Michelle J says: "This is
the first book I have read from this author. It “looked”ancient by the cover. I
enjoyed it, it was a quick read. These two brothers were lucky to have their parent’s
money so they did not need to work. Otherwise, they couldn’t have been so
uselessly eccentric (having a car in the dining room). They did not need to be
so dysfunctional, but I guess it was blindness handicapping one and war wounds
handicapping the other. I liked Langley’s theory of replacements (the same thing
happening over and over again), i.e., the cycle of life, birth school taxes
death. I think their string of “strange” visitors was just a device for the
author to spice up the book. I did not think that Langley’s universal newspaper
had any merit as old news is no news. The details of current events is what
makes them interesting. Newspaper hoarding is just classic hoarding mental
illness, quite common.
A good
book, but we all have to deal with the interplay between home and the outside
world, our personal and our public or work lives.Being separate from the world
is no practical goal, although the author physically tried to pull that off
(shutters, etc.). I think they were just a tad mentally ill and did need a
social worker to “rescue” them from themselves but that’s not the priority of
our government. We can’t even feed all our citizens."
The group mostly enjoyed the writing and the clever way the writing structure and style echoed the closing in of the two brothers' lives. Most in the group were curious and looked up information about the real Collyer brothers.
