Man Walks Into a Room (original 2002; edition 2003)

The perfect post-modernism novel. What would it be like to have another person's memory? This novel explores memory loss, shared memory and how we connect with people in the world. A first rate book to be sure. I love Kraus' use of language and found myself underlining much of the book. ( )

At the age of 36, what do you have left if you have lost all of your memories beyond your 12th year of life?

This is the premise of Krauss's first novel, as she explores the importance of memory to our individual identity, and the lonely freedom that can come after losing them. Her beautiful prose and ability to develop empathetic characters make this book one that resonates long after you close the book.

Haunting and gorgeous. ( )

this book is gorgeous. i absolutely loved the first third for both the writing and the story, then the story sort of fell off a bit for me. it picked up with the last third. but the writing. the writing never fell off at all. from beginning to end it is just superb. and as to the story - i was hoping she'd explore something she didn't, but she went a different way that was perfectly interesting and worth traveling, but it wasn't where i was hoping she'd go. not her fault. but it doesn't matter because the writing is just so good. ( )

A book better suited for someone of another mind. Or, perhaps, perfectly suited for me: for I do not forget what I should, and invented what should have been buried.
Samson was not someone you rooted for. Anna, his forlorn wife, and Donald, his aged pal, were the only sympathetic characters in this debut novel. Having read The History of Love first, I will say that Krauss shows range. I will also grant that she can write some moving passages and stir up some uncomfortable emotions - but that is not enough to fill an entire book. I feel like she had a few points she wanted to make, and quickly chose characters and a plot to bring her ideas to life. Which is fine, but one needs substance to back up ideas, and Man Walks Into A Room very much lacks that. Now, I understand that Samson stands for something else, but guess what: I didn't care. The loss and loneliness, the bigger picture, just wasn't expressed well enough.
Very much a rough draft. Also, I'm not sure why, but in her books I've caught the same error: suppose in place of supposed. What's going on here, editors? ( )

Beautifully written exploration into the subject that memory makes us who we are and without it we are incomplete beings.

Samson is found wandering in the Nevada desert and has no idea who he is. It happens that he has a benign brain tumor. After it’s removed, he is returned to his wife of 10 years, Anna, and she takes him home to NYC with the hope that his memory may return beyond what he's retained up until age 12, and the present memories that he’s creating.

To Samson, Anna is a perfect stranger; he has no idea how to love someone, let alone his "former" wife; he has no desire to re-create his past in terms of reconnecting with old friends or re-engaging in his teaching position at a local university. However, he goes one day and encounters Lana, a student of his with whom he begins a relationship. His relationship with Anna is deteriorating. There is no level on which they connect, no ability for him to create feelings that he hasn’t re-learned to have. So, unable to pick up the thread of their lives together, they separate and Samson moves out to live with his lover.

After a brief hiatus in Lana’s aptartment while she’s in LA, Samson begins a new life as a guinea pig at Dr. Ray’s neuroscience lab in the Mojave desert where Ray is trying to collect memories from donor subjects and insert them into the minds of recipient subjects.

While in residence, Samson attaches himself to Donald, an older man whose memory of being a young soldier who witnessed an atomic blast in the Nevada desert Samson is destined to receive -- with devastating consequences.

This is an elegiac, deeply explored, and philosophical journey into an annihilated mind. A good as well as a meaningful book. Read this for a rich literary experience and for the joy of solid writing and understanding of the fragile nature of maintaining a normal that can so easily be destroyed by happenstance and acts of man. ( )