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lvdani's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
chamblyman's review
4.0
In the brutally funny, yet warmly human tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders, this sharp eyed satire explodes American culture and reassembles the pieces into a crazy quilt of politics, celebrity, crime, love, and death that makes perfect sense. Fans of Don Delillo's White Noise and John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces are 99.9% sure to enjoy!
julesfreak's review
3.0
That was dark. Dark veiled in humor and philosophy. Don't read while depressed.
norrin2's review
3.0
The first 80 or so pages of this book I felt like a had found a definite 5 star read. Then it turned into a completely different book and then another, each more bleak and depressing than the last. Currie has a great talent for finding humor in the darkest circumstances, and that's what kept me reading on to the oh-so-bitter end. Let's just say I'm not looking forward to reading any more Ron Currie anytime soon. My lasting impression of this book is a strong wish that he had continued with the book he started writing and not veered off into several left fields.
comeintothegraveyardmary's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
robinreading's review
4.0
For much of the time that I was reading The One-Eyed Man, I didn’t really want to be reading it, which has absolutely nothing to do with the book, which is smart, funny, wry, tender and surprising in all the ways that I expected after having read Ron Curry, Jr.’s [b:Everything Matters!|6184241|Everything Matters!|Ron Currie Jr.|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347445018l/6184241._SY75_.jpg|6364388]Everything Matters.
But I started reading this book as America began protesting the murder of George Floyd, and I continued to read it through many days when I wished I had an input that wasn’t the voice of a white man from the county I grew up in. Curry is a lot of other things, too, and I mean any of this disparagingly, but as a reader who can count the number of white men I read in a given year on one hand and have fingers left over, I tend to value voices and stories that stretch beyond my understanding of the world. The lens of the white American man has been pretty reliably presented for most of my life, so it’s not where I tend to look.
It was a superficial disappointment and didn’t matter all that much, in the end. Ron Curry Jr.’s sharp eye for the terrors and embarrassments of the modern day is refreshing and validating. It makes you think he might be a difficult kind of guy to get along with, but you’d trust him to write a pretty good social studies book.
There’s a lot of satire here, and the kind of big, improbable-but-still-very-possible action that Curry is so skilled at, and a delightfully literal protagonist with a surprising
The descriptions of smoking are absolutely phenomenal. They’re enough to reform the most staunch non-smokers. This is a writer who has thought very long and hard about each intimate detail of smoking a cigarette. There is one action-packed chapter full of drama that I recall simply as “the cigarette chapter,” because the smoking weaves in and out of the narrative, providing safe and sturdy islands between chaos.
“Clarity? Certainty? Only children and republicans expect life to be that simple.” The One-Eyed Man is a delight, both an escape and heavily grounding, even if my timing was a little off.
But I started reading this book as America began protesting the murder of George Floyd, and I continued to read it through many days when I wished I had an input that wasn’t the voice of a white man from the county I grew up in. Curry is a lot of other things, too, and I mean any of this disparagingly, but as a reader who can count the number of white men I read in a given year on one hand and have fingers left over, I tend to value voices and stories that stretch beyond my understanding of the world. The lens of the white American man has been pretty reliably presented for most of my life, so it’s not where I tend to look.
It was a superficial disappointment and didn’t matter all that much, in the end. Ron Curry Jr.’s sharp eye for the terrors and embarrassments of the modern day is refreshing and validating. It makes you think he might be a difficult kind of guy to get along with, but you’d trust him to write a pretty good social studies book.
There’s a lot of satire here, and the kind of big, improbable-but-still-very-possible action that Curry is so skilled at, and a delightfully literal protagonist with a surprising
The descriptions of smoking are absolutely phenomenal. They’re enough to reform the most staunch non-smokers. This is a writer who has thought very long and hard about each intimate detail of smoking a cigarette. There is one action-packed chapter full of drama that I recall simply as “the cigarette chapter,” because the smoking weaves in and out of the narrative, providing safe and sturdy islands between chaos.
“Clarity? Certainty? Only children and republicans expect life to be that simple.” The One-Eyed Man is a delight, both an escape and heavily grounding, even if my timing was a little off.
librarimans's review
3.0
The One-Eyed Man is Currie doing his best Kafka impersonation to mixed results. It was a mostly enjoyable read that was free of Currie's most common tropes (father issues and high school sweethearts), but I felt the last but of it fell flat once it hit the homestead in Texas. If you like Currie I'm sure you'll enjoy this, but if you've never read anything by him before I would recommend the much better Everything Matters! as an entry point.
glitterandtwang's review
4.0
K. is almost as charming as Eleanor Oliphant, though not quite. This is a lovely book with a faster pace than it really has any right to have, as it's about a grieving widower and his stumble into a reality television show. There's some great parody in here, particularly of Bill Maher and Rachel Maddow, and I'm definitely going to have to check out some of Ron Currie's other books after reading this one. The very end was satisfying, though the lead-up to it was... well, it's all a bit far-fetched, but there's something about plots involving militias that just plain loses me. Currie kept my attention better than most, though, and that's saying a lot.
dannewton's review
3.0
3.5 really, there were a lot of parts that I liked but overall I just felt like it was missing something.