I finished listening to the audio version of this book a couple of months ago but have been putting off writing my review of it. The plot is so scattered that I can’t even begin to tell it with my own words without making it sound even more scattered than it is. So, I’m going to cheat and use the book description from Good Reads:
Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho- babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.
All the characters in this book seemed to all have serious issues and in need of therapy. In fact, the main character, Lenore Beadsman did go to therapy, the same therapist that her boyfriend Rick Vigorous went to. It turned out the therapist discussed Lenore with Rick which is totally against doctor/ patient confidentiality. Not to mention that this therapist was so “out there” that he was in need of some serious counseling and probably meds as well. LOL!
As I said above, this book went all over the map, in terms of plot. So thick with multiple and sub-plots that it was difficult to follow at times. However, it was so absurd that it was laugh out loud funny. I listen to it in my car and noticed people staring at me at stop lights, because I was laughing, at times with tears in my eyes. It had a “grown up” humor to it, surprising to me when I found out that Wallace was just 24 years old when he wrote it.
Although I do prefer a book with a concrete plot that I can follow. I did enjoy this book at times. It is full of vivid and quirky characters. It was that and the humor, that kept me listening to all 14 discs audiobook. Although, I may not have endured if I knew how it was to end. Not only a disappointment but totally incomprehensible! Perhaps I would have understood more of if I had read it? Somehow I doubt it though.
2.5/5
Thanks to Anna Balasi of Hachette Book Group for this audiobook.
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Did you review this book? If so, leave the link in the comments and I will post it here.
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