Two and a half stars. Maybe two and a quarter.This was a book club selection, a fictional retelling of the rise and fall (before the return and higher rise) of Steve Jobs. Only in this book Steve Jobs is named Tom Owens, and instead of running a computer company, he runs a company that does something even the omniscient narrator isn't sure about.And that is one of the fatal flaws of this book. Tom Owens appears to have all his success because he literally is bathed in luck, yet despite the many times we're deep in his inner thoughts, we don't know what the hell either of his companies does to make money. There's some product called N12, but whether it's a polymer, an antibiotic, or a vaccine, I couldn't tell you, and neither could Tom. And I find that completely unbelievable. Nobody could start two firms so important that mysterious Bohemian Club backers are discussing Owens running for California Governor, and not be aware of what the places are doing.And that's not Owens' fault. That's Simpson's failure to convince me that Owens was who she said he was, or that Alta actually existed in one particular place. Not only does Owens not know how he made his millions, but his town can't figure out if it's in Silicon Valley or the Sierra foothills. I suspect Simpson hasn't been to either place, because she shows Owens voting (for the first time) and literally pulling a lever of an old-fashioned voting machine.Had Simpson actually visited California, she would discover those machines weren't used out here. Similarly, she can't place the town where the novel occurs, because she describes it as being both in Santa Clara County (e.g. Silicon Valley) and next to a town called Auburn (a real city of that name is a suburb of Sacramento in the foothills, 150 miles away). There's a mention of Grass Valley Community College; Grass Valley is another Sierra Foothills locale. We don't know where Alta is because Simpson doesn't know, so she can't make it real enough. Her Tom Owens character lived in a copper magnate's decaying mansion (as did Jobs, in Woodside, 10 miles from Palo Alto) and then bought a house in "Alta" (Jobs bought a house in Palo Alto). But he grew up in "Auburn." Is Auburn really Los Altos, where Jobs grew up? Is it Mountain View, where he also lived? Both these towns are right next to Palo Alto. Or is this part of the 30% of Tom Owens that doesn't track with Steve Jobs? For example, Tom Owens' mother died at his birth and he was given up for adoption. Steve Jobs' mother gave him up at birth but stayed very much alive... to later give birth to Mona Simpson. So in this novel Simpson literally killed off her own mother as a plot device.It isn't just the instability of place and business that's the problem; there's also a tendency to shift Point of View more often than the reader turns pages. If I came across this novel in one of my writing classes I would red-ink "POV shift" every three paragraphs. Now, I recognize that a good writer can break the rules if it's done well. But the POV shifts are NOT done well. They're just DONE. And they're annoying. We're deep in Tom Owens' thoughts, no, now we're in his daughter's thoughts, no, now where in her mother's thought, oops, over to Owens' girlfriend, and now over to his friend Noah. This isn't just omniscient narrator. This is adrift narrator.The Owens/Jobs character is interesting, but he's not the only character we get to know in the book, and many of the others really weren't worth the time to delve into. Mary, the mother of Owens' daughter Jane, is annoying in a way that doesn't enlighten or even entertain. She doesn't grow as a character, and her daughter doesn't even seem to learn anything from her as a negative example. I really had difficulty understanding what Owens ever saw in Mary in the first place, given how often we see how intensely drawn he is to perfect simplicity. (And there's another failing of the book, that drive, which was signature Jobs in his insistence on elegant style in Apple products, makes no sense whatsoever when remaking him as some sort of biotech mogul.)It's always more fun to write a scathing review than a glowing one. I can't say what compelled me to finish this book after showing up at book club with it 2/3 done. Everyone else had similar frustrations with the book and the characters. I guess I was hoping, even if it didn't get any better, that there would be some cathartic realization for someone, somewhere. There's a happy ending for one of them, and a happy beginning for another, but I can't say I learned anything taking those two hours to finish the last 120 pages.Not recommended as a literary novel, and not recommended for Steve Jobs fans either.
A very low 3 stars, bordering on 2.5...The problem for me is that I just didn't get the point of this book.The words themselves flowed well enough, and they didn't get in the way of the story as I often fear in a literary novel. The story was coherent, and worked well enough in that sense.I simply didn't get insight into the life of Steve Jobs (or if I did, I just didn't care), and the story didn't have enough strength to stand alone. This was true of the plot, but even more so of the characters. Tom Owens didn't intrigue me as Steve Jobs, largely because I never saw the charisma the character was described as having. Simply seen as a fictional character, he was both unbelievable and uninteresting, which is pretty sad if you think about it. At the beginning of the book, I had some hope for Jane (Owens' daughter) and her mother, Mary. Jane simply faded into the story (and that may have actually been the point-- if so, I feel terrible for the real life model of Jane, and wonder what her relationship with her aunt the writer must be like.) Mary turned into a whiny caricature as the woman who sent her 10 year old daughter driving solo cross country to live with her father becomes resentful as that daughter chooses to spend time with her father.The one character I found interesting was Noah, a scientist that chose to continue to follow his own path rather than work with Owens and his company. He was an intriguing secondary character, and I find it telling that I have no idea if he had a real life counterpart.I admit, I was relieved that the rest of my book club had a similar reaction, whether they were all to familiar with the details of Jobs and his life, or relatively uninformed, at least about this chapter. Whatever the point was, it was well hidden.
Do You like book A Regular Guy (1997)?
I was curious about this book after reading the Steve Jobs biography. But I kept putting it down and after a few weeks realized it just wasn't capturing my attention, so I gave up. None of the characters were interesting enough to encourage me to read on. I also had difficulty keeping track of all the characters introduced. P.S. I just reread my earlier review of "My Hollywood" and found that I'd expressed similar concern regarding confusion about too many characters. Perhaps Mona Simpsons's style just doesn't suit me.
—Lisa
This is a good, but difficult book to read. Mona Simpson writes well; she masters a sort of folky writing style where the reader must infer from the dialogue what really is happening behind what is said. Simpson comes across as a dispassionate but very keen observer of things around her. The real beauty of this book, though, can only be understood if you have read a lot about Steve in real life. Without knowing about Steve, this book is entirely without context. More than anything, this work is personal, it's real, it's poignant and it is written in a deceptively dispassionate way. What Mona has done with her characters - particularly Noah and Jane, is absolutely remarkable. To create Noah on paper, is to my eyes, one of Simpson's greatest accomplishments in this book. Do I recommend this book? Only if you are interested in a serious, slow, literary read and only if you have done lots of homework on understanding Steve.
—Neil
Would I have stayed with this novel if I hadn't known that it was about Mona Simpson's biological brother, Steve Jobs? Probably not. The plot line is messy and the characters, although memorable, are confusing. Simpson's insights into the "anything can happen" world of California start-ups and research in the 1980s are compelling, but not enough to carry the book. On the other hand, her eulogy for Jobs on his untimely death this year are beautiful and touching. I highly recommend reading it in The New York Times of November 30 (available online).
—Carol
