Narrator too much of a prick for me to enjoy this ( )

Interesting concept, great plot ( )

Once in a while I venture back towards "literary fiction" in the hope that maybe there's more to it than WASPy sexual dysfunction.

Nope.

I've never understood this fascination literary writers or their fans have with self referential composition as end to itself--a profoundly empty meta. Congrats to Baker for reaching Ondaatje levels of lettered masturbation.

As an aside, man has this book not aged well to boot. The adventures of a serial rapist are not as charming or funny as Baker seems to think he makes them. ( )

The protagonist can invoke a special power, imposingly referred to as The Fermata, to drop into a wrinkle in time and look up girls' skirts. Though he is ostensibly the only man in the world with this superpower, he's clearly an antihero, inspiring pity rather than envy, a lonely man who chooses to engage with other people when time and consciousness only exist for him, whose primary way of connecting with others is by fondling them, and who has yet to uncover the powers of love, trust, emotional connection.

As far as a fictional memoir goes, this one is quite beautifully written, though the objects on display here are quite ugly and get repetitive. At points it becomes a Proustian string of memories, overlapping anecdotes of times where the protagonist stopped time to peek at beautiful women. Of course, it was fascinating for me to be dropped into his morally challenged brain, and snicker-worthy to see someone capitalize on such a superpower in such a pathetically smutty way.

But I got tired of it after a while. There was no real growth or forward glug of character, except perhaps in the last twenty pages. Rather than a memoir, this read like a manifesto: The main character elucidating his philosophy, defending his assaults on women, engaging in an endless cycle of intellectual (and physical) masturbation.
( )

I had no idea what the book was about when I started it, so I wasn't expecting my subway/airport reading to be so incredibly dirty. Also, the lightness of the whole book, given the subject matter (a man who can stop time, and mostly uses his ability to do things to women that they wouldn't want him to do in real life), is deeply disturbing.

That said, it's thoroughly engaging, has a number of great moments, and is occasionally pretty funny. Proceed at your own risk. ( )