The Marbury Lens (edition 2010)

A brilliantly twisted, nightmarish tale. It reminded me of some bad acid trips I had in high school. Disturbing and absolutely riveting. ( )

Alright, I'm gonna give it to you straight--I've spent 20 years of my life in school. TWENTY. The number of amazing reviews of this book on Goodreads makes me feel like maybe I am too stupid to understand why this book is "so awesome."


Baby Ruth?

Maybe the awesomeness was lost in the translation to audiobook? I really don't think so though. So, we start out with Jack--a California high schooler. Jack and his best friend Conner spend the entire book being teenage boys to the max. I was listening to this in the car one day on my way to class and there is reverse cowgirl sex on the first CD. I guess kids are crazier now than they were when I was in high school--man, we thought we were rebels drinking in the woods for chrissakes. Also, they spend the entire book calling each other gay. (Dude, you are so gay) There was also a classic incident where I was listening to this while washing the dishes and my dad came in as the book went something like this: Fucking FUCK FUCKING STUPID FUCK, Jack, WHAT THE FUCK Not kidding. My dad was like, "what the hell is this?" Ummm, a "young adult" book? *shrug*

I would address the plot of this book it really doesn't lend itself to a rehash. It starts out as a kidnapping/pedophilia storyline, goes to a bromance jaunt to London, switches to a quasi-fantasy wherein Jack deals with his trauma by escaping to a world through magic glasses, and ends up with ghosts, cannibalism, a really serious relationship*, and a WTF ending. Am I making you want to read this yet?

A lot of people seem to root their reviews in how great it is that [a:Andrew Smith|1383409|Andrew Smith|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1270158603p2/1383409.jpg] dealt with such horrific topics. Ugh. Okay, I was totally with him for the first third or so of the book but he lost me. I'm gone.

Every once in awhile, I wished I had my Kindle or a pen and paper so I could write down memorable quotations. Two things I remember distinctly enjoying were the metaphor of people as Matroyshka nesting dolls and of "mind the gap" being used as an expression to warn people of the dangers of transition in life, not just in getting on and off the underground.

I always feel like I am being a total a-hole in reviews if I didn't really enjoy a book. This book is NOT bad--I'm sure some of my GR friends might like it...I'm giving this 2.75 stars.

*If you are starting a new relationship and the other person starts bringing up super serious issues and lets on that they are a psychiatric mess, like the same week you meet them, would you take care of them and really work at it? Neither would I. ( )

Well that was...fucked up. And rather fantastic. Like an Elizabeth Bear novel for fifteen year old boys. ( )

Please see my "team review" under "ErlangerAlpacaJedis" ( )

Disjointed.

That's the perfect word to sum up _The Marbury Lens_, in all its negative and positive connotations. On the one hand, the disjointed nature of the story really reflects what is going on in the psyche of the main character, Jack Conner. On the other hand, it makes it a bear to read.

Jack, rather early on in the story, is abducted, almost raped, escapes, and then goes on vacation to England. Disjointed already, right?

Once in London, he is given a mysterious pair of glasses that transport him to the world of Marbury, a brutal, post-apocalyptic landscape that has some sort of connection with our current world, though it is hard to figure out what that is – and don’t expect any answers in this volume.

In Marbury Jack is the leader of a small band of boys who may well be the last people on earth. They have to fight horrible monsters while they trek across a wasted landscape in the hopes of finding other people. Along the way, Jack will meet the nega-world versions of people from his “real” life, including his former captor. This is in stark contrast to “real world” Jack who is just falling the hell apart. He comes off like a crazed junkie with no self-respect.

This actually sounds a bit more interesting than it is. The majority of the text seems to deal with Jack’s almost addiction-like problem with travelling to Marbury. There’s a whole lot of internal monologue of “don’t do it, Jack,” “I can’t help it. I have to go.” Blah. Blah. Blah. And then there’s a lot of back and forth. Back to Marbury, back to the random “ghost story,” then back to London… disjointed again.

And the whole book starts off with what I like to call the “Thelma and Louise” problem. A great deal of Jack’s internal torture could have been dealt with if he’d *just gone to the police in the first place*. Who gets abducted, almost raped, escapes and then doesn’t think it is a good idea to tell someone? This sort of conceit in a story (and it is used all. the. time. in stories) drives me nuts.

If I can bite that, and sometimes I can, I’ve still got to deal with the fact that Marbury is just… brutal. A bit too gritty for my tastes. If I had a dime for every description of viscera, I’d still be a little queasy, but at least I’d have some dimes. There are horrible giant bugs that graphically feast on corpses, freaky monster people that wear scalps for codpieces and I-don’t-remember-what-else. And that’s just Marbury. Remember the “real” world includes abductions, explicitly described rape scenes, a rather unnecessary invitation to a threesome and copious use of the word, “f*ck.”

So it is fair to say this one isn’t one you’ll want to hand to just any reader.

That said, I think there’s a market for this story, depending on how the sequel(s) goes. Because the ending is also remarkably unsatisfying. Definitely a cliffhanger. I’m not sure I was compelled enough by this volume to pick it up, but perhaps, like Jack, I’ll find myself going back to Marbury whether I want to or not. ( )