The Fuck-Up

I LOVE THIS BOOK. I admit i picked it up because I saw that it said "fuck" in the title (great marketing), but when you crack it open it astounds. You then realize that you have only put it down because you there is nothing left to read. Its is so good that you find yourself wanting to read the very next word, sentence, paragraph, page, chapter. I can relate to the main character on so many levels yet at the same time i found myself screaming out "you dumb ass". By the end of the book you forget that you never do learn the name of the main character. In a way if you are reading it, and loving it as I did then the main character is you. This is indeed a real book for real people who have not had every thing in life handed to them; more show more over this is a quick and relative laugh for those of us who from time to tom "Fuck Up" show less

This reminds me of "The House of Mirth"...except more contemporary...and the protagonist is male (which gives him a head-up over Wharton's heroine)...and the ending is slightly different. But yeah, still pretty similar. ;)

In a nutshell, this shows the downward spiral of a fairly intelligent guy living in NYC. Selfish and stupid choices lead him on the path to living a hopeless life. This book could be entitled, "Bad Karma". He got what he dished out, although you still walk away feeling a little sorry for him. I want to make the stupidity and carelessness of youth into the culprit rather than blaming his own choices for determining his bleak fate but, unfortunately, like a previous reviewer stated, "he was a dumb ass".

The book started out as a pretty funny account of a fuck-up's life in New York during the gritty '80s, but I started to lose interest as the protagonist's luck continued to climb with one preposterous event following another. Once women implausibly started throwing themselves at him I gave up entirely.

A young slacker in New York loses his girlfriend and his job all in the same day. With nowhere to go and nothing but the clothes on his back, he spends the next few nights on a friend's couch, trying to piece together what he needs to do to survive. This novel narrates his ever-increasing downward spiral through the darker world of New York and his eventual escape into normalcy. A very engaging dark comedy, and the perfect choice to read while sitting in the juror room at the Superior Court.

With a title like the Fuck-Up, I was not expecting a freakin Mother Goose story. This is the kind of book you picture grad students in thier late 20's reading at an uber-cool coffee shop in the Village before checking out the latest underground indie film at the Angelika. It might sound like I disliked it, but it was a fun read. Some very funny moments and some all too real memories as the central figure tries to get a girl and get a job, but has no luck with either. He does wind up working at an XXX theatre, so there is a silver lining in there afterall. Not much of a plot, this would have been better off as a 2-part series in the Village Voice, but it does feature some self-loathing, misanthropic writing.

Unimpressive. Although the story is engrossing, Nersesian's prose style is forced--it seems to me as though he were trying too hard to produce a hybrid of Trainspotting and The Catcher in the Rye.

I really enjoyed reading about the New York I grew up in, seedy but beautiful. The main character was like an old friend, too smart for his own good and aimless. The ending felt like a bit of a cop-out to me. I definitely wasn't expecting it but what I'd come to expect from the characters was thrown away for a neat luke warm ending. Overall a quick and fun read.