Rating: 
Summary: Disasterous!
Review: Character names aside, I see no similarities between the editorial reviews and the book I read. There is nothing 'sparkling', 'flavorful', or 'wonderful' about this ill-thought, poorly written work. I don't recommend it, but if you absolutely must read this book, save yourself $$$ and wait for the paperback.
Rating: 
Summary: Ambitious, funny novel
Review: This book seems to have polarized people. I recommend the book if you like European literature. The jacket blurb by Philip Lopate placing the book in the tradition of "brainy Central European" fiction is the description that came closest for me. The part of "Prague" entitled "A Temporary Digestive Disorder" recalls the "Ameisenstrasse" ('ant street') chapter of Guenter Grass's "The Tin Drum" in its use of absurdist metonymy. The very final chapter in "Prague" reminded me of the closing, swirling pages of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude." And the American characters, despite or because of their alleged shallowness, recall fine English comic writing, like (at least remotely) Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim" or Geoff Nicholson's "Bleeding London." All in all, "Prague" is quite a "literary" novel, and it will be enjoyed by those who don't begrudge the novel's young author his ambitious, enthusiastic, and largely successfully attempt to claim for himself the literary conceits of novel-writing in the high European style.
Rating: 
Summary: Puts the pest in Budapest
Review: Philips' novel suffers slightly from overreaching, and not all the characters (Emily in particular) come to life. But what a great journey! He weaves stories from old Budapest, filled with tragedy, horror and sadness, with the bizarre neuroses of a group of expatriots who flood in to take advantage of post-Communist Hungary. Phillips is extremely cynical when he looks at his GenX profit-seekers, would-be writers and health nuts, but we find ourselves rooting for them. At times laugh-out-loud funny, "Prague" makes you wish you were in Budapest.
Rating:
Summary: Severely Overrated
Review: I was not prepared to dislike this book as much as I did. Given its rhapsodic critical reception, I was expecting a quick and absorbing read. Instead I found myself slogging through page after page with only moments of fleeting interest, hoping that it would all come together to a satisfying, or at least thought-provoking finale. After 300+ pages, I was left disappointed. I think my main problem is with the fact that this book has been compared to the works of F.Scott Fitzgerald and various other writers who came out of the 1920s and collectively represented the voice of a lost generation. This is simply not an accurate or responsible comparison. Fitzgerald's characters are survivors of the cataclysm of World War One, an event of unparalleled devastation on both physical and psychological levels. If Fitzgerald's characters are bitter, nihilistic, or self-serving it is because
of the history they have survived and the losses they have experienced. The characters in "Prague" have undergone nothing of equal power. The fall of communism does not really affect any of them directly, with the exception perhaps of Imre Horvath, the Hungarian publisher whose story more-or-less forms the backbone of what little narrative momentum the book has. Phillips' characters, on the other hand, come across as little more than spoiled, over-privileged brats with very little to say about anything. They're a bunch of posers mostly, all surface and no depth...which may be Phillips' point, but it certainly doesn't make for very stimulating reading. Overall, the book feels half-developed: characters emerge and then disappear halfway with little or no explanation, and the second half really doesn't come together but feels more a patched-together series of loosely connected vignettes. The best thing the book has going for it is its sense of atmosphere, particularly in the nightclub scenes with Nadja, the mysterious aging pianist, and in the few scenes that evoke Budapest's emerging art world circa 1990. I'm frustrated because this book could have been so much better and promises a helluva lot more than it actually delivers. Not recommended despite the critical hoopla.
Rating: 
Summary: Prague's a bit plodding
Review: Eh, that's the overwhelming feeling Prague left me. It's ok. It plods a bit, but the characters are interesting. The characters are so good, you kind of wish they had more to do, more life in them. But not so. I'd suggest reading this if you were at the bottom of the reading pile.
Rating:
Summary: Ambitious Writing that Succeeds on Every Level
Review: Superb in style and ambitious in scope, Prague fully lives up to its jacket blurbs and reviews, especially several fine ones already posted here. I kept wondering why some readers did not like it, and finally decided that this was perhaps because the author never comes right out and tells you his message, but rather, gradually and elegantly shows it. Much is therefore never quite made explicit, as the themes unwrap in layers, and there are metaphors within the metaphors. That no part of the book takes place in Prague is one clue to what's going on. The characters could be real people and their stories could happen to anyone. You must bring more to this book than to something by Grisham, but you'll take far more away.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable contradictions
Review: I was drawn to Phillips' first novel because of my interest in the expat experience. I wondered if this highly promoted novel would provide insights or perspectives that might prove interesting. I can say without reservation that Prague proved to be interesting. This book winds it way through the history of Budapest, the lives of five expats, and the lives of people they come in contact with. Like the novel's structure, which is essentially a collection vignettes and historical details, I was never able to settle on a single view of the characters or their actions. In one sense, the book presents a wonderfully accurate portrait of ugly expats who never connect, in a meaningful way, with the local people or culture. Nobody came to experience Budapest; instead, they came in pursuit of other objectives. Phillips portrays this aspect of the expat life in beautiful and vivid detail. There are times when you can't help but find these characters undesirable, or worse. You wonder why they elected to live in Budapest in the first place. But the winding novel never left me sitting still and despising these characters. The next set of vignettes would somehow manage to create a sense of hope and connection (to various degrees, of course) with the characters. John Price, the primary character, proved to be the person with whom I could identify most. I came to feel that John was the one character who offered some degree of hope. I wanted to see him mature and not act like the remaining cast of characters. Even for others, such as Mark or Charles, there were moments when I was able to hope for something more dignified from them. Yet other characters simply prove to be undesirable. In the end, I think one of the book's strengths is its ability to give a fairly complex view of the characters. The historical portraits throughout certainly add richness to the book. The books main weakness may be its sometimes forced use of stylistic devices. There were times when I could not determine any purpose for a using a certain structure or rhetorical device other than it may have seemed like a "neat" way to present the material. But if that is the worst criticism I can level against a first novel, then I must conclude Phillips has done a fine job. I hope he doesn't sell out and try to do "big and better" with his next book because my view is that he does show much promise as a writer.
Rating:
Summary: Truly pathetic
Review: I agree with the review below. The characters in this book are pathetic and of no interest whatsoever. The author's contempt for the people of Budapest is obnoxious. No plot, tedious dialogue, ridiculous personalities; a book that deserve to be ignored.
Rating:
Summary: A great travel book (but leave the dust jacket behind)
Review: If I had gone solely by the advance publicity behind "Prague," then I would've stayed cynical almost to the point of disgust and never bothered reading it. I yawned at the index-card description of the novel being about a group of North American expats hanging out in immediately post-Iron Curtain Budapest. I moaned at the accolades declaring young Arthur Phillips' debut some incredible update of the Jazz Age/Lost Generation for the 21st century. I groaned at the photo of the guy wearing jeans, a T-shirt, a suit jacket and that look of cocky fastidiousness on his face. And I was nearly yelling by the time I got to the novel's Web site and read the Random House "interview" with the author, in which he answers the VERY FIRST QUESTION by revealing that "Prague" grew out of his long-suffered battle with "recurring hyperglycemic nostalgia," the printed results of whose treatment were now available to the reader for the retail price of the novel. I fully expected "Prague" to be even worse than what some people on here seem to have read it as being: dragged-out, with no real plot and full of boring decadence, soulless ciphers for characters and the kind of mannered, overlabored "wit" that's meant to be an advertisement for the author's cleverness but instead actually serves as a warning never to touch anything with his name on it. (Whit Stillman's film "Barcelona" comes to my mind.) But what can I say? I was going on a trip and felt hungry for something new. In any case, Arthur Phillips was probably aware that some of these pitfalls could collapse the novel itself because he deals with them swiftly from the title onward. "Prague" doesn't really represent a city here as much as it does the place where everyone would much rather be, that distant beacon of utopian cool for which Budapest is merely a way station at best and a roadblock at worst. The first scene in the novel is that very group of expats clustered around the cafe table and playing that clever Sincerity game. And what's more, one of those expats is a Canadian named Mark Payton, who's so obsessed with collective nostalgia that he later blurts out the history of why people thought cafes were so hot in the first place. And many of these characters are motivated by a certain self-centeredness (especially Karoly/Charles Gabor, the Hungarian-born venture capitalist who comes back from the US to prospect on the fall of Communism -- history and heritage be damned) and not always particularly likable. But while they're not Everypeople by any means, they're almost all compelling (thanks to Phillips' great ear for diction and dialogue) and, in many cases, exhibiting a few characteristics of people at least I've met. Emily Oliver is the idealistic Daddy's girl from Nebraska (the "ugly American," naturally), who works at the embassy and is too pure for her own good. John Price is the almost-grown-up who follows his older brother, Scott, to Budapest, and falls in things like love, sex and a journalism job -- even while reflecting on whether he has Clue One about any of the above. (He's the focus of the novel, which is good because I can identify with him.) There's also a memorable supporting cast, including Imre Horvath, the exiled Hungarian publishing magnate who's in charge of his company for the first time since the pamphlet-and-broadsheet frenzy of October 1956; Nicky M., the bald-headed, razor-tongued photographer with some "creative" uses for the self-portrait; and Nadja, the storytelling lounge singer who's charmed the Commies, the Nazis, a few deceased lovers and John Price. As for the plot, I almost hate to say it, but "Prague" is a "coming-of-age" tale -- both for Budapest and the expats. There's no one composite story but rather a collection of stories -- vignettes and epics -- that grow, intertwine and occasionally repel each other. Phillips is big on exposition and background, and sometimes he interrupts one story to tell another one -- at length. But although he throws the novel's rhythms off this way, he effectively illustrates how the history relates to the characters and places -- as well as how easily they can toss each other aside. He also depicts the city and its people in ways other than those fitting a travelogue or a phrasebook, which is refreshing. Some starstruck critics are probably fetching the 1920s comparisons because "Prague" is full of well-crafted writing, rich imagery and the occasional innovation that calls just a little attention to itself. But if the novel has anything to do with a new Lost Generation, then its because it deals in moments that, chronologically and culturally, have pretty much passed. (And if, in the latter case, the praise is meant to evoke a watershed moment for Generation X, then there's the added question of whether that moment ever came in the first place.) "Prague" is much more effective, I think, as a snapshot of not only the fall of Communism but also of a young person's travels abroad for the first time: the initial euphoria and the latter impatience; the small, trivial moments that become large, romanticized memories; the connections with total strangers and the lack thereof with acquaintances; and that overall confusion of whether the running is away or toward. In short, then, hype and packaging aside, it's a great book to read while you're traveling -- especially if you need a change of scene. And I was, I did, and now I'm sold.
Rating:
Summary: Sarcastic garbage . . .
Review: Being a sucker for comparisons, I bought this book when the author was called the new Fitzgerald. Sadly, this is not the case. Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor and this is the foundation on which this miserable book rests. Miserable characters unable to connect in a story told by a voice that is equally spiteful of life. The characters are in no way sympathetic, just pathetic. Their conversations are of no interests to anyone, but the writer. A true chore to read.
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