Subscribe to Read | $0.00
Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Quick and Easy Sign Up!
It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.
Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Quick and Easy Sign Up!
It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.
Read Anywhere and on Any Device!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
The first problem I had with "Making Nice" by Matt Summell is the lack of character development. I found it unbearable and impossible to root for or like the protagonist, Alby. Alby is basically a man-child. He takes no responsibility for his crude and unflattering behavior. He's a belligerent and immature alcoholic with severe anger issues, and he's incredibly disrespectful to the women he has casual encounters with. Borderline rapist, anyone??? The way he treats himself and others is vile and
This is the best book I've read in a long time. It has everything you want when you sit down to read a great novel, and a heartbreakingly real narrator named Alby that you grow to love over the course of the book. Alby is fully broken after the death of his mother and this is his account of why he is the way he is. Almost every page has a line or lines that will make you laugh out loud. This is the funniest book I've ever read, and it's also achingly sad in parts, sections that will make you wan...
It's taken me a few weeks to process this book - and still, I'm not quite sure whether to give this one star or four. I'm settling on two, because Sumell is certainly a talented writer, some of it made me laugh out loud, and it touches on a topic I'm deeply interested in (and know too much about, unfortunately): the death of a parent. Sumell does a particularly good job of illustrating family dynamics before and after the loss of his mother (not a spoiler; you learn this in the first few pages)
You know that kind of cute, sometimes charming total loser that you slept with that one time when you were bored and drunk? This is a series of interconnected short stories about him. Sumell has some nice verbal gymnastics, but I couldn't find a way to like this. (Note: I received an advance review copy.)
I will not apologize for enjoying Matt Sumell's Making Nice. The book's interrelated stories essentially constitute a novel, albeit a work that's rude, crude and assuredly offensive to many. Too bad for those who interpret the book with such shortsightedness. I found Making Nice a genuine representation packed full of real-world vernacular, experiences, issues and emotions. Sumell deserves credit for authoring such an honest book that effectively and poignantly--movingly, even--explores the pain...
Like the author himself, this book made me laugh and puke simultaneously. Come for the jerk humor and titty-punches and stay for the description of the rescued bird and all the fucked up and perfect and heart-tugging mother-son and father-son interactions.
To paraphrase two other reviews "it's not for everyone"and "I don't feel like I have to apologize for it" but if this book is for you it will sweep you in quickly and won't let go until you finish the book. Manic, funny and crude my guess is you will either love it or hate it.
I thought that this collection of linked short stories was excellent although perhaps mislabeled as a novel. It put me in mind of Junot Diaz's "This is How You Lose Her" both in tone and subject matter - although written from a different cultural perspective. Sumell's central character Alby is both likeable and immensely dislikable in a similar way to Diaz's Yunior. He is sex obsessed, prone to violent outbursts, a bit of a loser and immensely selfish. However he also shows us his softness and a...
Crass, funny, heart breaking, realatable.
[6/7/18 Update: A GR friend just rated this book, and seeing her rating reminded me, almost three years after I read this phenomenal book, how much I loved it. And since I have many more active friends now, I thought I'd resurrect my review. I envy anyone who gets to read this book for the first time.]Raw, wild and free-wheeling, blasphemous, pained, and hilarious, Making Nice is a novel made from a collection of stories that work like the shards of a shattered window falling in such a way that
I'm a little surprised, honestly, that there are so many low-star reviews for this book, because I thought it was one of the best books I've read in months. The main character--Alby, Albert, Al (Matt?)--is crass and irreverent, just a colossal a-hole, to be sure. But the vulnerability! Oh, man, I felt like I was flailing right along with the guy. I felt his pain and understood his desperation as he tried to grapple with the death of his mother (and the Disappointment that is his father). Would I...
I'm not sure why I went ahead and decided to read this book. Something about the description must have captured me, but the opening chapter turned me off. i put it down for a few days, but then I kept reading. And I laughed. I laughed out loud! And I felt compassion and even an affection for the crazy narrator, Alby, as well as for his family. I was also inspired to keep reading since I grew up on Long Island, which is the main setting for this story. So the book had a couple of things going for...
I know better than to choose a book based on cover design or cover blurbs, but this one suckered me in on both counts. Then I spent 4 days trying to decide if I loved it or hated it.I've read lots of loser men novels (I'm talking to you Jonathan Tropper), but the losers are usually lovable, or at least trying to be lovable. Matt Sumell takes his loser Alby to a whole new level of crude, abrasive violence and several times I just wanted to stop reading. But then, there were moments of such great
Interconnected stories in the loose shape of a novel. While the main character is an unabashed asshole - to the point where some of the sexual situations here made me uncomfortable - Sumell writes like a goddamned acrobat, jumping from laugh-out-loud humor to pathos and back in the space of a paragraph. Seriously incredible, and one of the funniest books I've read in years. I could go on and on, but instead I'll say: there's few books that I'd consider giving as a gift to a vast number of people...
Writing a review for Alternating Current.
