You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem

You Don't Love Me Yet is the story of a dysfunctional band, or perhaps, more precisely, a dysfunctional couple and a band. This is one of the contemporary, cutting edge novels that would have worked much better if I actually cared what happened to any of the people in the novel. The utter ineptness of their existence and the strange situations in which the characters found themselves felt more like a slapstick comedy than a serious novel.

An odd novel with none of the depth of some of my other recent reads.

Grab On To Me Tightly As If I Knew The Way by Bryan Charles

I had to think about this book for a while before I wrote about it. Set in 1992 Vincent attempts to make sense of the world by partying, playing in a band and lusting after his band mate's damaged girlfriend. At various points during the book I wondered about mental illness issues (at the very least, depression) and fully expected something along those lines to be revealed by the end of the book. It wasn't. Apparently this is a look at a typical teenager during the grunge years but the book felt too over the top emotionally to be believable.