This was a really great read that I first heard about on the Kevin from Canada blog. In many ways, it tells the story of the American Dream gone astray. Ultimately, the main character (Lowell) becomes disgruntled with his current life, believing it not to be meaningful. He sets out to create a meaningful life for himself by purchasing and "doing up" a house/manor in a very poor part of Brooklyn. For this reason, there are interesting lessons about the challenges of gentrification. Davis describes what can and does go wrong when Lowell obsesses over restoring one part of Brooklyn to its former glory. In the process, Lowell himself becomes fascinated with the former owner of the manor, and seemingly seeks some of this man's notoriety in his own life. The result is a darkly comic novel, with wry observations about the failure to live up to self-expectations.
For me, the really enjoyable part of this book came at the beginning. There was simply so much humour infused in the early parts of the text, and the author's observations of character were extremely insightful. I loved the way he described his father-in-law in the quote below. You can absolutely picture people like him out there.
Apparently, he was meek and craven through and through, the kind of man who would always strive industriously to remain beneath any situation that might arise or sort of creep up on him, the kind of man who went through life continually ducking his head. Lowell got the impression that if somebody finally came and told him it was time to go to the gas chamber, he would hop right into the truck, asking them to call him Leo.All in all, this was an excellent book. And the text is so timeless that I felt it could have been written yesterday (though it was actually first published in 1971).
4/5 Stars.
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