What do you think?
Rate this book
Tumbledown
In Tumbledown, Robert Boswell presents a large, unforgettable cast of characters who are all failing and succeeding in various degrees to make sense of our often-irrational world. In a moving narrative twist, he boldly reckons with the extent to which tragedy can be undone, the impossible accommodated.
At age thirty-three, James Candler seems to be well on the road to success. He's in line for a big promotion at Onyx Springs, the treatment facility where he's a therapist. He has a fiancée, a sizable house, and a Porsche.
But ... he's falling in love with another woman, he's underwater on his mortgage, and he's put his hapless best friend in charge of his signature therapeutic program. Even the GPS on his car can't seem to predict where he should turn next. And his clients are struggling in their own hilarious, heartbreaking ways to keep their lives on track. How can he help them if he can't help himself?
In Tumbledown, Robert Boswell presents a large, unforgettable cast of characters who are all failing and succeeding in various degrees to make sense of our often-irrational world. In a moving narrative twist, he boldly reckons with the extent to which tragedy can be undone, the impossible accommodated.
At age thirty-three, James Candler seems to be well on the road to success. He's in line for a big promotion at Onyx Springs, the treatment facility where he's a therapist. He has a fiancée, a sizable house, and a Porsche.
But ... he's falling in love with another woman, he's underwater on his mortgage, and he's put his hapless best friend in charge of his signature therapeutic program. Even the GPS on his car can't seem to predict where he should turn next. And his clients are struggling in their own hilarious, heartbreaking ways to keep their lives on track. How can he help them if he can't help himself?
In Tumbledown, Robert Boswell presents a large, unforgettable cast of characters who are all failing and succeeding in various degrees to make sense of our often-irrational world. In a moving narrative twist, he boldly reckons with the extent to which tragedy can be undone, the impossible accommodated.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published August 6, 2013
21 people are currently reading
1135 people want to read
About the author
Robert Boswell
69 books51 followersRobert Boswell is the author of eleven books, including The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, a story collection with Graywolf Press, in April 2009. His novels: Century's Son, American Owned Love, Mystery Ride, The Geography of Desire, and Crooked Hearts. His other story collections: Living to Be 100 and Dancing in the Movies. His nonfiction: The Half-Known World, a book on the craft of writing, and What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak, a book about a real-life treasure hunt in New Mexico (co-written with David Schweidel). His cyberpunk novel Virtual Death (published under the pseudonym Shale Aaron) was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award.
His play Tongues won the John Gassner Prize. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Iowa School of Letters Award for Fiction, the PEN West Award for Fiction, and the Evil Companions Award. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, Pushcart Prize Stories, Best Stories from the South, Esquire, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, Colorado Review, and many other magazines.
He shares the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston with his wife, Antonya Nelson.
His play Tongues won the John Gassner Prize. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Iowa School of Letters Award for Fiction, the PEN West Award for Fiction, and the Evil Companions Award. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, Pushcart Prize Stories, Best Stories from the South, Esquire, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, Colorado Review, and many other magazines.
He shares the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston with his wife, Antonya Nelson.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
August 13, 2013
MYSTERY RIDE was Boswell’s crowning achievement, a sharp, ironic, yet surprisingly sensitive novel about relationships--marriages, lovers, parent/offspring, friendships, as well as an incisive peek into matters of mental health.
In his latest novel, set near San Diego, 2008, Boswell explores the world of mentally/emotionally challenged individuals and their caretakers/counselors, rendered with an eagle eye and a tender heart. Peopled with well-defined, original characters, it revolves around the theme of keeping your grip while life tumbles down around you, and aiming to encounter a slip of hope and normality within the chaos of a broken world.
“Every sane person has to find every day some manner of accommodating the impossible, some way of covering up for the failures of the rational world. This might actually be a reasonable definition of sanity.”
The story is set at the fictional Onyx Springs Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Center, one of the largest treatment centers in the US, which houses dormitories for the high risk clientele, and an outpatient facility. Many of them come together at the sheltered workshop—a pantyhose packaging workshop that allow patients to earn money and learn assembly line skills, preparing them to function semi-independently. The characters engage, collaborate, and collide in a circling and revealing narrative that allows the reader to witness a share of their all-consuming lives.
Thirty-three-year-old James Candler is an affable, attractive therapist, a yearning counselor who has, even with his flaws, found his niche in counseling individuals.
“He thought it might be more important to be heard than to be understood. It was almost certainly the greatest benefit of therapy: that someone was willing to listen.”
Now, however, he is pursuing the directorship at Onyx Springs at the persuasion of the vacating director. Candler bought an expensive house and a fancy car, steeped himself in financial debt, compelling him to require the lucrative directorship position. His fiancé, who he barely knows, is about to arrive; his sister, who recently lost her husband, is also on her way. And James is drawn to a woman (he doesn’t recognize) from his past, and who he counseled once—which turned her life around.
In the meantime, James’s distant past is hurtling toward his present, pressing on him emotionally. During James’s youth in Arizona, his parents—pretentious artists--refused to get professional help for his brother, Pook, who was autistic and fragile. Pook was also an artist, but his talent was his curse, one that underpins James’s journey of self-awareness, which takes place through the arc of the book.
Billy Atlas, James’s best friend since childhood, has emotional problems that have interfered with social adjustment, but he comprehends Candler better than anyone. He is temporarily living with James, who has propped Billy up with a supervising job at the shelter, an assignment that Billy may not be emotionally competent to handle.
Then there are the clients, a variety of characters with their own exquisite torments. If the mind is an elaborate system of pulleys and levers and delicate balances, then what happens when a portion is altered or missing?
The most sympathetic character is Mick Coury, a client of Candler and the workshop, a handsome twenty-one-year-old suffering from schizophrenia. When he is on his meds, he functions steadily, but he is dissatisfied with the flattening effect. He has had several suicide attempts in the past, but appears to be coping.
Mick falls head over heels for Karly, a beautiful client, but with the intelligence of a small child. Maura Wood, who lives on-campus, has superior intelligence, like Mick, but suffers from extreme emotional problems. She is desperate for Mick, who is desperate for Karly. Everyone struggles for an anchor of something possible, grasping for certainty in this tumbledown world.
One must have clear boundaries to work effectively in this field. In Tumbledown, boundaries are getting blurred and often violated, and both clients and counselors are potentially headed for a fall. Moreover, as the story flows back and forth between characters and time periods, we begin to understand, for example, why James became a counselor, and his desire to reconcile the past with the present. Billy strives to capitalize on the present and secure a footing in the future, as a way of erasing the past. Mick’s greatest desire is to “return to the world as it had been before. The simplicity of it, the basic clarity of existence, would once more belong to him.”
In the dedication at the front of the book, Boswell states “This book is dedicated to all the clients who survived my tenure as a counselor and to the one who didn’t.” That line resonates in every character that appears in this narrative, in the precise way that he portrays the domain and the people who inhabit it. As a psychiatric nurse for thirty years, I recognize a credible setting from a badly contrived one. I am reticent to read a book with this context, due to occupational hazard, but I wasn’t disappointed here, as I recognized the authenticity and acumen of Boswell’s depictions.
What sometimes detracts from the story is the densely crowded narrative. Most of the characters are introduced early, and they pile on before the reader has an opportunity to absorb them. Eventually, they are given dimension and place in the story, but the torpid momentum periodically drained my senses. Moreover, Boswell goes off on tangents, and the narrative was weighted with infinitesimal details, and the tension I craved was diminished.
This was a brave and incisive book about the tyranny of the psyche, but at times it was overcome by a tyranny of verbosity. If you stick with it, though, you will be ultimately moved by a compassionate story of humanity, and the conflicting and complex nature of surviving in an impossible world.
“He had a vague belief that the ability to do the right thing and the ability to do the wrong thing were the same ability, and it existed like a great body of water on which floated your personality, and you could never tell just what might seep through, or in which direction a tide might take you.”
In his latest novel, set near San Diego, 2008, Boswell explores the world of mentally/emotionally challenged individuals and their caretakers/counselors, rendered with an eagle eye and a tender heart. Peopled with well-defined, original characters, it revolves around the theme of keeping your grip while life tumbles down around you, and aiming to encounter a slip of hope and normality within the chaos of a broken world.
“Every sane person has to find every day some manner of accommodating the impossible, some way of covering up for the failures of the rational world. This might actually be a reasonable definition of sanity.”
The story is set at the fictional Onyx Springs Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Center, one of the largest treatment centers in the US, which houses dormitories for the high risk clientele, and an outpatient facility. Many of them come together at the sheltered workshop—a pantyhose packaging workshop that allow patients to earn money and learn assembly line skills, preparing them to function semi-independently. The characters engage, collaborate, and collide in a circling and revealing narrative that allows the reader to witness a share of their all-consuming lives.
Thirty-three-year-old James Candler is an affable, attractive therapist, a yearning counselor who has, even with his flaws, found his niche in counseling individuals.
“He thought it might be more important to be heard than to be understood. It was almost certainly the greatest benefit of therapy: that someone was willing to listen.”
Now, however, he is pursuing the directorship at Onyx Springs at the persuasion of the vacating director. Candler bought an expensive house and a fancy car, steeped himself in financial debt, compelling him to require the lucrative directorship position. His fiancé, who he barely knows, is about to arrive; his sister, who recently lost her husband, is also on her way. And James is drawn to a woman (he doesn’t recognize) from his past, and who he counseled once—which turned her life around.
In the meantime, James’s distant past is hurtling toward his present, pressing on him emotionally. During James’s youth in Arizona, his parents—pretentious artists--refused to get professional help for his brother, Pook, who was autistic and fragile. Pook was also an artist, but his talent was his curse, one that underpins James’s journey of self-awareness, which takes place through the arc of the book.
Billy Atlas, James’s best friend since childhood, has emotional problems that have interfered with social adjustment, but he comprehends Candler better than anyone. He is temporarily living with James, who has propped Billy up with a supervising job at the shelter, an assignment that Billy may not be emotionally competent to handle.
Then there are the clients, a variety of characters with their own exquisite torments. If the mind is an elaborate system of pulleys and levers and delicate balances, then what happens when a portion is altered or missing?
The most sympathetic character is Mick Coury, a client of Candler and the workshop, a handsome twenty-one-year-old suffering from schizophrenia. When he is on his meds, he functions steadily, but he is dissatisfied with the flattening effect. He has had several suicide attempts in the past, but appears to be coping.
Mick falls head over heels for Karly, a beautiful client, but with the intelligence of a small child. Maura Wood, who lives on-campus, has superior intelligence, like Mick, but suffers from extreme emotional problems. She is desperate for Mick, who is desperate for Karly. Everyone struggles for an anchor of something possible, grasping for certainty in this tumbledown world.
One must have clear boundaries to work effectively in this field. In Tumbledown, boundaries are getting blurred and often violated, and both clients and counselors are potentially headed for a fall. Moreover, as the story flows back and forth between characters and time periods, we begin to understand, for example, why James became a counselor, and his desire to reconcile the past with the present. Billy strives to capitalize on the present and secure a footing in the future, as a way of erasing the past. Mick’s greatest desire is to “return to the world as it had been before. The simplicity of it, the basic clarity of existence, would once more belong to him.”
In the dedication at the front of the book, Boswell states “This book is dedicated to all the clients who survived my tenure as a counselor and to the one who didn’t.” That line resonates in every character that appears in this narrative, in the precise way that he portrays the domain and the people who inhabit it. As a psychiatric nurse for thirty years, I recognize a credible setting from a badly contrived one. I am reticent to read a book with this context, due to occupational hazard, but I wasn’t disappointed here, as I recognized the authenticity and acumen of Boswell’s depictions.
What sometimes detracts from the story is the densely crowded narrative. Most of the characters are introduced early, and they pile on before the reader has an opportunity to absorb them. Eventually, they are given dimension and place in the story, but the torpid momentum periodically drained my senses. Moreover, Boswell goes off on tangents, and the narrative was weighted with infinitesimal details, and the tension I craved was diminished.
This was a brave and incisive book about the tyranny of the psyche, but at times it was overcome by a tyranny of verbosity. If you stick with it, though, you will be ultimately moved by a compassionate story of humanity, and the conflicting and complex nature of surviving in an impossible world.
“He had a vague belief that the ability to do the right thing and the ability to do the wrong thing were the same ability, and it existed like a great body of water on which floated your personality, and you could never tell just what might seep through, or in which direction a tide might take you.”
July 29, 2013
What a wonderful, sprawling, exciting book! The narrative choices the author makes (Unreliable omniscient? Brilliant!) are fascinating and ultimately perfect for the telling of this story. (If you stumble a bit at the beginning, stay with it--relationships and characters become clear soon enough--and you will be richly rewarded as the book progresses.) Many of the characters in TUMBLEDOWN have mental impairments of various types, still others have moral or judgment impairments, and yet the author deals with them all clearly and fairly--and in a way that makes us love them all the more for their imperfections. This may be Boswell's most exciting and inventive book yet.
June 6, 2013
Tumbledown is a capacious novel, as big as life and twice as vigorous. It is populated with a large array of sharply etched characters whose lives crisscross and oscillate between intimacy and abandon, like the dramatis personae of a Robert Altman movie, as noted on the back cover. Boswell, whose gift it is to create convincing and full-blooded characters, and who is always a joy to read for shrewd readers who appreciate a novel’s depth and psychological underpinnings, and who wrote Mystery Ride, a flat-out perfect novel, is here again on top of his game. When he is, he is one of the finest writers we have. Here his cast of characters revolves around Onyx Springs, a treatment center for the mildly crazy. Its main protagonist, counselor James Candler, is a beautifully flawed human who you’ll want to follow wherever his poor misbegotten heart takes him. But there are many other characters as appealing. In the swirling, kaleidoscopic narrative of Tumbledown, Boswell is able to depict how we bounce off each other, stick together or fly apart, how skewed love is, yet how important. He is also master here of illuminating ordinary lives, lives lit by the glow of a kitchen light, or by the clinical brightness of a psychiatric clinic. This is an extraordinary novel. At the end you may want to return to its world to revisit these characters and to savor again the author’s precise and elegant prose.
August 2, 2013
I enjoyed this book… up until the last chapter or so. Then I felt things just fell apart (maybe that was the point though, who knows).
The writing style was interesting - each section by a different character overlapped with sections by other characters, providing insights into significant events by multiple characters. There were also some jumps back in time to Candler's past, as his family history is revealed to the reader.
The story itself follows the lives of a few mentally ill individuals as well as their counselor, Candler (referred to mainly by his last name throughout the story). There isn't really a significant or intense plot throughout the story, it mainly just follows the day-to-day lives of the characters and the only conflict occurs because of the romantic feelings that all the characters have for someone else.
If you're a little confused at the beginning of the story just stick with it because the characters, and the relationships between them, become clear after a chapter or so. And if you think things are confusing at the beginning, just wait until the end! I felt like the last chapter just sort of fell apart, maybe that was the point (as Candler's life falls apart, the story falls apart as well?). If you read this book though, it might be better to bail out sometime before the last chapter so the story isn't ruined for you. The end section took my rating from a four star book down to a three.
The writing style was interesting - each section by a different character overlapped with sections by other characters, providing insights into significant events by multiple characters. There were also some jumps back in time to Candler's past, as his family history is revealed to the reader.
The story itself follows the lives of a few mentally ill individuals as well as their counselor, Candler (referred to mainly by his last name throughout the story). There isn't really a significant or intense plot throughout the story, it mainly just follows the day-to-day lives of the characters and the only conflict occurs because of the romantic feelings that all the characters have for someone else.
If you're a little confused at the beginning of the story just stick with it because the characters, and the relationships between them, become clear after a chapter or so. And if you think things are confusing at the beginning, just wait until the end! I felt like the last chapter just sort of fell apart, maybe that was the point (as Candler's life falls apart, the story falls apart as well?). If you read this book though, it might be better to bail out sometime before the last chapter so the story isn't ruined for you. The end section took my rating from a four star book down to a three.
December 6, 2017
Onvan : Tumbledown - Nevisande : Robert Boswell - ISBN : 1555976492 - ISBN13 : 9781555976491 - Dar 448 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2013
October 6, 2013
The main theme of Tumbledown - that every day a sane person must figure out ways to deal with the impossible - permeates every aspect of this novel by prize-winning author Robert Boswell, who uses his experience as a psychological counselor to create realistic but damaged characters who try and fail every day to accommodate the impossible. In this novel set in a residential facility, main character, therapist James Candler, is responsible for six young clients, most of them under the age of twenty-five.
Candler, age thirty-three, is neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist, and his own life is a mess. The house he owns outside of San Diego, on which he cannot make the payments, is now "under water." He has bought a used Porche which he does not need and cannot afford. He has spent six years living with a woman he thinks he might have loved, but she has left him and has married someone else. Now engaged to a woman with whom his primary contact has been by e-mail, he is also at the mercy of his raging desire for another woman who was once a patient. His only big achievement on the job has been to set up a sheltered workshop for his clients, hoping that they will eventually be able to get jobs on an assembly line.
For the first third of the novel, author Boswell introduces his dysfunctional characters, their past histories, and their problems, not just for the clients but the staff, too: one young man lives at the center, hoping that after two tours of duty in Iraq that someone there will declare him unfit to return for another terrifying tour of duty. Another disappears into the bathroom so often that Candler has to bribe him to keep him focused on something - anything - else. A gorgeous young client with whom most of the men are in love, is mentally handicapped, with an IQ so low she is unable to function on her own. Mick Coury, the client that readers will probably care most about, was a happy, productive teenager until he became the victim of schizophrenia. Constantly experimenting with his meds in an effort to become closer to "normal," Mick tries to court the gorgeous Karly, having no clue about her life outside the Center and no ability to read the signs or signals she sends.
The "plot," a collection of vignettes involving the characters and their interactions with each other and with life in general, unwinds on several levels at once. The often grotesque ironies in the characters' lives and their sometimes bizarre interactions lead, at times, to scenes bordering on farce, but the overlay of the clients' dysfunctions and the sympathy these people engender in the reader keep the novel grounded and often emotionally moving. The clients' irrational behavior represents their best efforts to deal with life's impossibilities, even when they cannot evaluate their actions in relation to the wider world or see that world for the sometimes absurd, illogical place that it is. Ultimately, the author summarizes his themes in relation to specific clients and characters in the novel, remarking in the surprising conclusion that though "Every reader wants the impossible acts addressed,...every sane person [also] has to find every day some manner of accommodating the impossible, some way of covering up for the failures of the rational world." Everybody lives in a "tumbledown" world and there is no going back. "Believing in the days of seamless reality is the real madness," the author shows us.
Candler, age thirty-three, is neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist, and his own life is a mess. The house he owns outside of San Diego, on which he cannot make the payments, is now "under water." He has bought a used Porche which he does not need and cannot afford. He has spent six years living with a woman he thinks he might have loved, but she has left him and has married someone else. Now engaged to a woman with whom his primary contact has been by e-mail, he is also at the mercy of his raging desire for another woman who was once a patient. His only big achievement on the job has been to set up a sheltered workshop for his clients, hoping that they will eventually be able to get jobs on an assembly line.
For the first third of the novel, author Boswell introduces his dysfunctional characters, their past histories, and their problems, not just for the clients but the staff, too: one young man lives at the center, hoping that after two tours of duty in Iraq that someone there will declare him unfit to return for another terrifying tour of duty. Another disappears into the bathroom so often that Candler has to bribe him to keep him focused on something - anything - else. A gorgeous young client with whom most of the men are in love, is mentally handicapped, with an IQ so low she is unable to function on her own. Mick Coury, the client that readers will probably care most about, was a happy, productive teenager until he became the victim of schizophrenia. Constantly experimenting with his meds in an effort to become closer to "normal," Mick tries to court the gorgeous Karly, having no clue about her life outside the Center and no ability to read the signs or signals she sends.
The "plot," a collection of vignettes involving the characters and their interactions with each other and with life in general, unwinds on several levels at once. The often grotesque ironies in the characters' lives and their sometimes bizarre interactions lead, at times, to scenes bordering on farce, but the overlay of the clients' dysfunctions and the sympathy these people engender in the reader keep the novel grounded and often emotionally moving. The clients' irrational behavior represents their best efforts to deal with life's impossibilities, even when they cannot evaluate their actions in relation to the wider world or see that world for the sometimes absurd, illogical place that it is. Ultimately, the author summarizes his themes in relation to specific clients and characters in the novel, remarking in the surprising conclusion that though "Every reader wants the impossible acts addressed,...every sane person [also] has to find every day some manner of accommodating the impossible, some way of covering up for the failures of the rational world." Everybody lives in a "tumbledown" world and there is no going back. "Believing in the days of seamless reality is the real madness," the author shows us.
December 17, 2013
Boswell is a fine writer but I think this one goes off the rails a bit. He plays games with perspective and events--perhaps trying to suggest how arbitrary life (or death) can be? But not to great effect. And the characters, many patients at a psych clinic, are a bit too disaffected to engender much interest. So a mixed bag.
July 25, 2015
It is a genuine sadness to finish a book this fine since it means I will not get to look forward to another day reading it.
September 21, 2013
James Candler is a mental health counselor who is up for a lucrative promotion as the director of the treatment facility Onyx Springs. He is engaged to be married and lives in a large house outside of San Diego. The clients of this facility include sweet, mentally impaired Karly, sensitive Mick who can't remember the person he was before his schizophrenia and sarcastic, intelligent Maura who lives on a locked ward after a suicide attempt.
Robert Boswell changes point of view sometimes multiple times per page so you are inside the heads of most of the characters. His writing is dense, descriptive and brilliant. My heart broke for Karly since she reminded me of a beautiful student I had taught. Her kind nature shined brighter than her inability to repeat a few phrases every morning. I think that this book hit too close to home for me sometimes but it is a must read for anyone interested in the human condition.
Robert Boswell changes point of view sometimes multiple times per page so you are inside the heads of most of the characters. His writing is dense, descriptive and brilliant. My heart broke for Karly since she reminded me of a beautiful student I had taught. Her kind nature shined brighter than her inability to repeat a few phrases every morning. I think that this book hit too close to home for me sometimes but it is a must read for anyone interested in the human condition.
March 2, 2014
A nicely crafted story about the mentally ill, those that treat them, and the profound affect both have on each other. Rich with great characters, this book had me hooked early and never let go.
Boswell does a great job of navigating between the tragic and the comedic. At first glance, the story and ideas bounce in what may seem whimsical, but given that the common thread in the story is mental illness, it makes sense.
For those who are fans of Richard Russo, John Irving, or David Wroblewski, I would highly recommend Tumbledown.
Boswell does a great job of navigating between the tragic and the comedic. At first glance, the story and ideas bounce in what may seem whimsical, but given that the common thread in the story is mental illness, it makes sense.
For those who are fans of Richard Russo, John Irving, or David Wroblewski, I would highly recommend Tumbledown.
July 25, 2015
I give myself a pass to put a book down if I haven't gotten sold on it by 100 pages. Heaven knows why I didn't take this book up on that; I guess I had high hopes that something would happen. Written by a therapist, I thought it might have some great insights. But, just the old stereotype of a therapist who is a total mess and clients who seem more put together than the one who is in charge of helping them. Sigh.
August 31, 2013
I tried so hard to like this novel. I read so many good reviews that I thought if I kept reading eventually I would like it. I finished the book and still didn't care for it at all. It was a big waste of my time and I had to force myself to keep reading it. I wish I would have given up on it. I just thought it would get better but the ending was worse than the rest.
October 19, 2013
Couldn't finish it. Not engaging enough. Found myself wanting to do other things instead of reading. :(
September 7, 2013
There is much to admire about Robert Boswell's sprawling novel that is told from the perspective of an array of characters all connected to a counseling institute for the mentally ill near San Diego. A key theme is the search for an authentic self, as many the characters strive for what they believe is their true or better selves - that includes Mick, a schizophrenic who constantly longs for his "old" self before the disease took hold of his brain; Lise, a one-time patient of the main protagonist, James Candler, who left a life of stripping and occasional prostitution after James asked her in a session to start inventorying how she got to the place where she was; and Lolly, James' fiancée, who also left behind a wild life and transformed herself by, rather obnoxiously, moving to England and taking on the persona of a Brit - assuming the accent and all the idioms, like "bloody" and "knackered," that enable her to be taken as a different person.
The problem for me, though, is that the novel's main protagonist, James, isn't compelling enough. I think novels -- even character-driven, literary ones - work best when the main character wants something and has to battle with an obstacle preventing them from getting it. There is a lot of that going on here with the secondary characters. I became completely absorbed by Mick's constant longing for his "saner" past and his daily struggle to decide whether to take his pills and keep his craziness at bay or forgo the medication and escape the sluggishness the pills impose on him. Similarly, Maura a member of a workshop with Mick at the institute desperately wants him, while having to contend with the fact that Mick is in love with another girl in the group, who is beautiful but mentally challenged. You can't help but sympathize with the engagingly wise-cracking Maura, who lends a empathetic ear to Mick, but has her own selfish reasons for wishing Mick won't ever get better. She knows that the handsome Mick might not be interested in someone with a less than stellar beauty like herself if he weren't compromised by a mental illness.
While those and a few of the other character's dilemmas - like James' sister's Violet's struggle to get back on her feet after the death of her husband - kept me reading, I found little interest in James' struggles. He has two things looming in his future - an appointment to the directorship of the institute and a marriage to Lolly. Oddly James doesn't seem very invested in either, so it's hard for me to care. The directorship is being foisted on him by the outgoing director, and his engagement came about after visiting his sister in England and having spent only two weeks with her assistant, Lolly. It's never clear whether even a part of James wants the directorship position. Similarly his engagement to a woman he barely knows matters so little to him that two weeks before she is scheduled to arrive from England to begin spending more time with him, he enters into an affair with Lise, who has stalked him out, years after that single session that changed her life. He doesn't remember her, but is easily seduced into starting the affair. With both women, their beauty is all that seems to attract him, and we never get any greater sense of why he is in love with either of them - and for most of the novel because we get views of Lolly filtered through James' sister Violet, who finds Lolly's fake British persona obnoxious, it's hard to care about James' engagement or his betrayal of her.
While much of the novel is told from a close, third-person point of view, inside the heads of the multiple characters, occasionally we get an omniscient narrator who makes voice-of-God pronouncements about what we are witnessing. Early on, that omniscient narrator tells us we are about to learn of the acts that lead to James's undoing. For me, that set up the expectation that we would get a Bonfire of the Vanities type novel where we would see the gradual unraveling of someone's life as we watch one domino after the other tumble down (sorry for the pun) until the pile ends up crushing our protagonist beneath it. That doesn't happen here. For much of the novel, James moves happily along, letting his mentor maneuver him into getting the directorship, even though he isn't fully deserving of it. Yes, he does enter an affair, but his fiancée has been portrayed as so shallow and pretentious, there doesn't seem to be much at stake in his betrayal of her.
It's hard to connect with a character that seems to be going along for the ride and doesn't have a great desire for any particular thing or have to contend with some seemingly insurmountable challenge preventing him from getting it. About the only thing that made James an interesting, sympathetic character is his fondness for his autistic brother Ponk, who killed himself when he and James were teens. Ponk is a fascinating character - a boy incredibly loyal to James and his best friend, Billy - and who had an array of intriguing personality quirks and also a great talent for drawing and painting. In all of his art and comic book sketches, every character looks like him - but the way he portrays himselef made his art exceptional. Because I never felt engaged in either James' pursuit of the directorship he doesn't really want or his involvement with two women he treats rather shabbily, I never was that eager to get back to reading the book.
(SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!) When I stick with a book I'm having doubts about, I usually begrudgingly feel rewarded by the end. That didn't happen here as Boswell's shift into experimental fiction at the end incredibly frustrated me. I felt the victim of a bait and switch, because 90% of the novel - even with the occasional omniscient narration and direct address to the reader - felt like straightforward storytelling, so I wasn't prepared for the transition into anything different. And I have little patience with this experimental stuff. I know what fiction is -- a mirage-like departure into a fantasy world. I don't need any writer to go all "meta" on me and make me self-conscious of the process I'm engaged in. I read novels because I enjoy that ride and if someone wants to explore what it all means, I'd prefer they let me know that upfront so I can leave them to it and go read something else that doesn't play with the conventions of traditional storytelling. I know what Boswell's trying to do at the end - to show that you don't have to believe in parallel universes to understand that our lives are constantly affected not just by the paths we took but also by those we didn't. The decisions we make and don't make influence our lives simultaneously. Okay, nice thought, but I don't really care for a novel that can't resolve itself.
I have read novels that give two endings - that after one conclusion, they rewind and give you another one. But I've never read a novel like this one that tells the two versions of an ending at the same time so that you slip back and forth from one paragraph to the next from scenario A to scenario B. I didn't find it all that interesting, and that at the point with only a few dozen pages left I just kept chugging along to finish the thing. As Boswell predicts in one his direct address to the readers before he launches into his dual ending, I am one of those who wanted to throw the novel against the wall. I haven't given up on Mr. Boswell. I have his recent story collection sitting on my shelves, waiting to be read, but I hope in future works he'll leave behind the exercises his students in MFA programs might enjoy and produce works for those of who want to enjoy his talent without getting a lesson on the meaning, boundaries and limitations of fiction.
The problem for me, though, is that the novel's main protagonist, James, isn't compelling enough. I think novels -- even character-driven, literary ones - work best when the main character wants something and has to battle with an obstacle preventing them from getting it. There is a lot of that going on here with the secondary characters. I became completely absorbed by Mick's constant longing for his "saner" past and his daily struggle to decide whether to take his pills and keep his craziness at bay or forgo the medication and escape the sluggishness the pills impose on him. Similarly, Maura a member of a workshop with Mick at the institute desperately wants him, while having to contend with the fact that Mick is in love with another girl in the group, who is beautiful but mentally challenged. You can't help but sympathize with the engagingly wise-cracking Maura, who lends a empathetic ear to Mick, but has her own selfish reasons for wishing Mick won't ever get better. She knows that the handsome Mick might not be interested in someone with a less than stellar beauty like herself if he weren't compromised by a mental illness.
While those and a few of the other character's dilemmas - like James' sister's Violet's struggle to get back on her feet after the death of her husband - kept me reading, I found little interest in James' struggles. He has two things looming in his future - an appointment to the directorship of the institute and a marriage to Lolly. Oddly James doesn't seem very invested in either, so it's hard for me to care. The directorship is being foisted on him by the outgoing director, and his engagement came about after visiting his sister in England and having spent only two weeks with her assistant, Lolly. It's never clear whether even a part of James wants the directorship position. Similarly his engagement to a woman he barely knows matters so little to him that two weeks before she is scheduled to arrive from England to begin spending more time with him, he enters into an affair with Lise, who has stalked him out, years after that single session that changed her life. He doesn't remember her, but is easily seduced into starting the affair. With both women, their beauty is all that seems to attract him, and we never get any greater sense of why he is in love with either of them - and for most of the novel because we get views of Lolly filtered through James' sister Violet, who finds Lolly's fake British persona obnoxious, it's hard to care about James' engagement or his betrayal of her.
While much of the novel is told from a close, third-person point of view, inside the heads of the multiple characters, occasionally we get an omniscient narrator who makes voice-of-God pronouncements about what we are witnessing. Early on, that omniscient narrator tells us we are about to learn of the acts that lead to James's undoing. For me, that set up the expectation that we would get a Bonfire of the Vanities type novel where we would see the gradual unraveling of someone's life as we watch one domino after the other tumble down (sorry for the pun) until the pile ends up crushing our protagonist beneath it. That doesn't happen here. For much of the novel, James moves happily along, letting his mentor maneuver him into getting the directorship, even though he isn't fully deserving of it. Yes, he does enter an affair, but his fiancée has been portrayed as so shallow and pretentious, there doesn't seem to be much at stake in his betrayal of her.
It's hard to connect with a character that seems to be going along for the ride and doesn't have a great desire for any particular thing or have to contend with some seemingly insurmountable challenge preventing him from getting it. About the only thing that made James an interesting, sympathetic character is his fondness for his autistic brother Ponk, who killed himself when he and James were teens. Ponk is a fascinating character - a boy incredibly loyal to James and his best friend, Billy - and who had an array of intriguing personality quirks and also a great talent for drawing and painting. In all of his art and comic book sketches, every character looks like him - but the way he portrays himselef made his art exceptional. Because I never felt engaged in either James' pursuit of the directorship he doesn't really want or his involvement with two women he treats rather shabbily, I never was that eager to get back to reading the book.
(SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!) When I stick with a book I'm having doubts about, I usually begrudgingly feel rewarded by the end. That didn't happen here as Boswell's shift into experimental fiction at the end incredibly frustrated me. I felt the victim of a bait and switch, because 90% of the novel - even with the occasional omniscient narration and direct address to the reader - felt like straightforward storytelling, so I wasn't prepared for the transition into anything different. And I have little patience with this experimental stuff. I know what fiction is -- a mirage-like departure into a fantasy world. I don't need any writer to go all "meta" on me and make me self-conscious of the process I'm engaged in. I read novels because I enjoy that ride and if someone wants to explore what it all means, I'd prefer they let me know that upfront so I can leave them to it and go read something else that doesn't play with the conventions of traditional storytelling. I know what Boswell's trying to do at the end - to show that you don't have to believe in parallel universes to understand that our lives are constantly affected not just by the paths we took but also by those we didn't. The decisions we make and don't make influence our lives simultaneously. Okay, nice thought, but I don't really care for a novel that can't resolve itself.
I have read novels that give two endings - that after one conclusion, they rewind and give you another one. But I've never read a novel like this one that tells the two versions of an ending at the same time so that you slip back and forth from one paragraph to the next from scenario A to scenario B. I didn't find it all that interesting, and that at the point with only a few dozen pages left I just kept chugging along to finish the thing. As Boswell predicts in one his direct address to the readers before he launches into his dual ending, I am one of those who wanted to throw the novel against the wall. I haven't given up on Mr. Boswell. I have his recent story collection sitting on my shelves, waiting to be read, but I hope in future works he'll leave behind the exercises his students in MFA programs might enjoy and produce works for those of who want to enjoy his talent without getting a lesson on the meaning, boundaries and limitations of fiction.
March 25, 2020
My first experience reading Robert Boswell.....I figured if you're a writer and married to Antonya Nelson, you have to be good. The story told is about a therapist at a center for troubled youth whose life gradually comes unravelled. Not stupidly unravelled, like all the men in Richard Russo novels, but wobbly enough.
Boswell's writing is fascinating and his strength is in detail. His characters don't come alive in a burst, they unfold slowly as Bowell atomizes details of everything they do, every tone of voice, every reaction to others. The not-so-good news is that his story-telling isn't as compelling. The novel is 429 pages and that's a lot of detour, false start, direction change. He makes it a point to bounce back in time with every one of the half dozen main characters and too much background can be disconcerting, since he does so in such detail.
He also does the best job of crawling into the mind and thought cadence of troubled young people. His ability to speak in their voice is amazing.
In the last hundred pages, his storytelling gets more coherent and the reading easier. Spoiler alert: there's some weirdness at the end that didn't make sense to me. But, I'm going to read at least one more novel by Robert Boswell.
Boswell's writing is fascinating and his strength is in detail. His characters don't come alive in a burst, they unfold slowly as Bowell atomizes details of everything they do, every tone of voice, every reaction to others. The not-so-good news is that his story-telling isn't as compelling. The novel is 429 pages and that's a lot of detour, false start, direction change. He makes it a point to bounce back in time with every one of the half dozen main characters and too much background can be disconcerting, since he does so in such detail.
He also does the best job of crawling into the mind and thought cadence of troubled young people. His ability to speak in their voice is amazing.
In the last hundred pages, his storytelling gets more coherent and the reading easier. Spoiler alert: there's some weirdness at the end that didn't make sense to me. But, I'm going to read at least one more novel by Robert Boswell.
Read
December 28, 2025Recommended by Denise
March 6, 2017
Did not finish.
September 13, 2013
In case you didn't know it, everyone's crazy. And sometimes the so-called craziest are really quite lucid and profound. Or at least that's how I was seeing the world under the influence of Robert Boswell's latest novel, Tumbledown. We meet thirty three year-old therapist James Candler at a time in his career when he is being considered for a chief administrative position at the treatment facility known herein as Onyx Springs. Perhaps his ego has gotten a little inflated, as he has also bought himself Porsche and an oversized in the suburbs. Also, he is engaged to a woman he met in England and only spent two weeks with; now tell me -- does that sound quite sane? His friends and family can't help but wonder....
As a matter of fact, for the time being, his best friends lives with him, a flub-a-dub fellow called Billy Atlas, ex-convenience store manager and now a workshop supervisor at Onyx Springs. Billy & James go way back as they were childhood best friends. They are both very loyal to each other, at least usually, though from time to time a woman comes between them. Yes, there are some boundary issues here. But a very tragic event bonds these two men together. James once had an older brother, Pook, whose behavior in life placed him somewhere on the autism spectrum. Pook was always in the background of James and Billy's childhood pursuits and pleasures. (SPOILER ALERT) Pook was becoming a brilliant painter but took his own life. And so we can see why and how James became interested in helping people with psychological problems.
Tumbledown is very democratic in its treatment of characters. A handful of workshop clients are given equal page time with the above-mentioned staff at Onyx Springs. We climb inside the mind of Mick Coury, a handsome young man who is schizophrenic, a simple, but beautiful belle named Karly who he thinks he loves, and some other tortured souls, all supervised by Billy, and some also counseled by James. Billy is very popular with his clients, to the point where he smokes pot with them. James is reckless when driving his Porsche and he sometimes following Karly home to be sure she is safe. And then there is Lise, a once-upon-a-time stripper, now reformed, once one of James' clients in another setting three or so years ago, who stalks James and they end up in bed together, this despite the fact that James' intended bride, Lolly, is due to arrive from England any week now.
So you can see this is a real psychiatric potboiler, at times very dark, at other times quite illuminating. Clarity and confusion erupt within seconds, within the minds of the so-called well and the so-called crazy. Much like Billy sees relationships with women, that there are plenty of "trap doors and panels" involved, Tumbledown is never quite what you think it might be. The psychological depth and near stream-of-consciousness is astounding. There were a few times when I wanted to throw the book across the room, but in the end, Boswell pulls plenty of the right punches and I was able to stay with it. If you are attracted to novels featuring dysfunctional individuals, this is the book for you. Everyone else, beware, you may really start to wonder which side of the well or not-so-well fence you and yours truly dwell behind....
As a matter of fact, for the time being, his best friends lives with him, a flub-a-dub fellow called Billy Atlas, ex-convenience store manager and now a workshop supervisor at Onyx Springs. Billy & James go way back as they were childhood best friends. They are both very loyal to each other, at least usually, though from time to time a woman comes between them. Yes, there are some boundary issues here. But a very tragic event bonds these two men together. James once had an older brother, Pook, whose behavior in life placed him somewhere on the autism spectrum. Pook was always in the background of James and Billy's childhood pursuits and pleasures. (SPOILER ALERT) Pook was becoming a brilliant painter but took his own life. And so we can see why and how James became interested in helping people with psychological problems.
Tumbledown is very democratic in its treatment of characters. A handful of workshop clients are given equal page time with the above-mentioned staff at Onyx Springs. We climb inside the mind of Mick Coury, a handsome young man who is schizophrenic, a simple, but beautiful belle named Karly who he thinks he loves, and some other tortured souls, all supervised by Billy, and some also counseled by James. Billy is very popular with his clients, to the point where he smokes pot with them. James is reckless when driving his Porsche and he sometimes following Karly home to be sure she is safe. And then there is Lise, a once-upon-a-time stripper, now reformed, once one of James' clients in another setting three or so years ago, who stalks James and they end up in bed together, this despite the fact that James' intended bride, Lolly, is due to arrive from England any week now.
So you can see this is a real psychiatric potboiler, at times very dark, at other times quite illuminating. Clarity and confusion erupt within seconds, within the minds of the so-called well and the so-called crazy. Much like Billy sees relationships with women, that there are plenty of "trap doors and panels" involved, Tumbledown is never quite what you think it might be. The psychological depth and near stream-of-consciousness is astounding. There were a few times when I wanted to throw the book across the room, but in the end, Boswell pulls plenty of the right punches and I was able to stay with it. If you are attracted to novels featuring dysfunctional individuals, this is the book for you. Everyone else, beware, you may really start to wonder which side of the well or not-so-well fence you and yours truly dwell behind....
September 27, 2014
Tumbledown
The weirdest novel I have ever read. I have almost no good things to say about it beyond stating that it was, if nothing else, creative. Surely there was a deeper meaning to everything than I was able to grasp but for me it was a scattered novel that jumped back and forth and told the story from too many perspectives. For hells sake at one point in time the author wrote from the view point of characters printed on a book cover!
The story is meant to revolve around James Candler, a lost and confused therapist. The story bounces around from so many incredibly deep characters you often forget who is meant to be the base point. I will give it to Boswell he has done his research, able to write from the perspective of the mentally very well.
Things I could not stand!
COUNTLESS useless flashbacks. One of the basic rules of writing is to keep the flashbacks/narrative histories to an absolute necessity, short and to the point basis. There are pages upon pages of James growing up in a home with no air condition, where he was forced to make his bed blah blah anything and everything you do not need or want to know to get the story.
Say the base event was for example, going to the beach. Boswell wrote about the event from
Before it ever happened to after it happened to while it was happening changing perspective with every paragraph. Call me old fashioned, but that was just too much.
One of my BIGGEST problems with this novel is right in the thick of it the author STOPS the story to conduct a very weird question and answer section! The author literally tells you everything that should be common sense read between the lines things like "Micks mom is an amazing mother" to claiming to know exactly what readers will stop the story and be inching at the bit to write a terrible review and which ones are enthralled and will continue on. WHO DOES THAT?!? Who stops their story to call the reader out like that? It just said hello. I am a very insecure writer that in my own pathetic way is begging you not to close this book and describe just how horrible it is to others.
And if I had a freaking dollar for every time Boswell but deep weird twisty insights in the characters thought patterns right as they are drifting off to sleep I could buy myself a new novel that actually makes sense.
The weirdest novel I have ever read. I have almost no good things to say about it beyond stating that it was, if nothing else, creative. Surely there was a deeper meaning to everything than I was able to grasp but for me it was a scattered novel that jumped back and forth and told the story from too many perspectives. For hells sake at one point in time the author wrote from the view point of characters printed on a book cover!
The story is meant to revolve around James Candler, a lost and confused therapist. The story bounces around from so many incredibly deep characters you often forget who is meant to be the base point. I will give it to Boswell he has done his research, able to write from the perspective of the mentally very well.
Things I could not stand!
COUNTLESS useless flashbacks. One of the basic rules of writing is to keep the flashbacks/narrative histories to an absolute necessity, short and to the point basis. There are pages upon pages of James growing up in a home with no air condition, where he was forced to make his bed blah blah anything and everything you do not need or want to know to get the story.
Say the base event was for example, going to the beach. Boswell wrote about the event from
Before it ever happened to after it happened to while it was happening changing perspective with every paragraph. Call me old fashioned, but that was just too much.
One of my BIGGEST problems with this novel is right in the thick of it the author STOPS the story to conduct a very weird question and answer section! The author literally tells you everything that should be common sense read between the lines things like "Micks mom is an amazing mother" to claiming to know exactly what readers will stop the story and be inching at the bit to write a terrible review and which ones are enthralled and will continue on. WHO DOES THAT?!? Who stops their story to call the reader out like that? It just said hello. I am a very insecure writer that in my own pathetic way is begging you not to close this book and describe just how horrible it is to others.
And if I had a freaking dollar for every time Boswell but deep weird twisty insights in the characters thought patterns right as they are drifting off to sleep I could buy myself a new novel that actually makes sense.
August 26, 2013
I can always gauge my true thoughts on a book when it comes time to review it. Sometimes it's difficult to write a review because I love a book too much and I can't even begin to explain why. Other times I'm not even sure what I like about the book, I just like it. And then there are the books that are perfectly enjoyable, I read them really quickly, but when it comes time to review them—I just don't feel like it.
Tumbledown is one of those books. I did enjoy it, especially the insights into a variety of mental illnesses, but I just don't feel strongly enough to give it a proper review. Would I bother to recommend it to someone if they were looking for a great book to read? Probably not. I like to recommend books that blow me away. The ones that I can't stop thinking about, talking about, or rereading. So this was a perfectly fine book to occupy a few hours with. There were some nice passages and some thought provoking moments, but the details of this novel will fade quickly from my mind, and if you ask me in a few years what I thought of it, I probably won't be able to remember, but I would still be happy to read some of Robert Boswell's other work in the future.
"The deadline that numbered their days also sweetened them. Its hovering finality kept them from openly arguing, permitted them to ignore the spitting and roaring of the other aspects of their lives. Oh, well, this much he had to admit: when he was with her, he could breathe. Really breathe. But some things were meant to end, and because of that they might seem more beautiful than the things that lingered."
"Oh well, he thought, people weren't really so complicated, were they? Humans didn't do all that much but seek out people to hold and fuck and talk to, people they might like to eat with and argue with and lie next to."
Tumbledown is one of those books. I did enjoy it, especially the insights into a variety of mental illnesses, but I just don't feel strongly enough to give it a proper review. Would I bother to recommend it to someone if they were looking for a great book to read? Probably not. I like to recommend books that blow me away. The ones that I can't stop thinking about, talking about, or rereading. So this was a perfectly fine book to occupy a few hours with. There were some nice passages and some thought provoking moments, but the details of this novel will fade quickly from my mind, and if you ask me in a few years what I thought of it, I probably won't be able to remember, but I would still be happy to read some of Robert Boswell's other work in the future.
"The deadline that numbered their days also sweetened them. Its hovering finality kept them from openly arguing, permitted them to ignore the spitting and roaring of the other aspects of their lives. Oh, well, this much he had to admit: when he was with her, he could breathe. Really breathe. But some things were meant to end, and because of that they might seem more beautiful than the things that lingered."
"Oh well, he thought, people weren't really so complicated, were they? Humans didn't do all that much but seek out people to hold and fuck and talk to, people they might like to eat with and argue with and lie next to."
October 9, 2018
Tumbledown is my introduction to Boswell's writing and though it is "capacious" it certainly delivers. The third person omniscient point of view can be a bit tedious in the beginning and for this reason it took longer for me to get into the book, however before long it flows so well, even helping to interweave the characters experiences and show us the common ties that bind them. I read a review somewhere that described Boswell as a keen observer of the human condition and after meeting the characters in this book, experiencing what they do and becoming privy to their thoughts, no description could be more accurate. He introduces us to these damaged characters - all suffering from some form of mental alienation, however it never feels "clinical." It would be easy to do this from a thoroughly detached perspective; however Boswell fleshes out each of these characters while treating them honestly and compassionately. At first you get the sense that this is a book about mental illness but by the end you realize that's not it at all...
"Every sane person has to find every day some manner of accommodating the impossible, some way of covering up for the failures of the rational world. This might actually be a reasonable definition of sanity."
...And then there is Boswell's writing which is unpretentious yet thoroughly smart, intuitive and often irreverently funny (but in a balanced, not at all snarky way). In the most general description of what this book is "about," I would say its about human relationships (including the ones we have with ourselves and our conscience), but that would be an oversimplification of this rich and near-perfect novel.
September 9, 2020
quite interesting, the narrative is a little confusing and different from what I'm used to read so it took me a while to finish this book, but I had fun reading this
October 12, 2015
It is tough to relate to characters when they are all mentally ill - and to be clear, everyone in this book is, regardless of whether they are clinically diagnosed or not. The main character is that in name only,because the story really revolves around a crew of mentally ill patients packaging panty hose as part of a workshop within their mental health treatment facility. The author's ability to describe the thought processes of the mentally impaired was impressive, as he crafted them in such a way as to create an almost logical perspective. Every boundary is blurred, if not outright violated, as all of the characters - and there are a lot of them to follow - struggled to find happiness, or simply normalcy. Everything about the book felt authentic, the author's personal experience within the field evident in every page. The back story of James' brother Pook captured my attention, but felt that storyline's conclusion was too open-ended, and it was that disappointment that stuck with me as I closed the book. A worthwhile read, but not the most fulfilling one.
June 20, 2019
This is a hard book to review. I liked it quite a bit, but I think I liked the writing more than I liked the story. That said, certain parts of the story I liked quite a bit. Unlike my usual self, I preferred the back story, the story of the main character's childhood. I would actually love to read a book about that.
I guess I didn't really like the main character, and I didn't care that much about his conflict. But he works with people who have psychological problems, and those characters are very interesting and engaging. I guess that's the problem with the novel, the main character is actually the least interesting person in the book.
But the writing is great. The ending is unusual, but ultimately I think it works within the context and themes of the novels.
The book is not for everyone, but those who appreciate good writing will enjoy this book. I would like to read something else by him and see if I like the story more.
I guess I didn't really like the main character, and I didn't care that much about his conflict. But he works with people who have psychological problems, and those characters are very interesting and engaging. I guess that's the problem with the novel, the main character is actually the least interesting person in the book.
But the writing is great. The ending is unusual, but ultimately I think it works within the context and themes of the novels.
The book is not for everyone, but those who appreciate good writing will enjoy this book. I would like to read something else by him and see if I like the story more.
October 19, 2013
I thought this book was amazing. What Boswell is doing by creating an unreliable omniscient narrator, which is an oxymoron but still) is incredibly interesting to me. As I was reminded while reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, I am reading fiction. The author is choosing how the story goes. The writing is so good that this didn't take me out of the stories...it simply increased my pleasure. That's how it was for me reading Tumbledown. I understand it won't work this way for every reader. But I loved it, and loved the many winks the author gave throughout the book. Loved the double takes as something occurred or was said (by the narrator) that didn't quite fit. Pook is a character I will not forget. And Mick and Maura...I want them to last. Love that a book is something I can experience again. I will definitely read this one again.
January 25, 2014
Not really sure if I liked this one or not; it may because of the feckless hero or the just-a-little too artsy ending(s.) It's also hard to do a novel cast in the mental health care world without comparing it to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Nonetheless, many of the internal views of the characters were interesting and added to the understanding of the events and illustrated the interaction of all our subjective perspectives on the events of our lives. Plenty of ambiguity that keeps the interest up as you go along; does the fiancé have any core personality? Is the best friend merely amiable or is there a darker side? What in the world is going on with the protagonist?
July 16, 2014
I found this book somewhat hard to follow. It takes a number of different viewpoints, and not all of them (or even any of them) are really made clear. I did read it t the end, as it dealt with subjects in which I am interested: mental health, efforts to help those so afflicted, the motivations of those who do the helping, etc. I didn't think this did a vey good job of answering any of those questions, except maybe the motivation of the primary helper. And that wasn't too complimentary to him. It certainly did describe the actions of those with mental affliction, but they weren't very complimentary or understanding, either. In the end, I left sort of a bad taste in my mouth.
May 8, 2014
I thoroughly enjoyed this book set near San Diego in 2008 about a counsellor, with his own major life issues, and the mentally and emotionally damaged young people that inhabit his world. This is a character driven book that slowly unfolds. Do any of us really allow others to see the real us or do we take on characteristics we think others will like or will help us manipulate others? This is not a fast read but it is well worth reading and allowing yourself to understand the characters, their strengths, their limitations, etc. You might just learn something about yourself, I did.
December 25, 2013
I read 50% of the book and just had to move on. Actually, after the first bit, rather boring. Others have said "not engaging" and I would reiterate that. I skimmed the last half - but didn't see anything to hold me. I don't get all the accolades for his writing. There was "skillful" writing in terms of playing with perspective and voice and other things - perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for this type of book.
November 16, 2013
This book is like popcorn puffs. You can't stop consuming it, but you know it's not good for you. I mean, what a great story. But geez, he's a hard ass author with an axe to grind and does so without any subtlety or grace. Maybe he could a) write books and b) host a talk radio show with Rush Limbaugh. Just so long as he keeps the writing separate from the omg the world is ending because of people who don't think like me rhetoric.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews