Notable American Women

From the first few pages, I knew this would be one of the weirder books I have ever read -- and I am a reader of weird books. Equal parts disorienting and invigorating, this book is about an America very different from the one we know, and yet weirdly familiar. Everyone in the book has very strange ideas about the best ways to eat, move, and talk to improve the self, but... don't we? You could call it the American condition.

But it would be misleading to represent this as simple satire, though it does that well. Marcus is also doing strange and troubling things to language throughout. Words are placed together in ways that shouldn't make any sense, and yet weirdly, kind of do. And there's also potentially a psychoanalytic/semiotic show more reading, perhaps about the horrific inevitability of the Oedipal drama, the law of the father, the return to the Real. It's some crazy, dense, puzzling, but also fun stuff.

Through the whole last third, I became obsessed by the idea that this needs to be a movie -- a very strange, quiet, unsettling movie. Preferably directed by me. show less

I need to stop trying to read Ben Marcus. So self-indulgent and self-important that it overrides any interesting take on language.

I finished reading Ben Marcus’ “Notable American Women." It’s interesting, unique, well-written and mind-bending, but still, not worth it. It reads like a car manual. I’ve checked out his short stories, which I encourage you to take a look at; they all read like car manuals.

This shouldn’t have been a whole book. It should have been a short story. “Notable American Womenâ€? is a novel about a boy named Ben Marcus who’s raised by his parents to have no emotions. At least, that’s the description everyone gives when mentioning this book. That’s not what I thought it was about. I thought it was a painfully detailed description of the Silentist Movement, one of the cults featured in the book. show more

The best line in the book is: “Almonds are language neutral.â€? Believe me, that line tells you all you need to know. show less

Unless Ben Marcus stops imitating himself, you don't need to read past 'The Age of Wire and String.'

WORST book ever.