Ah, Jonathan Lethem. Even when you give us lightweight confection you delight us with your clever comparisons, your wonderful dialog, and your uncanny ability to give voice to those sensations and feelings we thought could never be put into words.

Case in point: You Don't Love Me Yet.

On the surface it's a story about a girl in a rock band who during the day mans a "complain line" as part of an art experiment (this is Los Angeles, after all). One of her regular complainers has such a way with words that she co-opts his complaints as lyrics, which kick start the band to new levels. The catch? At their first gig the Complainer (as he's called) hears the new stuff and wants in. Wackiness ensues.

The admittedly brief synopsis above doesn't begin, however, to describe the experience of reading You Don't Love Me Yet, and doesn't hint at the many explorations of love and relationships, and the nature of music and how it affects not only the people listening to it, but the people making it as well. Lethem is a writer I'm proud to say I've been turned onto ever since his first novel Gun, With Occasional Music and although he's moved away from the science fiction to mainstream (if you can call it that) literative fiction and all the accolades that accompany, his biggest strength of conveying ideas and emotions directly to the reader has only gotten better with time. If you're a musician and you've ever played in front of a crowd you'll love this book - his description of what happens to a crowd during a show is spot-on, and the characterizations of the various band members are uncanny in how they at once embrace everything that's both romantic and realistic about the "struggling musician" type.

Very quick, very enjoyable. Now please get to work on something epic along the lines of your last novel The Fortress of Solitude. ( )

The whole thing reads like a bad version of Singles for people who are even more pretentious. Singles was pretty pretentious to start off with and wasn’t that great a movie either.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

Ratings for this book seem to be all over the charts and I can understand why. The characters are not drawn to be particularly likable and their motivations are scarcely known. But for young rock star wanna be's this little novel portrays the desires and challenges of playing in a band. ( )

A more fun read than his "Fortress of Solitude," but it feels much more slight. The characters aren't as interesting, their relationships not as complex ... enough for a tv dramedy, but not for a novel. But Lethem's got an agreeable style and he makes the story of the band, its brush with near greatness, feel like that time you saw that really cool local band you were sure were going to go places and you'd be able to say, "I saw them when they were playing 'Volcanic Action of My Soul' in grotty co-ops back in Madison" to folks when they were huge. But Trenchmouth never took off and I don't think ths novel really will either. ( )

Being a moody reader, I wanted something light and fun, You Don't Love Me Yet did not disappoint. The plot was authentic yet absurd. Authenticity was reflected in the maturity of the characters, who in their early-mid 20s don't hesitate to spend their (respective) last-dime on a pack of cigarettes, work in dead-end jobs, or blow-off an important project for school. Absurdity was abundant in frank descriptions of person, character and kangaroo.
The lead singer of a struggling alternative rock band, Lucinda earns her rent by answering calls for the Los Angeles Complaint Line, an artsy, unprofitable business venture of her college friend. There are many insightful one-liners in the book, especially from 'THE complainer' Carl, who Lucinda falls for.
[You Don’t love Me Yet] is not Lethem’s most loved, well known title (see Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude) for two reasons:
1) There was very little character development during the course of the novella
2) Lethem attempted to include a great quantity of casual sex, in the first-person POV, perhaps to authenticate Lucinda’s lack of age and maturity. Attempts to adequately describe such activity in the first-person may be better left to someone of the same gender. ( )