Moderately Entertaining

books:


	• Now You See Him: A Novel Eli Gottlieb William Morrow, 2008 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 65 reviews view larger image
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Three Sentence Review

All men our islands, and those bridges of marriage and family built along the human archipelago, tying us together, are all made of a sand. The sun will beat down on the ocean; hurricanes will be born. And those fragile connections will be overwhelmed and swept away; leaving us all alone

Liked this book a lot

Nick Framingham grew up with his best friend Rob Castor and his siblings. They lived right across the street from each other. Nick always felt deep down there was something different about Rob, but he couldn't figure out what.

Rob was a minor cult celebrity when he was in his 20s for his writing. He fell in love with Kate Pierce who was a writer as well. They lived together for some time. Then Rob's world started falling apart. Kate gets a story published and Rob can't stand her new success so they break up. His writing has faded to almost nothing and he's dealing with the break up. Rob returns a few months later to kill Kate in cold blood and then commit suicide a few days later.

The media gets a hold of the story about Rob and Kate. They are printing articles in the paper, showing clips on TV, and the media is in Rob's hometown of Monarch, New York talking to his friends and old neighbors.

Nick married Lucy and they had two boys. Nick gets the news about Rob and his world starts falling apart. Rob was like a brother to him since his own brother Patrick died in an accident. Nick starts drifting away from his wife and kids. He starts seeing and talking to Belinda, Rob's sister and Nick's old girlfriend. He even goes to see his own parents whom he usually just talks to once a month on the phone. As Nick goes down the path trying to help save his marriage and figure out a few pieces of his past, a secret is discovered-and then he finds answers. Just when he thought his world was ending after Rob's death, he finds out the simple truth: His life is just beginning.

This book was a real page turner for me. I loved the twists, and just when I thought I knew what was going to happen next, I was wrong. The book is full of emotions and friendship that are so close to your heart.

Armchair Interviews says: A real 5-star read.

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Recognizeable Quality

This pretty much does it for me with books through the Vine program. I'll suffer through something I'm really not interested in once, but twice is just too far to go. Now You See Him, while recognizable as a piece of quality writing, is so far removed from anything that I would ever want to read that it's very difficult for me to evaluate it at all.

My biggest interest when I'm reading a book is story, and that's what irritated me about this book more than anything. Not that there wasn't one, because there was, but that it wasn't anything I want to read. The entire piece was seeped through with a sort of sepia-toned, sour unpleasantness that made even slogging through the first third an incredible chore. The characters are authentic, but not anybody that I'd want to spend any time with, and most of the plot events are suffused with the same downbeat quality. The entire experience gave me the same sort of unpleasant feeling I got trying to watch A History of Violence, which in my case is not a mark in its favor.

That said, I can recognize the quality of the work here. Unlike other books I've read for the program, this book's failure to connect with me isn't a failure of execution, but of design. I can't really find fault with what's produced here except to say that it isn't for me, and people who like the same things that I like might not find it to be for them either. If you're looking for action, color, vibrancy, or something that's going to go to an effort to grab and hold your attention, you probably won't be satisfied with this book. I don't think I'd recommend it as a diversion for a long flight, but if anything I've said so far sounds like something you might want to check out, then by all means you should.

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Moderately Entertaining

I really enjoyed the writing style of this author who has an amazing ability to capture the inner life and frailties of his main character in a way that is truly poignant. The book was entertaining and engaging enough that I read it in 1 day on the beach. So why 3 stars? The main twist at the end, while entertaining, didn't seem to fit the characters and didn't seem plausible.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

His name was Rob Castor. Quite possibly, you've heard of him. He became a minor cult celebrity in his early twenties for writing a book of darkly pitch-perfect stories set in a stupid upstate New York town. About a dozen years later, he murdered his writer-girlfriend and committed suicide. . . .

The deaths of Rob Castor and his girlfriend begin a wrenching and enthrallingly suspenseful story that mines the explosive terrains of love and paternity, marriage and its delicate intricacies, family secrets and how they fester over time, and ultimately the true nature of loyalty and trust, friendship and envy, deception and manipulation.

As the media takes hold of this sensational crime, a series of unexpected revelations unleashes hidden truths in the lives of those closest to Rob. At the center of this driving narrative is Rob's childhood best friend, Nick Framingham, whose ten-year marriage to his college sweetheart is faltering. Shocked by Rob's death, Nick begins to reevaluate his own life and his past, and as he does so, a fault line opens up beneath him, leading him all the way to the novel's startling conclusion.

In this ambitious and thrilling novel, award-winning author Eli Gottlieb?with extraordinarily luxuriant and evocative prose?takes us deep into the human psyche, where the most profound of secrets are kept.

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