Scan barcode
sommanita's review
1.0
I can't bring myself to finish this book, which almost never happens. I get that the protagonist is "raw" and "unfiltered" but at some point the rape jokes, recklessness and violence has to develop into something in order to keep it interesting. It's described as "hilarious" but truthfully, it's stale. The "raw-ness" of the lead character isn't wild and honest, it's unimaginative and boring. I think Sumell has done a good job with other aspects of the book but they all get buried beneath Alby. At times you lose track of where the story is headed or coming from because Alby goes into some long-winded, overwrought excuse for his violence or offensiveness.
I tried, I really did.
I tried, I really did.
kathleenww's review
4.0
I'm not sure why I went ahead and decided to read this book. Something about the description must have captured me, but the opening chapter turned me off. i put it down for a few days, but then I kept reading. And I laughed. I laughed out loud! And I felt compassion and even an affection for the crazy narrator, Alby, as well as for his family. I was also inspired to keep reading since I grew up on Long Island, which is the main setting for this story. So the book had a couple of things going for it, including the fact that i found myself laughing out loud quite often.
Alby is an angry young man--think Holden Caufield meets a straight David Sedaris--he is disillusioned, and from a highly dysfunctional but loving family,grieving over the loss of his mother and trying to deal with the inability of his dad to cope with the loss. Their family is dysfunctional to start with, as so many families are. Alby drinks, fights, and is almost completely unable to control his impulses to do and say the whatever comes into his head. He is clearly a man of actin. But he is also a very sensitive person. When you get to know Alby, you might even like him. Many people do. And he is also someone who is has a natural love for the helpless and the hurt.
Don't expect an amazingly written and beautiful novel, but this might be something you could take a chance on. The writing reflects the gritty nature of a family that has experienced great loss and pain, reflected in one family member. Alby is funny, angry, horrible, and lovable all at the same time. you might even need a tissue. The honest story makes up for the lack of polish in the writing, and was actually suitable, since Albvy is anything but polished. I'd give Mr Sumell a chance again.
***LANGUAGE ALERT!!!***
If you are easily offended by bad language, or base talk about sexual acts, this is NOT the book for you. Do not read this. If you can accept that some characters (and people) use this language as a regular part of their vocabulary, and that it is part of what makes this book work, than you may do okay. I had a hard time when I first started reading the book because of this language, but then you see who he is, and how it is necessary to understand the narrator.
Alby is an angry young man--think Holden Caufield meets a straight David Sedaris--he is disillusioned, and from a highly dysfunctional but loving family,grieving over the loss of his mother and trying to deal with the inability of his dad to cope with the loss. Their family is dysfunctional to start with, as so many families are. Alby drinks, fights, and is almost completely unable to control his impulses to do and say the whatever comes into his head. He is clearly a man of actin. But he is also a very sensitive person. When you get to know Alby, you might even like him. Many people do. And he is also someone who is has a natural love for the helpless and the hurt.
Don't expect an amazingly written and beautiful novel, but this might be something you could take a chance on. The writing reflects the gritty nature of a family that has experienced great loss and pain, reflected in one family member. Alby is funny, angry, horrible, and lovable all at the same time. you might even need a tissue. The honest story makes up for the lack of polish in the writing, and was actually suitable, since Albvy is anything but polished. I'd give Mr Sumell a chance again.
***LANGUAGE ALERT!!!***
If you are easily offended by bad language, or base talk about sexual acts, this is NOT the book for you. Do not read this. If you can accept that some characters (and people) use this language as a regular part of their vocabulary, and that it is part of what makes this book work, than you may do okay. I had a hard time when I first started reading the book because of this language, but then you see who he is, and how it is necessary to understand the narrator.
jakennedy's review
1.0
While others have said this book is laugh out loud funny and hilarious, I found it very difficult to read. It's one part self loathing mixed with one part family disfunction and one part grief. There was nothing funny reading about how the main character, Alby, drank himself silly, treated his family like crap, etc., etc., following his mothers death.
I attribute my negative reaction to the fact that I received an advance copy of Making Nice. The cover is a bright yellow and says, "Meet Alby. He's having trouble making nice." For some reason I interpreted this to mean the story was humorous and light hearted, something like David Sedaris. It's not. If the copy I received had more clearly outlined this is a story of grief and coping I may have enjoyed it much more. As it was, I had to force myself to finish it out of obligation for receiving the advance copy.
lisagray68's review
1.0
Ugh. I try really hard to "make nice" when I'm writing reviews but I just could not stomach this book. When I received it from the early reviewer's program on Library Thing, I was initially captivated. I made my whole family read the first page, which I thought might be the funniest first page I'd ever read. But being inside this character's head literally made my head spin. The sarcastic, inappropriate and ADHD ramblings of the first page never stopped. I make myself read 100 pages of every book before I give up, and I made it, but only because I was trapped in an airport with nothing else to do. I left it on the chair in the airport, and actually felt kind of guilty that some poor person was going to pick it up and be subjected to a book full of f-bombs and drunken sex.
jodyjsperling's review
4.0
I enjoyed the consistency of humor and absurdity throughout this collection. Sumell has a keen comedic timing. Few of the stories “stuck the landing,” but his writing engaged me always. And the book even delivered a few unique insights about living, a handful of takeaways that left me .0001% wiser.
saartje24's review
5.0
This is a very masculine book but it gives you the little, tiny inside views on how someone who seems so tough-skinned, may really just have deep wounds that are still healing. Very funny, at times very shocking, but beautifully written.
anxious_librarian's review
You like short stories, you hate short stories. It doesn't $^&%ing matter to Sumell. He will make you laugh, he will make you cry, he'll have you looking over your shoulder to make sure your parents aren't reading the things you can't believe were actually allowed to go into print.
A worthy buy.
A worthy buy.
bjr2022's review
5.0
[6/7/18 Update: A GR friend just rated this book, and seeing her rating reminded me, almost three years after I read this phenomenal book, how much I loved it. And since I have many more active friends now, I thought I'd resurrect my review. I envy anyone who gets to read this book for the first time.]
Raw, wild and free-wheeling, blasphemous, pained, and hilarious, Making Nice is a novel made from a collection of stories that work like the shards of a shattered window falling in such a way that you can still see the pane (pun intended). Angry-young-man narrator Alby is a pushover for a stranded baby cardinal he names Gary, his dog Sparkles, a possibly suicidal grasshopper, and a slug named Cherokee Bob, but he can't control his hair-trigger temper or his mouth or, the bigger problem, life—the fact that stuff happens, people suffer, and no matter how hard you love, everyone and everything dies. In this rollicking, nasty story of his travails, he explains himself:
Alby is a Holden Caulfield with no filters, on uppers, living in our crazy twenty-first century with way more noise, dysfunction, and heartbreak than Salinger ever imagined. This is scary-good funny writing that is sure to thrill some readers (moi) and enrage anybody who does not enjoy wallowing in and laughing at the darkness within us.
Raw, wild and free-wheeling, blasphemous, pained, and hilarious, Making Nice is a novel made from a collection of stories that work like the shards of a shattered window falling in such a way that you can still see the pane (pun intended). Angry-young-man narrator Alby is a pushover for a stranded baby cardinal he names Gary, his dog Sparkles, a possibly suicidal grasshopper, and a slug named Cherokee Bob, but he can't control his hair-trigger temper or his mouth or, the bigger problem, life—the fact that stuff happens, people suffer, and no matter how hard you love, everyone and everything dies. In this rollicking, nasty story of his travails, he explains himself:
Somewhere along the way I’d become incapable of relaxing, of allowing my body to be still, of rest. It isn’t that I have more energy than I know what to do with, because I don’t. It’s that my body is uncomfortable. It’s not pain, necessarily, but an antsy annoyance of the muscles and—when still—I become excruciatingly aware of just how uncomfortable I am. Then I have to move. I get up and pace around, shake my hand like I just touched something too hot, fidget, tap a table or countertop. I take long walks.
In a car, though, I’m stuck, and the entire drive up from Wilmington had been a nonstop series of seat adjustments and shoulder rolls, opening and closing windows, switching CDs and tinkering with the volume knob, rubbing my eyeballs and punching myself in the legs, as if hurting the leg hurts the ache that’s in it. I smoked a lot of cigarettes, cracked my knuckles, my ankles, my back and my neck, cracked everything that was crackable and bobbed my head in order to make a smashed bug on the windshield appear to fly just above the treetops bordering the interstate, until I banged my chin on the steering wheel while attempting to clear a particularly tall pine outside of Richmond. When that got old, I looked for things to look at: the rearview, the rearview, trees, a dead dog next to a blue hospital sign and GOD BLESS OUR SOLDIERS BEEFY BURRITO $1.39, the rearview—anything but the road itself. I’ve been in over a dozen accidents, all of which were my fault. I hit a bridge once. I drove through a closed garage door. It’s stopping I have a problem with.
Alby is a Holden Caulfield with no filters, on uppers, living in our crazy twenty-first century with way more noise, dysfunction, and heartbreak than Salinger ever imagined. This is scary-good funny writing that is sure to thrill some readers (moi) and enrage anybody who does not enjoy wallowing in and laughing at the darkness within us.