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No Lease on Life
It's 5:00 a.m. and Elizabeth Hall can't sleep. She sits at her apartment window, entertaining murderous fantasies, while on the street below morons smash bottles, flip trash cans, vomit, and dance. Elizabeth struggles heroically to keep her wits, whether fighting with her landlord, the housing agency, or simply trying to survive. Twenty-four hours later the morons are back on the street, but this time Elizabeth is ready to strike a final, defiant-and hilarious-blow. Desperately funny, dark, and altogether entertaining, No Lease on Life perfectly captures a woman and a city on the edge.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
About the author
Lynne Tillman
113 books320 followersHere’s an Author’s Bio. It could be written differently. I’ve written many for myself and read lots of other people’s. None is right or sufficient, each slants one way or the other. So, a kind of fiction – selection of events and facts.. So let me just say: I wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old. That I actually do write stories and novels and essays, and that they get published, still astonishes me.
My news is that my 6th novel MEN AND APPARITIONS will appear in march 2018 from Soft Skull Press. It's my first novel in 12 years.
Each spring, I teach writing at University at Albany, in the English Dept., and in the fall, at The New School, in the Writing Dept.
I’ve lived with David Hofstra, a bass player, for many years. It makes a lot of sense to me that I live with a bass player, since time and rhythm are extremely important to my writing. He’s also a wonderful man.
As time goes by, my thoughts about writing change, how to write THIS, or why I do. There are no stable answers to a process that changes, and a life that does too. Writing, when I’m inhabiting its world, makes me happy, or less unhappy. I also feel engaged in and caught up in politics here, and in worlds farther away.
When I work inside the world in which I do make choices, I'm completely absorbed in what happens, in what can emerge. Writing is a beautiful, difficult relationship with what you know and don’t know, have or haven’t experienced, with grammar and syntax, with words, primarily, with ideas, and with everything else that’s been written.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
November 21, 2014
What is better? Life in a hushed towerblock on the town’s outskirts where nothing but the clinking of champagne flues and the twittering of middlebrow bourgeois (hasn’t Mad Men gone downhill? OMG Twin Peaks is coming back!!!) from the flats below can be heard; or life in a streetside tenement with the thrum and rumble of the traffic (HONK! move your stinking Renault!) and pedestrians; or life in a Ballardian high-rise where filth and trash are dumped in the corridors, stoners practice their music at full volume nightly, insane couples yell at each other until the wee hours, and the relentless howl of street violence and auto-rage rages in your cranium all day? The answer, of course, is the second. Tillman’s novel wryly explores a dystopian New York tenement setting with her trademark descriptive acuity, loveably confused characters, and playful formal antics, all mixed in with inappropriate jokes like: What was Kurt Kobain’s final thought? Hole’s gonna be big. This is splendid bookage.
November 8, 2023
‘There was a backyard, with a tree. A New York tree, a weed. It was unashamed and hardy for a long time. Unabashed, it grew. Now the tree was dying—It was suffering from a disease that was probably curable—Elizabeth had become attached to the once-sturdy weed. In winter, it shed its leaves and withered. It became skeletal and forlorn. There’d been a weeping willow in front of the house she grew up in. The willow’s roots were strong. They made the walkway buckle. Her parents had the willow tree pulled out and thrown away, because it caused trouble. A weeping willow out her bedroom window, a weeping pillow in her bedroom, the tree caused trouble, and she grew up.’
Didn’t really know what I was in for, but then the narrative reveals itself in layers, and the experience is a strange pleasure (if I can call it that). Every thin and thick layer of it all—basted with both beauty and ‘filth’, simultaneously. It’s a buffet of dark comedy, and that's usually what I gravitate towards, literarily (except I thought it was just going to be an easy, quick read; but it’s certainly more than just that (definitely holds a lot more underneath it all; and in between the lines as well)). Brilliant writing, obviously.
‘The Dallas BBQ restaurant was Friday-night alive and air-conditioned to death. Video wall screens were a distraction when you had nothing to say. The room was loud, filled with echoes, like a public swimming pool, with people shouting for help from waiters, sound bouncing off the walls, an acoustical nightmare.’
‘Could you please turn it down? My baby can’t sleep, Elizabeth said. The girl did instantly, out of a traditional respect for babies and motherhood. Elizabeth walked away, aware of the girls in the Jeep studying her and doubting that she was a mother—She could easily pretend to be a mother.’
Tilmann’s ‘fiction’ is delivered/constructed like a strange string/melange of collective memory—of ‘people’ in urban spaces. Not ‘amplified’ per say, but written akin to some form of ‘hyperrealism’, I feel. At first, one might think that whatever’s being said/done (in Tillman’s novel) might be too bizarre, but on second thought—you realise that that’s actually such a human/ordinary act and/or saying (except perhaps we don’t usually pay enough attention to it; or perhaps it’s just that we’re already ‘desensitised’, and so we then ‘naturally’ just don't give it much thought/attention).
‘Some people who hate themselves wear perfume. Elizabeth liked certain perfumes and others made her sick. She didn’t hate herself all the time. She hated herself less when she liked her own smell—Some people burned incense day and night or wore sickeningly sweet perfume. Some taxi drivers hung furry green-and-white odor-eaters from rearview mirrors. Elizabeth often became nauseated. You smell good, she told Roy yesterday. That’ll change, he said.’
‘People wanted pleasure all the time, anytime, anyplace, they’d do anything to get it. Everyone was capable of the most hideous behavior and crimes to get it. The pursuit of pleasure wasn’t pretty. It made people cruel during tender moments. If they weren’t really getting what they wanted, they could kill as easily as kiss.’
The main character/protagonist being constantly bothered and made a bit ‘unhinged’ by ‘noise’ that she simply can’t ‘control’ or put an end to—made me think of Antonio di Benedetto’s The Silentiary. I really like that one, and I think it would be quite interesting to make comparisons to/about the both of them. At first I thought Tillman’s novel might be a bit similar to Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation but then quickly realised that I only thought so because of the slightly unhinged protagonists in both novels (both very different characters). Perhaps both of their protagonists ‘fight’ against the same ‘void’, but just in very different ways. And/but no matter their differences, Tillman definitely reminds me of Moshfegh slightly (and I don’t know why exactly, but maybe it’s ‘vibes’).
‘The moon was fading. The sun was starting to rise. It showed the top of its fierce face. It rose resolutely. Daily Elizabeth negotiated with nature.’
‘Commercials addressed the sloppy void, and Elizabeth liked commercials. They were anti-death. You had to be alive to buy things.’
‘People want the facts, the news, fantasies were news, facts were fantasies. All fantasies were true, all news was good news, no news was bad news. A father beat his child to death, a dog found its way home, a country has a famine—TV’s a domestic animal. Elizabeth’s appetite for food, news, disaster, gossip was healthy or unhealthy. She adjusted to disasters, watched them become less alarming over time. The unusual mutated into the usual. The grotesque was homey. They sent in the serious news clowns when things were really bad.’
The narrator (and because of that, also the narrative) may be ‘hard to follow’ at first—a bit too ‘omnipresent’/too involved with the characters (and by that mean in terms of what goes on in their ‘heads’, rather than in a directly physical way)—through a ‘fluid’ form of narrative style. To me, it’s kind of like a super-powered ‘flea’ jumping from one character to another—and wherever it lands or on whoever it lands, it seems to have the ability to enter/share their consciousness. It takes a bit ‘getting used’ to the writing (stylistically), but I think it’s worth the tiny effort/simply a bit of patience spent to get there. It does remind me of Mrs Dalloway (Woolf) in terms of the movement of the narrative, and of how the novel/narrative seems to be structured around the life of one woman (or at least she’s the one who takes the wheel/‘drives’ the plot). But that’s probably the only/most convincing ‘similarities’ that both novels share.
‘Elizabeth knew her route by heart. Any change in her beat was an irregularity, not life-threatening, unless it was. Imperfect strangers hurried by her. They took up space. They were full of themselves, of piss, like her. They came from disturbed families and controlled hideous feelings which controlled them. Their views of events developed from events and sensations they couldn’t remember. Nothing came out in the wash. Everyone performed circus acts of confusion and covered them over like cats covering shit in litter boxes. Nothing human is unique—Human beings were walking near her, heading somewhere to something. Life was just around the corner. Without want, their lives would collapse, no one would go anywhere, or do or make anything. Lust marked their hapless faces and misshaped them. They were generally lusterless and misshapen.’
One of the things that I find ‘weird’ and interesting about Tillman’s novel is how there are brilliantly absurd chunks of ‘mini fiction/stories’ (some of them are just really awful/horrible jokes) embedded in the primary/core narrative itself. Those absurd little gems give the novel/text an interesting ‘texture’. I don’t really know why they are put there, but I also know that the novel would not be the same without them. In a way, that’s kind of ‘poetic’ when you consider the setting of the story itself. In a way (or at least the way I see it), they are kind of like the ‘people’ either stuck or living (or both) in the city in the novel. But perhaps I’m simply over-reading this; or am I simply misreading it? In any case, I don’t think I’ve read anything like this before (and even if I did, I can’t recall), and I like it. But also when I think of those ‘chunks’ of text, it reminds me of those text-based art installations (Jenny Holzer, Tracey Emin, Lawrence Weiner, etc.).
‘What’s the difference between meat and chicken?
If you beat your chicken, it dies.’
‘What were Kurt Cobain’s last words? Hole’s gonna be big.’
Just before reading Tillman’s book, I read the first few pages of Their Four Hearts by Sorokin. I thought I was ready; I thought wrong. But I will give it another go another day. The ‘worst’ part of Sorokin’s ‘grossness’ (I can’t think of a better word right now) is that it comes with fucking pictures/illustrations. Don’t get me wrong, I still think he’s brilliant (probably even more than before), but I think I need a bit more time before giving his novels a proper read. Tillman’s book is full of ‘grossness’ and ‘filth’ too, but compared to Sorokin, hers ‘different’, and/but also considerably ‘milder’ (so I don’t know what other readers are complaining about when they think Tillman is ‘too much’/‘too intense’—it’s just a bit of shit, piss, and vomit mostly (nothing out of the ordinary); wait until you’ve Sorokin-ed then you’ll see).
‘The New York Times fired all its proofreaders years ago—The room was a den for a dying breed—The room corrected errors no one would’ve noticed. Double quotes inside the period were moved outside the period, different than was changed to different from. The room scorned “between you and I.” The correct “me” sounded lower class to people who ached to sound classy. The room understood that all mistakes entered the language after being repeated enough, and someday they’d be correct, so eventually no one writing or speaking would be aware that over time and imperceptibly an array of former misfits had deformed and degraded the language.’
After finishing the book, I Google-ed Tillman (to browse/look for some interviews, more recent work and such) as one does. I wasn’t surprised, and/but am glad to know that she’s collaborated with or at least have been known to be in some way or another acquainted with artists and writers that I already think of as quite ‘fascinating’ figures—notably—Roni Horn, Nan Goldin, Chris Kraus, Dennis Cooper, and Craig Owens (to name a few). Anyway, if you already like any one of them/their work, you’ll most likely like Tilman’s writing too. I, for one, think it’s brilliant; and I really want to read her other books now that I know I like this one. A better RTC later (maybe, but I quite like my current, haphazard one).
‘It’s impossible to be on both sides of the window simultaneously. Windows were paradoxical. She was vulnerable with them, vulnerable without them. She had to be wary of attack, but she had to be open—At the window, she made an effort to think about how she was seen and if she was being seen. She was like a window, she thought, sometimes transparent, usually paradoxical, and always open to tragicomic views of life.’
January 6, 2023
I really got a kick out of this novel! Lynne Tillman is cool. Reminded me so so much of the last years I spent in Vancouver living in a rodent infested shit hole apartment with a monstrous dipshit of a landlord; the fury and interconnectedness of people in the building and neighbourhood and how I absolutely lost my mind.
August 8, 2022
No Lease on Life by Lynne Tillman is the kind of novel that can make you simultaneously nostalgic for and repulsed by New York City. Her New York is the East Village of the mid-90s, but to her main character Elizabeth, it might as well be a war zone. Elizabeth and her partner Roy have found no peace in their apartment, yet they refuse to leave. They are both solidly lower-middle class, employed in jobs that no longer exist today.
The novel takes place over the course of 24 hours, starting at five a.m. when she is awoken by “morons” playing stickball with empty beer bottles. Knowing the cops wouldn’t do anything, she entertains fantasies of killing them using bows and arrows. Her apartment is run by an elderly alcoholic super who hasn’t cleaned the hallways in years and won’t respond to calls about gas leaks or hot water outages. The locks on the building's front doors have been broken since before she moved in, and the front vestibule has become a popular spot for junkies to shoot up in peace, the bodies of whom she must step over to get in and out of her apartment. She is taunted by her neighboring buildings, with their thick glass doors and sparkling clean hallways.
While I didn’t love this book (its style is flat and somewhat hard to engage with), I think Tillman did an excellent job of portraying a certain subset of city life. It’s kind of like when you have a toothache: it’s such a small and insignificant part of your body, and yet when you have one, it’s pretty much all you can think of. All of Elizabeth’s problems are relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but when you’re unable to focus or sleep, you’re driven to a kind of murderous madness that renders all other thoughts useless.
The novel takes place over the course of 24 hours, starting at five a.m. when she is awoken by “morons” playing stickball with empty beer bottles. Knowing the cops wouldn’t do anything, she entertains fantasies of killing them using bows and arrows. Her apartment is run by an elderly alcoholic super who hasn’t cleaned the hallways in years and won’t respond to calls about gas leaks or hot water outages. The locks on the building's front doors have been broken since before she moved in, and the front vestibule has become a popular spot for junkies to shoot up in peace, the bodies of whom she must step over to get in and out of her apartment. She is taunted by her neighboring buildings, with their thick glass doors and sparkling clean hallways.
While I didn’t love this book (its style is flat and somewhat hard to engage with), I think Tillman did an excellent job of portraying a certain subset of city life. It’s kind of like when you have a toothache: it’s such a small and insignificant part of your body, and yet when you have one, it’s pretty much all you can think of. All of Elizabeth’s problems are relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but when you’re unable to focus or sleep, you’re driven to a kind of murderous madness that renders all other thoughts useless.
May 14, 2011
I really love Tillman's detachment, both the narrator and the central character are deliciously clinical here.
February 3, 2020
I liked the whining about her apartment building
June 19, 2012
from publisher
Listened 5/29/12 - 6/15/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to lovers of the cynical and insomniacial
Audio Download (approx 5 hrs)
Publisher: Iambik Audio / Cursor, Red Lemonade
I have been Elizabeth. Not in NYC, but in the Pocono's. In a gated development, on a quarter acre of land, in a house on a street that is draped in trees. Most developments are gated to keep the riff-raff out. Mine, we joke, is gated to keep the riff-raff in.
The outer walls of my home are extremely thin. I lie in bed at night, the night before a work-day, tossing and turning and stuffing my head beneath my pillow as my neighbor cranks out his Latin music. They are having a party. It's a Saturday night. I have to be up at 3:30am tomorrow morning for work.
It's 10:30pm, now it's 11:00, now it's 11:30pm, and I can still hear the bass beating through the wall behind my headboard. Dum, Dum, DumDumDum, Dum, Dum, DumDumDum. I can't even close the window to lessen the noise because it's already shut. Not only can't I sleep because of the music, but I'm also sweating my ass off because the window is closed.
I start tossing and turning across the bed. I kick at the sheets piled across the bottom of the bed. I stare up at the ceiling and swear I can see it pulsing to the beat of my asshole neighbor's music. Doesn't he know that we have a noise curfew? Of course he knows, he's lived here longer than I have. He doesn't care. He just wants to party. He thinks everyone else wants to hear his party. I bet he's one of those creeps who sits in a parking lot cranking his music with the car windows down, so everyone can hear the bass beat of his latin music when they walk in and out of the store.
Why doesn't anyone else tell him to turn down the music? Maybe he's invited all of the other neighbor's to his party so they won't complain. They aren't trying to sleep like I am because they are all swigging down beers and dancing to the Dum, Dum, DumDumDum of his latin beats while I am sweating all over my bed sheets watching the clock count down to midnight. Watching the digital minutes creep closer and closer to 3:30am. Practically becoming the time at which my alarm will go off right before my eyes. I am watching every minute pass me by.
I am restless. I am exhausted. I am envisioning myself throwing a robe over my wife-beater and boy shorts. Walking out my bedroom. Down the stairs, through the living room. Out the front door. Across my side yard into theirs. Up their front steps. Balling my hand into a fist. Pounding that fist against their door. Holding the fist tightly as they open the door. Watching that fist shoot out across the threshold. Punching them in their loud-music-playing face. Watching the blood blossom from their lip. or nose. I was never a good shot.
It takes everything to not scream. I can feel my heart racing. I am tossing and turning and burying my head beneath the pillow. I can feel the scream sitting in my throat. Patient. Waiting to be released. And just when I open my mouth to let it out, the music stops. I hold my breath. I take the pillow off my head. I turn my ear towards the thin wall behind my bed. It's quiet. I let my breath out. Should I trust it? Is it over?
I lay flat with my pillow behind my head. I look at the ceiling and my body begins to quiet. I breathe in again.
Dum, Dum, Dum, DumDum, Dum Dum Dum, DumDum... That asshole was just switching CD's. It's 12:30pm. I have to be awake in three hours. I lean over and reach for the phone. I call security. I tell them I cannot sleep. I tell them I might go crazy and kill the neighbors unless they send someone to tell them to turn the music down. I hang up the phone. I put the pillow over my head again.
And I toss and turn and sweat and swallow the scream that wants to come out.
Listened 5/29/12 - 6/15/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to lovers of the cynical and insomniacial
Audio Download (approx 5 hrs)
Publisher: Iambik Audio / Cursor, Red Lemonade
I have been Elizabeth. Not in NYC, but in the Pocono's. In a gated development, on a quarter acre of land, in a house on a street that is draped in trees. Most developments are gated to keep the riff-raff out. Mine, we joke, is gated to keep the riff-raff in.
The outer walls of my home are extremely thin. I lie in bed at night, the night before a work-day, tossing and turning and stuffing my head beneath my pillow as my neighbor cranks out his Latin music. They are having a party. It's a Saturday night. I have to be up at 3:30am tomorrow morning for work.
It's 10:30pm, now it's 11:00, now it's 11:30pm, and I can still hear the bass beating through the wall behind my headboard. Dum, Dum, DumDumDum, Dum, Dum, DumDumDum. I can't even close the window to lessen the noise because it's already shut. Not only can't I sleep because of the music, but I'm also sweating my ass off because the window is closed.
I start tossing and turning across the bed. I kick at the sheets piled across the bottom of the bed. I stare up at the ceiling and swear I can see it pulsing to the beat of my asshole neighbor's music. Doesn't he know that we have a noise curfew? Of course he knows, he's lived here longer than I have. He doesn't care. He just wants to party. He thinks everyone else wants to hear his party. I bet he's one of those creeps who sits in a parking lot cranking his music with the car windows down, so everyone can hear the bass beat of his latin music when they walk in and out of the store.
Why doesn't anyone else tell him to turn down the music? Maybe he's invited all of the other neighbor's to his party so they won't complain. They aren't trying to sleep like I am because they are all swigging down beers and dancing to the Dum, Dum, DumDumDum of his latin beats while I am sweating all over my bed sheets watching the clock count down to midnight. Watching the digital minutes creep closer and closer to 3:30am. Practically becoming the time at which my alarm will go off right before my eyes. I am watching every minute pass me by.
I am restless. I am exhausted. I am envisioning myself throwing a robe over my wife-beater and boy shorts. Walking out my bedroom. Down the stairs, through the living room. Out the front door. Across my side yard into theirs. Up their front steps. Balling my hand into a fist. Pounding that fist against their door. Holding the fist tightly as they open the door. Watching that fist shoot out across the threshold. Punching them in their loud-music-playing face. Watching the blood blossom from their lip. or nose. I was never a good shot.
It takes everything to not scream. I can feel my heart racing. I am tossing and turning and burying my head beneath the pillow. I can feel the scream sitting in my throat. Patient. Waiting to be released. And just when I open my mouth to let it out, the music stops. I hold my breath. I take the pillow off my head. I turn my ear towards the thin wall behind my bed. It's quiet. I let my breath out. Should I trust it? Is it over?
I lay flat with my pillow behind my head. I look at the ceiling and my body begins to quiet. I breathe in again.
Dum, Dum, Dum, DumDum, Dum Dum Dum, DumDum... That asshole was just switching CD's. It's 12:30pm. I have to be awake in three hours. I lean over and reach for the phone. I call security. I tell them I cannot sleep. I tell them I might go crazy and kill the neighbors unless they send someone to tell them to turn the music down. I hang up the phone. I put the pillow over my head again.
And I toss and turn and sweat and swallow the scream that wants to come out.
December 5, 2009
i liked this quite a lot. very strong voice, third-person limited used in a way i haven't seen before, something like "mrs. dalloway," i.e., assocational, memories stacked, triggered by setting; with an archness and cynicism appropriate for 90s nyc. very funny in parts, with jokes scattered throughout, breaking up the narration.
--
There was nothing Elizabeth could do about Jeanine, the elusiveness of sleep, or the stagnant effects of memory. Sleep wouldn't absolve her anyway. It wasn't her friend. Who was a friend. Friends and enemies come and go. They're turncoats, reversible. She hated reversible coats. She didn't see the point.
Two bags of vomit are walking around the neighborhood. One bag of vomit starts to cry. The other bag of vomit asks, What's the matter? The first bag of vomit says, I was brought up around here.
--
thx mh for the lend!
--
There was nothing Elizabeth could do about Jeanine, the elusiveness of sleep, or the stagnant effects of memory. Sleep wouldn't absolve her anyway. It wasn't her friend. Who was a friend. Friends and enemies come and go. They're turncoats, reversible. She hated reversible coats. She didn't see the point.
Two bags of vomit are walking around the neighborhood. One bag of vomit starts to cry. The other bag of vomit asks, What's the matter? The first bag of vomit says, I was brought up around here.
--
thx mh for the lend!
December 15, 2010
Elizabeth is a woman tortured by the elements surrounding her apartment: The morons breaking car windows outside, the super who hordes trash instead of cleaning it up, the junkies and hookers polluting the hallway. As Tillman paints a picture of New York City, circa the OJ trial/Knicks vs. Rockets finals, something odd happens to the reader: He/she becomes engulfed in Elizabeth's life, her struggles, even her occurring neurotic obsession to murder the kids making noise outside her window. Normally, I would find myself struggling to get through a book about the problems in a NYC apartment complex, but Tillman attacks the subject with beautiful prose, interesting choruses and deepened characterizations.
June 30, 2007
Patrick Ewing was sweating, drenched. A.C. kept talking to the cops on the car phone. O.J. wanted to go to his mother, to his home or to the cemetary, to Nicole's grave. Starks missed a basket. Elizabeth started to cry.
—What's the matter, Roy asked. The Knicks are winning.
If he did it, anyone could do it. No one was safe from each other or from themselves. He wants to go home to his mother.
—I just saw him in Naked Gun 33 1/3. He was funny, she said.
—The first Naked Gun was funnier.
and Mackey Sasser as metaphor. A New York entertainment.
—What's the matter, Roy asked. The Knicks are winning.
If he did it, anyone could do it. No one was safe from each other or from themselves. He wants to go home to his mother.
—I just saw him in Naked Gun 33 1/3. He was funny, she said.
—The first Naked Gun was funnier.
and Mackey Sasser as metaphor. A New York entertainment.
April 3, 2009
Lynne Tillman doing again what she does so well, step into a persona and never leave it to the point of consistency that borders on flatness. This book was amusing and sad.
January 6, 2013
Very dark, very funny and beautifully written book about shitty neighbors, awful landlords and the uneasy compromise of living in a New York City that doesn't exist anymore.
March 1, 2020
I guess white women write voyeuristic books that pry on poor people and people find it "brutally honest" and funny.
April 7, 2023
Nahh…
Couple funny jokes thrown around. I can appreciate the nihilistic bourgeois big-city dweller reflections on life-genre, but this is not it. Ottessa Moshfegh does it better, much better.
Couple funny jokes thrown around. I can appreciate the nihilistic bourgeois big-city dweller reflections on life-genre, but this is not it. Ottessa Moshfegh does it better, much better.
June 14, 2023
This book came off to me as if Tillman had the following thought, "you know what I could do? Modernize Mrs Dalloway. And you know what, I'll make the content more edgy with a setting in an NYC dump."
I didn't really care for Mrs Dalloway, but at least I could appreciate it. In this book, Tillman comes off as trying to be profound and instead achieves frustrating pseudo-intellectual results. One particular eye-roll inducing moment: "It was a City regulation that if tenants had kids under the age of ten, they were required to have guards on their windows. Children ten and under were legally protected from falling out windows. Children over the age of ten, who cares." Maybe, just maybe the regulation is based on the rationale that, by the age of ten, a kid grasps the concept of distance from the ground?
There's a number of such inane observations from the narrator that made me wonder if an inflated sense of their own intelligence was a purposeful character trait. I don't even know that I'd feel better if I knew it was purposeful.
Along a similar line of grief are the interspersed joke non sequiturs. These are almost exclusively jokes based on some insulting demographic prejudice. Early on, I considered that Tillman was going for some tension breaking laughs and it just wasn't working for me. Over time though it seemed much more likely that those jokes were meant to further the edginess by showing how many widespread jokes had such depravity. As bad as most of those jokes were, by the end of the book, they really did become welcome breaks from the narration.
It's a bit disappointing because the first part is decently good, it's slow, but builds the setting and details intriguing relationships the main character has. Rather than go somewhere satisfying with that, the second half continues to do more of the same and it gets increasingly tired.
I suppose, for those frustrated by their own apartment and neighborhood shortcomings, this could be a satisfying read. Otherwise, there's easily better books to read.
I didn't really care for Mrs Dalloway, but at least I could appreciate it. In this book, Tillman comes off as trying to be profound and instead achieves frustrating pseudo-intellectual results. One particular eye-roll inducing moment: "It was a City regulation that if tenants had kids under the age of ten, they were required to have guards on their windows. Children ten and under were legally protected from falling out windows. Children over the age of ten, who cares." Maybe, just maybe the regulation is based on the rationale that, by the age of ten, a kid grasps the concept of distance from the ground?
There's a number of such inane observations from the narrator that made me wonder if an inflated sense of their own intelligence was a purposeful character trait. I don't even know that I'd feel better if I knew it was purposeful.
Along a similar line of grief are the interspersed joke non sequiturs. These are almost exclusively jokes based on some insulting demographic prejudice. Early on, I considered that Tillman was going for some tension breaking laughs and it just wasn't working for me. Over time though it seemed much more likely that those jokes were meant to further the edginess by showing how many widespread jokes had such depravity. As bad as most of those jokes were, by the end of the book, they really did become welcome breaks from the narration.
It's a bit disappointing because the first part is decently good, it's slow, but builds the setting and details intriguing relationships the main character has. Rather than go somewhere satisfying with that, the second half continues to do more of the same and it gets increasingly tired.
I suppose, for those frustrated by their own apartment and neighborhood shortcomings, this could be a satisfying read. Otherwise, there's easily better books to read.
June 12, 2023
I have been meaning to read Lynne Tillman for a while! Tillman would probably hate that I say this, but this book is like a time capsule of 1990s NYC. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing. A woman is from the suburbs but now lives in a dump of an NYC apartment building. She keeps trying to get the super to clean the hallways but the other tenants just think "This is how it is, suburb lady." She can't sleep. There is always someone making a racket. I can tell this narrator is the type that will shove a reader right out of the book. I am usually a fan of those narrators. If the narrator doesn't shove the reader out of the book, then these dated jokes will shove the reader out of the book. I guess I'm not a joke person? I was trying to tell the purpose of so many jokes, but there is one line at the end that I think gave the jokes a bit of purpose. The jokes were odd for a punkish leaning book. I loved the line featuring a public bathroom: "The walls were zines." Take out the annoying jokes, and I really would have loved this gritty, punky book. As the narrator seems to become gritty, punky and a bit crazy. Most books about NYC would probably annoy me more. This book will not discourage me from reading other books from Lynne Tillman! I'm still looking forward to them.
April 3, 2024
I did not enjoy this book. I started it last summer, a very hot summer, for book club. The book is basically about hot, sweaty New Yorkers, so it provided zero escape from my reality. Not that all books should provide an escape, but if they don’t, some compelling story or interesting character might. This book had neither. The characters were always upset & unfortunately, I tried to empathize with them, but they were just tough to “hang out” with, like a friend who’s always down in the dumps. Anyway, now I’ve finished this, & can move on to my next read :)
October 27, 2023
Despite the smattering of knock knock joke-type non sequiturs (why??) this book was actually really sad, but I hated how it was written. At first I thought the book was slowly getting somewhere with something of a plot — trying to get ppl together to deal with a slumlord and horrifying apt building — but it didn’t go anywhere and I was so ready to be done with it by the end. Not a fan.
July 5, 2020
5 stars, but I deducted a star because just use quotation marks like everybody else c’mon now ain’t nobody got time for that.
July 9, 2024
City living and the grind at their finest and most maddening.
January 21, 2017
Tillman’s novel is like opening a time capsule buried in the East Village during the mid 1990’s. During a sleepless night and the following day, Elizabeth Hall endures the bottle-smashing morons, junkies who shoot up and pass out on her stairway, the homeless guy who shits in the foyer, hookers giving blowjobs in doorways and cop cars, a super with an almost ethereal approach to maintenance, and postal workers.
Elizabeth intersperse her travails with jokes, some old, some less familiar than others, some funny, some not so funny. What purpose do these serve? I don’t think Tillman is implying that Elizabeth’s life is a joke. But it is a narrative of set pieces and repetitive motifs. Like a good joke.
Two bags of vomit are walking down the street. Once bag of vomit sees that the other bag of vomit is crying. “Why are you crying?” he asks. The other bag of vomit says, “I used to live around here.”
Elizabeth intersperse her travails with jokes, some old, some less familiar than others, some funny, some not so funny. What purpose do these serve? I don’t think Tillman is implying that Elizabeth’s life is a joke. But it is a narrative of set pieces and repetitive motifs. Like a good joke.
Two bags of vomit are walking down the street. Once bag of vomit sees that the other bag of vomit is crying. “Why are you crying?” he asks. The other bag of vomit says, “I used to live around here.”
August 16, 2015
Mid 4. Simply adored how the narrator offers such a vibrant and realistic snapshot of the social malaise affecting the late twentieth century urban landscape. The reader can feel the claustrophobic existence of the apartment dweller as she observes the outcasts and predators on the streets below. So well-written and such a fantastic portrayal of New York street-life.
February 22, 2011
Funny and caustic, NY in the 90s.
September 19, 2011
one of my favorite novels
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