IZ TOO

by Robert Davis

When Isadore Aronson disappears and his car and wallet are found abandoned near the Golden Gate Bridge, the former child prodigy is believed to have committed suicide. Susan Henderson, covering Izzy's funeral for her newspaper, describes the twenty-three year old composer as a "tragic young genius" and falls in love with his music and his myth. So begins a love affair involving music, ambition, deception, and of course comedy.

204 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2010

Reviews

[Maeve · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is an absolutely pointless read. There is no character development; Davis introduces characters, especially beautiful women, for no apparent reason. All of the women Izzy hooks up with are described as extremely beautiful: Michelle is "a Botticelli come to life, a heavenly creature, one of those beauties who, wherever they go, leave men behind, like fallen leaves, to be scattered in the wind" (4), Nicole has a "gorgeous body" (38), Sandra is "stunningly beautiful" (48) and looks "like an exotic dancer or a porno movie star, wearing a tight blouse and a micro-mini skirt" (91). None of these women adds any depth to the story; they are all just the recorded fantasies of the author. But the worst part of this collection of sexual fantasies is that one of the characters, a high school teacher, has an affair with one of his students, which is especially creepy given that, in real life, Davis was a high school teacher.

My other problem with this book is that the protagonist, Izzy, is supposed to be a musical genius who composes symphonies and operas. Yet he describes one of his own pieces of music as "sort of jazzy and louder" (62), which does not seem how a musical genius should speak. The whole book, in general, makes use of an under-average vocabulary. I would not recommend it to anyone.