Lucky Alan and Other Stories

Lucky Alan and Other Stories by Jonathan Lethem          Audio Book:  4hours 30 mins.     Hardback Book:  176 pages    

While these stories are definetly adult oriented there are times when the author is so vivid in his imagery and seems to love peculiar names sometimes suggestive of the personality of the character or what they are into sometimes its like something out of Lewis Carroll other times its like a story by Dr. Seuss only with adult themes (ie. Horton Hires a Ho – that type of thing).     Some stories hold your interest like the flamboyant character in Lucky Alan that you are not quite sure where the two leads are headed with all their clandestine-esque meet ups at theaters unbeknownst to one another, etc. then when there is the mail-order obedient bride who in reality HATES her husband and is glad when he dies.    All of the stories have elements of the odd or excentric within them.    I think my favorite was “Traveler Home,”  because of the whole Silas Marner feel with the added touch of the 7 wolves then it molts into a weirder tale and you wonder if the guy is psychologically flipping personalities.   The massive collection of “The Porn Critic,”  and how he flips from kindly holding the lady’s hair while she is throwing up to going over various titles from his collection and acts to be performed…this is definetly a different gathering of strangely weird stories.   Not badly written, just sort of here to there and back again and over the top around and through like he is tying all of his stories into a big bow, but, like that present you get but don’t necessarily want, yeah, it is kind of like that.    I wasn’t sorry to come to the end.   While he is a New York Times Best Selling author, for me, I would not award this collection that prize.   Like I said, I did like the first story and the story about, “The Traveller,” but now I question where he was going with his imagery.   Which leaves a bad impression for me.     I can’t say I would recommend this book, but, I am sure there is an audience that he does appeal to, I’m just not one of them.