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A review by nickdleblanc
Venus Drive by Sam Lipsyte
3.0
Short dark tales that start off with a real one-two bang (pun intended). These characters are gross, sad, and have no motivation to change who they are. Luckily, I like reading about tough-to-like or unsavory individuals and I don't possess the same desire as others to see a character's arc be fulfilled by redemption or growth. If that's your bag, steer clear of this collection of shorts. Lipsyte's prose is very confident, he gives the reader the benefit of the doubt and often uses nouns as adjectives in a conversational way. It quickly convinced me to read another collection by him soon. I would say read a novel, but I'm not currently in the reading mood to commit to a heavy narrative style such as his for a hundred thousand words or so. My only real complaints for this collection were that he relies a bit too heavily on the first-person narrative perspective and many of the characters feature exactly the same type of issues with drug use. For transgressive and dark stories like this, the first person is an effective tool in building character in that it takes you directly into the heart (or more accurately, the mind) of the characters. But when sitting with it for a full collection like this, it can become wearing. It makes you want some space outside of the characters. Some omniscient third person would lighten the load a bit. Though, with the subject matter of some of these stories, I could see how someone would argue that the suffocating effect of the first-person narration was intentional. As far as the drug use, at some point I ended up finding myself saying, "Oh, this guy shoots cocaine too, huh?" and it can come off a bit repetitive or exploitive for exploitation's sake. A more cynical reviewer might say it was Lipsyte trying to show off that he once had a drug problem and a reviewer with a stick up his ass might say that it was a cheap way to build character without doing the bull work of development. I'm not so sure that's the case, and I fall more into the belief that it was a bit solipsistic, all these characters interacting in and around Venus drive are just different parts of Lipsyte--or the parts of himself he was making available for this early collection.
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tl;dr--A confident writer with a good sense of black humor who relies on the same tropes a bit too heavily in this collection. Though, the argument could be made that these stories were originally intended to be read individually as well, but ultimately it doesn't matter. It's a good read I'd recommend to people who I know have a good sense of humor.
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tl;dr--A confident writer with a good sense of black humor who relies on the same tropes a bit too heavily in this collection. Though, the argument could be made that these stories were originally intended to be read individually as well, but ultimately it doesn't matter. It's a good read I'd recommend to people who I know have a good sense of humor.