a negative one, by Louis Menand. In his "review" he so hilariously misses the point of the book that it is highly dubious to me that he read more than the first 100 or so pages. Indeed, his summary of the plot covers perhaps 10% of the events in
Against the Day, and none of the important ones. Since Menand was not expecting the story to completely change after he had to gave up, he probably thought he could get away with it. No such luck -- the story shifts and evolves so much, that his his referencing solely of the of the set-up device confirms to me that he had to bail out fairly early on. Could he really have read the entire 1085 pages since he did not enjoy the book at all?
Menand's skills as a reviewer are so poor as to be amusing, and as the task of reading
Against the Day was utterly beyond him, he should have stuck to something a little more within his range: there are loads of
Hello Kitty books on Amazon that need reviewing and he can even write about ones that haven't been published yet.
More on this later -- I have an
AtD review in the works that is also an answer to the Menaud review.
