Aug
29
How to Sell: A Novel
Posted by admin Comments (5)
- ISBN13: 9780374173357
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Product Description
Bobby Clark is just sixteen when he drops out of school to follow his big brother, Jim, into the jewelry business. Bobby idolizes Jim and is in awe of Jim’s girlfriend, Lisa, the best saleswoman at the Fort Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange. What follows is the story of a young man’s education in two of the oldest human passions, love and money. Through a dark, sharp lens, Clancy Martin captures the luxury business in all its exquisite vulgarity and outrageous fra… More >>
Categories: All About Selling
Enjoy the characters – only mid-way through book, but so far really appreciating each person and cirumstance. Well written.
Rating: 3 / 5
A sad story of drug use, fraud, and con artist in the jewelry business. The characters are as fake as the Rolexes that they sell.
Rating: 2 / 5
I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of this and loved every page. Powerful prose and a compelling story. Who doesn’t love drugs, sex, diamonds and lies? Read this now before everyone else on your block does.
Rating: 5 / 5
Reading this book is a bit like being cornered at a party by a voluble drunk who drones on about his boring profession, his sex life, and his drug taking. It quickly gets tiresome and you look for an escape. I’ve given this book a middling rating because the author clearly has talent and the writing is always competent. Unfortunately, the master-of-the-universe characters are repellent and generate no interest or sympathy. Maybe once Martin gets his knowledge of jewelry off his chest, he’ll deliver a second novel of greater appeal and substance.
Rating: 3 / 5
I tip my had in deference to the obviously fascinating story inside Clancy Martin’s head and to his stature, which I learned of from other Amazon.com reviewers, as a leading existentialist philosopher. Unfortunately, neither of those traits necessarily makes for a good fiction writer.
I’m almost half way through and finally had to give up. This work is just so darn . . . I don’t even know . . . boring is part of it but not all. There just seems to be too much going on that doesn’t make much sense.
There’s the story about the jewelry business, which has the potential to be great but doesn’t seem to get there because it’s weighed down by so much other stuff.
There’s the story about Lisa, which is trite at best. I don’t care that the narrator knows Lisa via the jewelry store; these are still two separate stories that have no connection to one another and don’t belong in the same novel.
There’s the story about the moralizing-but-womanizing father and his astral proclivities. I have to assume Clancy Martin’s father is like this because if not, i have no idea why this stuff is in the novel (and even if it’s true, who cares . . . this is supposed to be the art of fiction, not a diary).
Jim, the narrator’s brother who gets him into the jewelry business is one of the most spectacularly uninteresting characters I’ve ever encounters in fiction or non-fiction; ditto the Pollack, the leading saleswoman at the first store where the narrator works. The story of how the brother met the Pollack is banal beyond belief).
Actually, the Lisa character is likewise pretty dull as is the narrator’s affair with her. An amazon.com editorial review hints that she becomes a prostitute later. I have no idea if that livens anything up. My lack of interest in reading long enough to find out should provide an idea as to how deadening I found the part I forced myself to read.
I’m sorry, but with all due respect to Martin’s stature as one of our leading existential philosophers, all I can say is he probably should stick to his day job, or see if he can audit a creative writing class at the university with which he’s affiliated
Rating: 1 / 5