Another advance review of Everything Is Borrowed has just appeared, this one by Jon Sobel at Blogcritics. Sobel shows a fine appreciation for the psychic turmoil of the novel's narrator, architect Nicholas Moscowitz, who gets obsessed with his guilty memories of a college love affair and with the life of a 19th-century counterpart who frequented the same city blocks:
"as the book effectively evokes Nicholas’s obsessive state of mind it also gives us vivid snapshots of the anarchist movement of the late 19th century; a glimpse into the lives of poor Jewish immigrants of the time; and a sensitive rendering of the hyper-reality of the college-age mind. 'The neighborhood, far west of our university, might be a world apart. Living here makes us feel authentic and original, as if we, who are merely transient, are part of something real.'
"That feeling of being 'merely transient' sings through the whole narrative. As Nicholas scans the history of the blocks and buildings associated with his predecessor, he observes the impermanence of even the most solid-seeming structures....
"The title, Everything is Borrowed, takes on a dual meaning: artists build their new creations out of borrowed pieces of others’ past work. But in the end our lives, too – our relationships, our activities, even the places in which we ride it all out – must go back out with the tide of history."
"as the book effectively evokes Nicholas’s obsessive state of mind it also gives us vivid snapshots of the anarchist movement of the late 19th century; a glimpse into the lives of poor Jewish immigrants of the time; and a sensitive rendering of the hyper-reality of the college-age mind. 'The neighborhood, far west of our university, might be a world apart. Living here makes us feel authentic and original, as if we, who are merely transient, are part of something real.'
"That feeling of being 'merely transient' sings through the whole narrative. As Nicholas scans the history of the blocks and buildings associated with his predecessor, he observes the impermanence of even the most solid-seeming structures....
"The title, Everything is Borrowed, takes on a dual meaning: artists build their new creations out of borrowed pieces of others’ past work. But in the end our lives, too – our relationships, our activities, even the places in which we ride it all out – must go back out with the tide of history."
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