Before getting into this book review, you should know that I am not one to shy away from fiction that crosses the line. I've enjoyed everything from the overtly sexual (Tom Spanbauer's the Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon) to the graphically violent (Battle Royale by Koushun Takami) and books that mix the two (See: Dennis Cooper).
The point being, I'm not one to crap all over a book just because I find the content offensive. Far from it. Usually, the more offensive, the more engrossed I become. I read I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell with pleasure that I wouldn't even call guilty.
But this book, I have to say, was dirty without a whole lot of purpose and to no great effect.
Now, I'm not here to play comedy police, and it sounds like a lot of people found this book to be a laugh riot, but I'm just not sure what was funny about it.
There were funny moments, I'll grant that. When the main character's nephews experiment with swearing, coming up with combinations like "f*** dolphin" I got a chuckle or two. But most of the jokes are what I like to call American Pie Humor.
This is turning into a bashfest review, but I really don't like the American Pie movies. Again, not because they're crude, but because they are silly and rely on flimsy setups to get a laugh. It's always some kid is trying to help his buddy do something, and two minutes later Eugene Levy walks in and one kid's hand is glued to the other kid's ass somehow. To have all this build-up that leads to a scene where it appears, briefly, that someone is having sex with a dog doesn't seem worth it. Plus, you can't help but think, "Wait, the scene cuts there, but wouldn't a one-sentence explanation and slight change of angle convince any rational human that this guy wasn't having sex with a dog?" It's the same problem as the Fokker movies. They create this whole house of cards, and if Ben Stiller would just stick up for himself for one half of one second everything would be fine. EVEN THAT is no big deal, but the problem comes when you have this insane, farcical setup that then tries to reach for an emotional climax somewhere towards the end.
This is Where I Leave You reminded me a little bit of that kind of humor, with scenes like listening to two characters have sex as broadcast on a baby monitor, or a bizarre turn of events that cause the main character to have sex with his sister in law for no real reason and with no repercussions whatsoever.
That's all I really want to say about the humor. I think there's a tendency with books and movies to look at comedy, judge it as unfunny, and then attack it as being misogynistic, misguided, or whatever. But we reserve room for the things we find funny to be truly offensive, just so long as they reach a certain threshold of entertainment value. So whether or not I found it funny isn't so much relevant as explaining the style of humor and allowing other readers to decide whether or not it works for them.
What I will say is that I gave the book a chance, thinking that the high level of crudeness was there as a counterbalance so that the book could reach a level of emotion that would seem all the better considering how low it started. It just didn't hit that redemptive note for me, however. In fact, just as the author gets close in some places, he has a character throw in a one-liner from off to the side that deflates the moment. I'm all for mixing comedy and tragedy, and I genuinely believe that a little tragedy makes the comedy a hell of a lot sweeter, but the humor feels thrown in, like screening a movie to a test audience and throwing in a couple fart noises in post-production just to squeeze out a few artificial laughs.
If you read the first few chapters, get up to the part with the infidelity and don't find yourself laughing, then put the book down and move on. It doesn't really get any better.
Also, to be 100% fair, I read it in large print. So maybe the largeness of the words made it seem more gratuitous. But, dumb as I may be, I don't think I'm THAT dumb.
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