Rating: 
Summary: Hated it.
Review: "Prague" is about shallow, self-absorbed, ignorant 24-year-olds thoughtlessly destroying whatever good managed to survive in vulnerable post-wall-fall eastern Europe.The novel is set in Budapest. The young characters have flocked there to see what they can get out of a new world, a world where the fall of communism has created societies that are more open than they may ever have been. They all wish they'd gone to Prague, the real Mecca of the early '90s, but they didn't. They're in Budapest, and although they yearn for the Czech capital continually, like Chekhov's three sisters pining for Moscow, they stay where they are. John, Scott, Charles, Emily, and Mark think they know it all, but of course, they know nothing. They have a remarkable opportunity laid out before them but their lack of compassion and life experience renders them incapable of seeing or appreciating any of it. They cannot comprehend what the Hungarians have been through or their desperate hope that this future might be different from their harsh past. Arthur Phillips describes them with a seeming empathy which is creepier than if he had lambasted them. Here's the rub. Although I did not like this novel at all, I suspect that Phillips wrote exactly the book he set out to write, and that the characters make his skin crawl, too. He's good. It's just that with a decade's hindsight, I found the adventures of his amoral quartet shameful. Which might be what he intended.
Rating: 
Summary: THIS defines my expat generation?
Review: What do you mean, "ennui"? We went to "Eastern" Europe for adventure, enlightenment, shocking new experiences and fun! It was the best time of our lives -- those who stuck around learned a new language, made life-long friends, discovered appalling and comical customs and had a blast! There's nothing anti-intellectual about that -- I could have brooded at home just as efficiently. I wondered when the "new Hemingway" flatulence would finally bubble to the top. Well, Phillips is actually a very good writer with a way with words, but not much more. As always, ignore the gassy cover blurb cliches -- this is no Hemingway/Fitzgerald/define-a-generation/"finally!" novel.
It describes expat life in Central Europe, as I and many other found it in the early 90s, mostly in poignant single phrases and episodes, and in lots of quotable scenes. But we're already familiar with the situation and expect a decent story, so disregard the setting and let's read the book.
Unfortunately, Phillips violates two extremely important rules of a good novel: 1) Show, don't tell, and 2) If nothing happens after page 1 (20? 50? 100?) why should anyone keep reading?
The author writes with an unnerving, almost pathological (Jeopardy champ?)obsession with surface detail. He makes Joseph Conrad's Marlow look forgetful and reticent by comparison. Once you recognize this, you begin to skim past whole paragraphs or pages of catalogued information for the next actual instance of activity. But because that rarely comes, I think few will readers will actually read to the end.
There are some gripping, square-on accurate scenes, but they are so spaced out. The author is probably an excellent short-story writer who has overreached himself. If he put out this same book as 10 or 12 short stories, I'd be raving! He's got the situation so precisely in his photographic-memory crosshairs. But every character and scene is noosed up so tightly in trivial detail -- as though the reader would be tested later, or as though we're unable to infer or assume anything without overbearing guidance -- that the book becomes claustrophobic. But the detailed descriptions lend nothing to the story -- they say only, "look at how accurate this is." So the oppressively omniscient and looming narrator becomes like a dinner guest telling a drawn-out yarn for hours as his captive guests doze off. Even Conrad's Marlow paused now and then, for chrissakes; Phillips just describes and describes until his photo-memory, self-satisfied presence becomes downright irritating.
Phillips (or his editors) seem never to have read chapters aloud to test the rhythm or tone, or to see if eyes glazed over. I read aloud just one page endlessly describing the concrete facade of a building to my (Czech) wife until she screamed, "Stop! Enough already!" Not the response you'd normally expect for an engaging book.
Once you realize that the plot is just a thin, prolonged theme with zero suspense -- young people overseas discovering themselves, and just barely -- the book becomes an endurance test. The uninspiring, self-defeating notion that Prague is more exciting than Budapest was apparently worked up later to justify the title and cover photo, and to appeal to potential expat buyers. That's it? That's the theme that's supposed to get us through 367 pages?
I'm still waiting for a good book that describes the reality of those expat days -- the whimsical, random, fun-loving, (definitely not "ennui"'d) times. Given what's been published so far, you'd think the American presence behind the liberated East Bloc was composed of braniacs and neurotic sticks-in-the-mud, rather than fools, folks, libertines and nerds out for kicks and to check out a new frontier. No one I knew back then took that Prague Post/Newsweek hype about "Paris of the 20's of the 90's" seriously, but so far no one has successfully challenged the hype -- certainly not Phillips. For God's sake -- we weren't writers, we just had cheap tickets and a sense of adventure (or massive delusions, for some few). A blistering and blissful experience that was just as eye-opening as that had by Phillips' pottering characters. Once the critics have finished scribbling blather about the "Generation X" thing in Eastern Europe, this book will unfortunately lose its relevance, inspiring no one, and will drop into its appropriate pigeon hole, even though Arthur Phillips may have done the best so far at "describing" what was going on.
I suppose if expat writers were less compelled to write "The Novel," and instead turned out scads of down-to-earth potboilers about the fun we had, we'd have something to choose from -- to enjoy or discard -- and we'd then have an actual genre to enjoy, instead of an occasional overhyped "voice-of-a-generation"-type tome that can't possibly meet expectations.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't invite these characters to dinner!
Review: I rushed to buy this book hot off the press based on a review in a national publication that made it sound like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Tom Wolfe all rolled up in one. Well, NOT! It is terminally tiresome, populated by banal characters living in a Budapest of their own creation. I flogged myself into finishing it only because--veeeery occasionally--the author offers a nugget of pure gold that ALMOST (but not quite) makes the tedium worthwhile. I look forward to reading more of Arthur Phillips' work--down the road when he has matured a bit as a writer and found himself a competent editor. For now, though, I wish I had spent the time re-reading "A Fine Balance"--now THERE'S a book to marvel over.
Rating:
Summary: S-l-o-w...
Review: Il tedioso, nothing original, occasional (VERY occoasional) flashes of good prose fail to save this lumbering snore-inducer. Where is Maxwell Perkins when we need him? One star (just) for being nice to Vietnam veterans
Rating:
Summary: amiable, reader-friendly, but too many longueurs
Review: too many slow patches -- sections which could have been cut with absolutely no loss... such as the lengthy biography of a very minor character, which I suppose served some purpose of local color, but seemed endless. the author is quite talented, and I enjoyed the novel, but it really needed some editing.
Rating:
Summary: actually, worse than 1 star
Review: I also bought it because I love Prague and because of the seemingly unanimous critical acclaim. This book just provides more proof that external gloss does not always mean substance inside the covers. This is the furthest thing from a beautiful book. If you love language and think that its ultimate goal should be clarity of thought and not obscurity, you will be as annoyed by the end of the first chapter as I was. The sentence structure and wording smack of pretension and self-conscious cleverness. Sentences are unnecessarily complicated and paragraphs meander away from any central purpose. The author regularly sprinkles in superluous/meaningless adjectives ("AMUSING boots"? "HUMOROUS nose"?) and constructs inelegant phrases ("...Mark Payton comes from Canada,.., where it doesn't look like this.."); it is difficult not to have the immediate impression that the author is going out of his way to appear profound. I am saddened to read that so many are fooled by these transparently awkward devices. Even if one has a fantastic, original story to tell--which I am not sure is entirely the case--nothing warrants this intentional abuse of language.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good read...
Review: As I started I felt like I was reading one of those arrogant first-efforts with ridiculously inciteful and witty characters that newer authors tend to put out. After a while I softened my take (you get used to them) and was swept up in the story. At any rate, the writing is quite good, the story was pretty interesting, and the theme resonated well with me.
It's an interesting glimpse of ex-pat culture. That being said, I don't think the point of the book was ex-pat culture at all, rather that feeling that everyone, everywhere, at every point in time has that they're missing the action, that it's somewhere else or with someone else or irretrievably in the past. In that sense, Budpest is an appropriate setting. The characters see the fall of communism as a chance to begin again, to get in on the ground floor of something fresh and exciting and malleable. As excited as they are in Budapest, word is that everything in Prague is a little better. As the book progresses the characters become disillusioned in Hungary, and it becomes clear that the disppointment has nothing to do with the situation and everything to do with the characters and the failure of their particular expectations. At then end of the book the main character, unsatisfied in Budapest, finally leaves for Prague, "a city where surely anything is possible." Surely.
I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 3 because it promped me to go read some of the books that Phillips suggests in the reader's guide in the back of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic Literature
Review: This is fantastic literature. Arthur Phillips has an amazing literary voice with the articulation of Fitzgerald and the simplicity and emotional range of Hemingway. It truly is the "Sun Also Rises" of the 90s generation.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant failure
Review: This novel was enjoyable and if looked at by individual pages, or even chapters, it was brilliant. As a whole, though, it lacks quality: great writer - weak book. As I worked through it I thought, "I can't wait for his next book - it should be better." (It is out now, I see, but I will wait for the paperback version.) One more thing - the characters were interesting and well drawn - but none of them were likeable.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed First Novel Imitates Hemingway
Review: This somewhat flawed first novel is hampered by overlong sentences but still has some good things going for it and perhaps deserves 4 stars, but I can't change my rating now. It is about 5 American expatriates living in newly capitalistic Budapest, and it tries to portray Budapest as where "it is at" in the post-Communist era. It would interest anyone planning a trip to Budapest since it has lots of European ambience, as well as Communist bullet holes from the past. I wasn't quite sure what it was--history or Ifarce-- but I've concluded it is at least half a farce. It is about an important historic subject, the fall of communism and rise of American capitalism in Eastern Europe(though it takes place during the 1st Gulf War), and takes place in Budapest, not Prague, where the author lived for several years. The novel contains a good deal of interesting information about the history of communism in Budapest and about Hungarian history in general, and numerous hilarious scenes in nighttime venues such as jazz clubs,party bars, a Halloween party, sex clubs, cafes, where the expatriates hang out. These nighttime scenes form the backdrop for the daytime capitalistic exploits of the 5 young American expatriates who are the main protagonists. We find out all about them and their family histories,and they are all interesting in different ways,so it is at least 1/2 an American novel. There are also a number of interesting secondary characters, including a elderly,motherly jazz singer, the owner of a Hungarian printing house in the family for 5 generations,a young vivacious American collage artist, and an Australian media mogul.
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