My Wife and My Dead Wife

Rating:
Summary: A Thought-Provoking Book
Review: Hmm. I hadn't heard of this author before, but was taken by the Dr. Seussian-looking title lettering. I ended up being very pleasantly surprised. Putting aside the humor that everyone else has noted -- and, yes, it is laugh-out-loud funny -- the book is actually a meditation on the the truthfulness of fiction. Toward the end of the book, when you realize the narrator may not have told you the truth about his girlfriend as a way to make himself feel better, you find yourself having to reassess everything you've read. And you'll look differently at everything you read in the future. Based on this, I'm going to run out and pick up the author's other novels. His is a very unusual voice that deserves to be heard.

Rating:
Summary: Let Down by Kun
Review: I felt let down by Kun's newest effort, which is nowhere as interesting or amusing as THE LOCKLEAR LETTERS, which to tell you the truth is not all that great either, but at least it had the dream figure of Heather Locklear (the world's ultimate good sport) to keep it going, so that we wound up rooting for Sid Straw no matter how implausible his problems got. But with MY WIFE AND MY DEAD WIFE, the humor is much more problematic. I never found any of Renee's quirks very amusing, the country songs she wrote weren't funny as they were supposed to be, indeed I kind of had the feeling Michael Kun isn't much of a country fan and has a disrespect for this kind of music.

Also not funny was Renee's habit, which her husband Ham borrows from her via osmosis, of peppering her conversation with numbered lists. So in short order A) not as good as the last book which B) wasn't nearly as good as Kun's novel A THOUSAND BENJAMINS, C) much too long, D) a few mile chuckles and E) needed an editor before it got to the reader. But what do I know, 15 other Amazon readers think it's the best thing since Zuleika Dobson. So judge for yourself, as ultimately you will.

Rating:
Summary: Laugh Out Loud
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed My Wife and My Dead Wife. After reading The Lochlear Letters I should have expected another humorous perspective on life. The characters were real and full of heart while the storyline remained interesting. I think Mike Kun has a big future as a great author! I look forward to reading his next book.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect Beach Read
Review: In a light, sweet and airy follow-up to the Locklear Letters, Michael Kun is at his comic best. Showing more depth than in his previous work, he manages to tell a somewhat disturbing tale in a funny, off-beat and compelling way. The protagonist, Ham Ashe, is an aimless everyman, who seems not to appreciate the things he has, although for no apparent reason. That is, until you find out why at the end of the book. In the meantime, there are several chuckles and enough lol's to keep the story moving. You can finish this book in one or two sittings, or just before the SPF 15 wears off. Really enjoyed this effort and can't wait to get his next book.

Rating:
Summary: If You Like David Sedaris and Nick Hornby ....
Review: Michael Kun has got to be one of the literary world's best kept secrets. It's amazing to me that he's not as huge as David Sedaris or Nick Hornby. He's funnier and, in my opinion, more talented. Yet you never see ads for his books, and the only way you'd ever even know he existed would be if a friend of a friend of a friend passed one of them along (which is how I got hooked). Kun's 2003 novel, The Locklear Letters, is the funniest book ever written, and it should have been the book everyone was reading last summer. But when I mention it to people, they look at me blankly. I was very surprised, and pleased, to see that he put out another novel so quickly afterward. My Wife and My Dead Wife is a more traditional novel than The Locklear Letters, and the humor and dialogue couldn't be more perfect. Kun uses his wit early in the book to make you like his main character, tailor Ham Ashe, so that you feel even more for him when the novel's surprise is revealed. And what a surprise it is. This is "book of the year" material. Hopefully, My Wife and My Dead Wife will win Kun the acclaim that The Locklear Letters should have. If not, it should at least help him develop a cult following.

Rating:
Summary: You have to read this book -- it is just incredible
Review: Michael Kun's Hamilton Ashe is often on the periphery of a party, a bar scene, or a relationship. His take on the world that's passing by is very entertaining, non-pretentious and honest, in contrast to his successful lawyer brother, from whom he borrows money, but that's another story. Ham goes through his daily activities, his dead end job, his attempts to fill his time, while he deals with his guilt and self-hatred for not having taken a stand when he had a chance to save an acquaintance from humiliation and worse. Perhaps, philosophically, Ham embodies the post-modern truth that people often wait for that perfect cause or the moment of truth to find their voice. And that moment never comes. My Wife and My Dead Wife is, in the end, a call to action, to take a chance while you can. It's an endearing book, funny and uplifting and honest; very worthwhile.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: My Wife and My Dead Wife is tremendous. It's the kind of book that you can read a couple of times and keep finding something new. The book starts out with humor that is out and out hilarious. As the wonderful story develops, the humor becomes a lot more subtle and is based on Mr. Kun's keen observations about people and their response to different situations and environments. Jerry Seinfeld has nothing on this guy in that regard, although you might be forced to ask, "why does a lawyer know so darn much about sewing? Why?" It's a great book and you ought to read it.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: My Wife and My Dead Wife is unquestionably the greatest novel about a tailor in the English language. It is also the funniest, saddest and downright readable novel on any subject you are likely to read this summer. No surprise, coming from master comic Kun, whose Locklear Letters rang up a laugh a paragraph just one year ago. MWAMDW (not to be confused with WMD) surpasses the dazzling Locklear Letters on just about all counts. Sid Straw was obsessive, witty and a little exasperating. Hamilton Ashe (Hamilton Burger meets Arthur Ashe) is a riveting, complex voice, a tailor who crossstitches his humor with self-deprecation, befuddlement, an endless bombardment of rhetorical questions (this a subliminally interactive novel) and an ineluctable helplessness in the face of a love relationship. Kun brings an embarrassment of talents to this book, from a relentless comic shpritz to a nanospecificity on the art of sewing, from risible dialogue to riotous sex. These are all new elements in Kun's work, or at least more pronounced than before. But what makes this novel superior to Kun's, and just about everybody else's fiction, is the gathering darkness and depth of the last 40 pages or so, when one realizes that this bittersweet parable of Mars vs. Venus is really about redemption, about how one momentous event can shape one's life for decades. Ham Ashe is a hopeless romantic, but he is ultimately more hopeless than romantic. He is a wannabe savior who can, in the end, bring salavation only to torn cloth. How many novels can go from sidesplitting to heartbreaking in a fast-moving 350 pages? James Thurber never tried it,but if he had, he might have written something like My Wife and My Dead Wife.

Thurber

Rating:
Summary: Novel about tailor had me in stitches
Review: My Wife and My Dead Wife is unquestionably the greatest novel about a tailor in the English language. It is also the funniest, saddest and downright readable novel on any subject you are likely to read this summer. No surprise, coming from master comic Kun, whose Locklear Letters rang up a laugh a paragraph just one year ago. MWAMDW (not to be confused with WMD) surpasses the dazzling Locklear Letters on just about all counts. Sid Straw was obsessive, witty and a little exasperating. Hamilton Ashe (Hamilton Burger meets Arthur Ashe) is a riveting, complex voice, a tailor who crossstitches his humor with self-deprecation, befuddlement, an endless bombardment of rhetorical questions (this a subliminally interactive novel) and an ineluctable helplessness in the face of a love relationship. Kun brings an embarrassment of talents to this book, from a relentless comic shpritz to a nanospecificity on the art of sewing, from risible dialogue to riotous sex. These are all new elements in Kun's work, or at least more pronounced than before. But what makes this novel superior to Kun's, and just about everybody else's fiction, is the gathering darkness and depth of the last 40 pages or so, when one realizes that this bittersweet parable of Mars vs. Venus is really about redemption, about how one momentous event can shape one's life for decades. Ham Ashe is a hopeless romantic, but he is ultimately more hopeless than romantic. He is a wannabe savior who can, in the end, bring salavation only to torn cloth. How many novels can go from sidesplitting to heartbreaking in a fast-moving 350 pages? James Thurber never tried it,but if he had, he might have written something like My Wife and My Dead Wife.

Thurber

Rating:
Summary: Contemporary Fiction at Its Best
Review: That last reviewer not only doesn't know what he's talking about, but a quick look at his profile tells you all you need to know about his vituperative review -- he's a lawyer who's jealous of Kun's legal and writing careers. How sad. Take the word of the other reviewers who loved "The Locklear Letters" and "My Wife and My Dead Wife" -- this is contemporary fiction at its very best. Well-written, yet easy to read. Funny, but not simplistic. Touching, yet not sappy. Kun is the real deal. He needs to quit practicing law and write more books like these. And get a new publicist so people will hear about them!