disinclined's Full Review: Richard Perez - The Losers' Club
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I received The Losers’ Club in a rather unusual way. Normally, I’m the one humbly begging publishing companies for free review copies; about half of the requests I make never get a response. This time, though, the publishing company actually asked me to read and review the thing. Now, it seems that a bunch of other Epinionators agreed to do the same, on the condition that they say something nice or say nothing at all. I didn’t go for this, because saying nice things isn’t an area I have much experience in, but the publishers sent me the book anyway. So I’m completely free to tell you exactly what I think of this book (although you can probably already imagine it).*
Martin Sierra is a working stiff, filling a desk at a small export company. He spends his workdays obsessively calling a 900-number to see whether there are any answers to his personal ad. Usually, there aren’t. Sometimes, for a change, he’ll browse through the female personals, but Martin never seems to find anyone that way, either. Where are all the good girls, anyway? Certainly not at the dive bars and clubs where Martin spends every evening, drinking too much beer and making clumsy passes at the ladies.
Actually, scratch that. Martin has found one amazing girl through the personals. Nikki is beautiful, smart, funny, and affectionate, and likes spending time with Martin. The only problem is, she’s not interested in him. Or maybe she is. It’s sort of hard to tell - she likes to tease him by holding hands and making out, then skipping off home at the last minute, leaving Martin to nurse his aching heart (and testes). To make things more of a challenge, Nikki, who’s bi, is in a stormy on-again off-again relationship with some random woman. Since her only function is to provide another stumbling block to Martin’s happiness, the girlfriend never develops into a full-fledged character or appears in-scene; we only hear brief second-hand allusions to her in conversation, but it’s enough to establish that she is a Bad Person with No Redeeming Qualities.
Suddenly, Martin’s fortunes change. He receives several messages from interested girls, who actually want to go on a date with him of their own free will. There’s Lola, the grubby bohemian, who expresses her violent feelings toward her mother on canvas; there’s Amaris, an English-teacher/goth chick who has as many piercings as she does student lovers. Martin’s dance card hasn’t been this full in ages, and he’s kind of enjoying the cavalcade of girls. But, to his disappointment, Nikki just cheers him on and asks for progress reports, seemingly no more interested than any platonic friend would be (and certainly not jealous). Hilarious hijinks pile up fast as Martin hits the streets of 1990s NYC, searching for true love and cheap beer.
Despite winning the first-ever Breakthrough Fiction Award (the prestigious new-author award bestowed by Ludlow Press upon its own book), The Losers’ Club is not very good. The writing is excessively italicized, adding artificial emphasis to random words, not only to indicate stress in dialogue, but also forstore names like Barnes and Noble, and whatever else looks cool with slanted letters. Because Martin Sierra is of Hispanic descent, he peppers his narrative with Spanish words and sentences; only once is a translation provided. I remembered enough from Spanish 101 to puzzle out the phrases, but gratuitously throwing in bits of other languages without providing a translation smacks of snobbery (especially when the phrases turn out to be as mundane as “What do you want from me now?”). In general, the writing is self-conscious and stilted; Perez tries for the frantic, hyperactively intellectual tone of, say, Dave Eggers, but lacks the dizzying stream-of-consciousness eloquence required to pull it off. The book touts itself as “retro-90s,” but the 㣾s weren’t actually that long ago; consequently, the rockin’ club scene Perez labors so hard to evoke simply feels passe – or, at times, like a heavily-italicized grocery list of defunct clubs that will have no relevance to non-New-Yorkers.
Martin is, quite simply, one of the least interesting characters I’ve come across in some time. He’s as average, as bland, as generic as can be; his only distinguishing characteristics are a tendency to write really bad free verse (really bad free verse abounds), and a fondness for talking to a framed photo of his deadbeat mom, whom he hasn’t seen in years. Otherwise, he just blunders through his guy routine, doing guy things in a guy way. Similarly, we’re never clear on what makes Nikki so special. Is it nothing more than that she’s a hot chick who likes other chicks? Certainly, that would be enough for many guys, but it’s hardly a compelling argument for true love. Unfortunately, Nikki’s not a point-of-view character, so we can only observe her through the lust-clouded, objectifying eyes of Martin; then again, there’s no indication that being inside Nikki’s head would be any less tedious than being in Martin’s.
Limp and unimaginative, The Losers’ Club reads like that most agonizing brand of writer’s-workshop trash: the souped-up memoir, posing as fiction, that spackles a thick coat of wish fulfillment over a plot lifted directly from the author’s own experience. This story drips with adolescent pining and casual teenage cruelty; the tragedy is that the characters are all in their late twenties, without a speck of self-awareness, wisdom, or maturity between them. I was blindsided by the ego-boost of being asked by the publisher to review a book; learn from my mistake, kids, and don’t take novels from strangers.
*A note on my controversial first paragraph: this introduction was included purely to document Ludlow's shady marketing tactics. Concerns have been raised that my introduction accuses those Epinionators who agreed to Ludlow's terms of unethical reviewing practices. Although no Epinionators who were directly involved have expressed such sentiments to me, let me state clearly for the record that I am not maligning those Epinionators who agreed to Ludlow's request. The blame falls entirely on Ludlow, who had no right to attempt to extract such a promise in the first place. Thanks to atchesonate and Panguitch for pointing out the need for the clarification.
Set in downtown New York City, The Losers Club tells the story of Martin Sierra, an unlucky writer addicted to the personals. His journey brings us in...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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