- An Amazon “Best Book” of Month
- A Buzzfeed “Most Exciting” Book of 2016
- A Flavorwire “Most Anticipated” Book 2016
I was so lucky to be sent PRIVATE CITIZENS for review for TLC BOOK TOURS. We started off by getting the tour dates mixed up and this book arrived before May. This was okay and we rallied around to find a new spot for it.
Here’s what it said on the book cover:
“ From a brilliant new literary talent comes a sweeping comic portrait of privilege, ambition, and friendship in millennial San Francisco. With the Social Acuity of Adelle Waldman and the murderous wit of Martin Amis, Tony Tulathimutte’s PRIVATE CITIZENS is a brainy, irreverent debut “ – This Side of Paradise for a new era.
“Private Citizens is a freak of literature – a novel so authentic, hilarious, elegantly plotted, and heartbreaking that I’d follow it anywhere. Tony Tulathimutte is a singular intellect with an uncanny 40/20 vision on the world.” – Jennifer duBois, author of Cartwheel and A Partial History of Lost Causes
Tony Tulathimutte is a very smart fellow
“Tulathimutte has contributed to AGNI, The Three Penny Review, The American reader, Salon, The New Yorker on line, and other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and Stanford University, he has received an O. Henry prize, a MacDowell Colony fellowship, and the Michener- Copernicus Society of America Award. He lives in New York.”
Hilarious, authentic, intelligent were the words that truly captivated me and to learn about the privileged young people who graduated from Stanford University, I was totally ready to read this book. Four friends reconnecting, yes! This sounds very good indeed. I set aside a whole afternoon to start the read. After 4 hours at it, I realized I had slept 90 minutes of my time away instead of reading. I am too old to find bowel track humor very funny any more, I could not find humor at all instead I found the style very distracting and the 4 friends pathetic.
On the second session of reading, I engaged a bit with Cory the social activist as she connected with a cultish self-help seminar, I could identify as my wishes and hopes were not being met early after graduation either and I fell pray to something like this situation. When I had 75 pages left to read, I jumped to the last chapter and finished PRIVATE CITIZEN’s. I have no idea why one character needed eye surgery. I did not care. I felt rather hopeless about recent graduates and a kind of despair sticks with me as I begin reading the next book on the list.
I did not like this book and thought the drug usage, sex, and alcohol consumption were too big a focus for these whiney characters. Wow not funny, not smart, and I find it sad that PRIVATE CITIZENS is so anticipated and folks are so excited about it – worrisome to me. All that privilege and such weak outcomes. I am concerned for our future.
Tony Tulathimutte Website
Tony Tulathimutte Twitter
Tony Tulathimutte Facebook
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A Visit From the Goon Squad
How To Be Alive
Liar
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