The Life I Lead

Rating:
Summary: Should've won the Pulitzer
Review: I do not know if Mr Banner's novel will eventually emerge as one of the finest works of fiction in the late 20th century. But it should. Its delights are in its details: no writer I know wields such an incredibly perceptive eye over American culture; Mr Banner shows an extraordinary, almost scary knowledge of all the wonderful and sad little things that make up the average American's everyday life. The Life I Lead is a great painting that's never been painted; a perfect film that's never been shot; a poem not yet set down. It captures so much that has yet to be properly articulated in American art, I can only hope that it someday receives the recognition it deserves.

Rating:
Summary: Never Again
Review: The Life I Lead is about a sick-minded man named Dave Brewer. It is a very confusing book because it jumps from his child hood to his adult hood and back. He is a father to a girl named Brittany, a husband to a woman named Tara, and a son to a man named Paul. In the beginning of this book when him and his wife are intimate, he dreams and visualizes it is a boy not a man but a boy named Nathan that he met at the local pool one day. He thinks about Nathan swimming at the pool naked. In the middle of the book he starts thinking about his old babysitter troy who at the time was 16 and he was 3 yrs old. One time when Troy was babysitting him they went to garage and they would do stuff together. When he thinks about stuff like that it makes him crave for Nathan even more. At the end of this book, his father gets sick and he has been sent to a nursing home. At the nursing home, Troy, Dave's old babysitter is working there so they reunite, but nothing happens between them. He sticks with his wife and daughter and a sick mind filled with nasty thoughts and fantasies.

I would never recommend this book to anyone. Because it is very confusing. The author jumps to one stage of his life then to another and that can get boring at times. I did not find this book interesting at all.

Rating:
Summary: Bravo
Review: Was it Flannery O'Conner who said "nothing human is alien to me?" In seeking to demystify (yet not forgive) pedophilia, Banner beautifully fulfills this most challenging of the fiction writer's credo. It took no small about of courage to write this novel. I applaud the writer and the publisher and find myself perhaps a bit sadder but also richer for having read Keith Banner's dramatic exploration.