Wow. This was a good one. Strange, intriguing, uniquely structured. It’s done in such a way that the story feels like nonfiction. Couldn’t put it down. ( )

Now that I've decided to try to 'review' each book that I have cataloged, there will be books( like this one) where I may recall reading it some years ago, may or may not remember how or why I liked it, but still can recall only a few or maybe no details about the experience. ( )

I need to be honest, I'm on the fence about this novel. At times, the flow is great. Other times, I'm forced to re-read paragraphs because they just put me into the motions. Nothing was absorbed. Klosterman creates an unlikable character with Y___, but I'm not sure if I'm supposed to dislike our narrator, Victoria. Much like Downtown Owl, I'm disappointed with the ending. ( )

This is one of the worst novels I've ever read. There was no sense of who any of the character sere, or why they interacted with each other as they did. Any "personal touches" were just out of place pop culture references that chuck klosterman can't avoid putting in any of his writing. ( )

Much like the therapist character in this novel, Visible Man left me with a significant amount of cognitive dissonance. I am torn between its brilliant commentary (and metacommentary) on the nature of self and evolving postmodernity and its simultaneous misogyny.

Although Klosterman's character Y (a close insert for K himself) claims he is "not a Jewish" novelist, he seems to be maniacally channeling the ego of Phillip Roth. At one point Y points out that "if an author wants to make a fictional character sympathetic, the easiest way to make that happen is to place them in a humiliating scenario," and this is what K does repeatedly to the unreliable, therapist narrator Victoria over and over again. Oh, our overly attached and flawed Victoria becomes the signifier of humiliation at Y's behest. However, this seems to be her one defining characteristic, and given the narrative structure, without this flawed and weak character, Y would cease to exist, for predators are nothing without their prey. I do concede that Victoria is a necessary device for pointing out the contradictions of Y's character, but she usually apologizes for her insight and admits that most of her sentences "read like they were written by a battered wife".

On the other hand, Visible Man is an interesting exploration on the nature and presentation of self. It questions the foundations of reality and is rather reminiscent of the classic Klosterman essay on the Real World, where fictional reality becomes desired over objective reality. However this book goes further, dismissing the idea that an objective reality could actually exist.

So like Natalie Imbruglia, you could say this book leaves me fundamentally "torn". ( )