A regular guy mona simpson ebook

There are many beautiful sentences and fine observations. The book is clearly the work of someone with great skill. Some of the scenes conjure unique but persuasive moods, particularly the ones of women waiting around for this powerful and mercurial man, and their shifting alliances and conflicts with each other as they jockey for his unreliable affections. Yet there was something that didn't completely gel for me. Maybe it comes from the inherent difficulty of making the tough, possibly irresistible, but undeniably ballsy move of trying to get inside the heads of real people you actually know and write fiction about them.

Maybe it comes from the way that I encountered the book, knowing and expecting it to be in some way 'about Steve Jobs,' rather than coming to it freshly and innocently on its own terms, as a straight up novel. It's an interesting question, though, since all writers at some level work with things they've been through and people they've known. Why does it sometimes turn into successful fiction and sometimes not? Is there a level of abstraction that's just not enough?

I'm glad I read 'A Regular Guy,' and bits and pieces may stay with me. But ultimately it lingers in some in-between zone: too much a piece of Jobsiana to be a searing novelistic experience, and too much a novel to be a satisfying meal of Steve Jobs lore.

View 1 comment. Oct 15, Neil rated it really liked it. This is a good, but difficult book to read. Mona Simpson writes well; she masters a sort of folky writing style where the reader must infer from the dialogue what really is happening behind what is said. Simpson comes across as a dispassionate but very keen observer of things around her. The real beauty of this book, though, can only be understood if you have read a lot about Steve in real life.

Without knowing about Steve, this book is entirely without context. More than anything, this work is This is a good, but difficult book to read. More than anything, this work is personal, it's real, it's poignant and it is written in a deceptively dispassionate way. What Mona has done with her characters - particularly Noah and Jane, is absolutely remarkable. To create Noah on paper, is to my eyes, one of Simpson's greatest accomplishments in this book.

Do I recommend this book? Only if you are interested in a serious, slow, literary read and only if you have done lots of homework on understanding Steve. Nov 07, Candice rated it it was ok. Hours of my life I can't get back. Like Simpson's other work, but this was disjointed and tedious and it wasn't until I figured out it was about Steve Jobs that it became mildly interesting and made more sense.

It wasn't the story itself, another girl searching for her father, but the structure was off and sometimes I could not diagram a sentence: I simply could not understand what she was saying or what a character's reaction referred to. People randomly came and went, the psychological sophist Hours of my life I can't get back. People randomly came and went, the psychological sophistication of the ten year old was hard to swallow, and I couldn't relate to any of the characters.

Given Job's personality, I guess it's not surprising but, and maybe this was the point, you're just left frustrated and disconnected with the entire mess.

How this book kept getting "comical" or "funny" review comments is beyond me: it was primarily tragic. Oct 24, Laura de Leon rated it liked it Shelves: blogged , mcbook , fiction , nook. A very low 3 stars, bordering on 2. The problem for me is that I just didn't get the point of this book.

The words themselves flowed well enough, and they didn't get in the way of the story as I often fear in a literary novel. The story was coherent, and worked well enough in that sense. I simply didn't get insight into the life of Steve Jobs or if I did, I just didn't care , and the story didn't have enough strength to stand alone. This was true of the plot, but even more so of the characters A very low 3 stars, bordering on 2.

This was true of the plot, but even more so of the characters. Tom Owens didn't intrigue me as Steve Jobs, largely because I never saw the charisma the character was described as having. Simply seen as a fictional character, he was both unbelievable and uninteresting, which is pretty sad if you think about it.

At the beginning of the book, I had some hope for Jane Owens' daughter and her mother, Mary. Jane simply faded into the story and that may have actually been the point-- if so, I feel terrible for the real life model of Jane, and wonder what her relationship with her aunt the writer must be like.

Mary turned into a whiny caricature as the woman who sent her 10 year old daughter driving solo cross country to live with her father becomes resentful as that daughter chooses to spend time with her father. The one character I found interesting was Noah, a scientist that chose to continue to follow his own path rather than work with Owens and his company.

He was an intriguing secondary character, and I find it telling that I have no idea if he had a real life counterpart. I admit, I was relieved that the rest of my book club had a similar reaction, whether they were all to familiar with the details of Jobs and his life, or relatively uninformed, at least about this chapter.

Whatever the point was, it was well hidden. Jun 23, Stephen Redwood rated it did not like it Shelves: fiction. A novel about a curious, complex character and the people who swing in and out of his life. He is brought up by adoptive parents, builds a wildly successful company, develops all sorts of idiosyncratic tastes, has a daughter by a woman he doesn't live with, gets ousted from his company by the person he brings in to run it and has challenging relationships with everyone who gets close to him.

So, anything but A Regular Guy. Sound familiar? It should. Written by Steve Job's sister, it is a thinly A novel about a curious, complex character and the people who swing in and out of his life. Written by Steve Job's sister, it is a thinly disguised tale about him. Warts and all. So it's not surprising that it supposedly caused a rift between the two of them.

Unfortunately, that's the most intriguing thing about it. Whilst there are occasional insights, much of the writing consists of overlong descriptions of minutiae about the lives of the characters. In the end it just gets to be boring, so I found myself skimming pages in search of the meat of the story.

Without the Steve Jobs angle, I doubt I would ever have finished it. View 2 comments. Nov 19, Robin rated it it was ok. I decided to read this after I saw - and loved - the recent Steve Jobs movie. I had read the Walter Isaacson biography of Jobs, and I was intrigued that this remarkable man had a long-lost sister who turned out to be a rather well known novelist.

I didn't get very far in Simpson's Anywhere But Here several years ago, and I can't say I'm a huge fan of this novel either. Sometimes intriguing, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes just confusing and unappealing, and ultimately inconclusive I'm not, I think, a big fan of Simpson as a novelist - I doubt I'll read another of her books, because there are so many books and so little time!

Oct 31, Diane rated it liked it. I found this book harder to get into than "Casebook. The focus seems to be more on him but I am finding it difficult to be interested in his character's development. For some reason, I find myself wishing the book would focus more on the other characters. Perhaps the story will become more I found this book harder to get into than "Casebook. Perhaps the story will become more compelling in the second half, as I found with "Casebook.

Sep 28, Mie rated it liked it Shelves: fiction , scanned. A good book, but there was too much descriptive narrative for my taste. Pace picked up as the book was about to end.

Noah Kaskie deserves some great love though. Dec 23, Terri Durling rated it it was ok. Oh my it was a hard job getting through this book. It was a mess - confusing, convoluted and aimless with a bunch of characters I could barely keep track of some I just gave up on completely as they were mentioned randomly at different sections and I had long forgotten them by that time. The characters circled each other warily and who could blame them.

They are all in awe of a very flawed and selfish character, Tom Owens, who is modelled after Steve Jobs. The author is his sibling and there i Oh my it was a hard job getting through this book. At the centre of the story is a daughter, Jane, who he barely tolerates unless it's convenient for him.

She survives despite having a maher who appears unbalanced and a father who mostly denies he's he's her father, ignites her fir the most kart and plain neglects her. His relationships with lovers, friends, colleagues and employees are fraught with tension and indecision.

Olivia was hard to figure out - a beautiful woman who fought with him and left him on a daily basis while he pondered whether he wanted to marry her or not. I dreaded picking up the book and trying to figure out this self absorbed man and why everyone is his life put up with him. It certainly wasn't his charm. I couldn't even figure out what he did or what accounted for his wealth and success.

Mar 12, Suzanne Perkins rated it it was ok. I forgot how I got this book. I feel like someone gave it to me. When i started it I forgot that it had anything to do with Steve jobs and I thought it would follow the girl Jane. The women too are all dips. The looney mom. The sucker of a girlfriend. Feb 06, Swood rated it liked it.

Read for our book club. Simpson got me rather quickly with the quirky nature of her characters, which she sustained across the entire narrative. However, there were so many characters in the supporting cast, I had a hard time keeping track. I feel like she set out to imagine a sort of silicon valley type tycoon, good natured, lucky, a bit eccentric in his beliefs and in his self-explanation, how he got to this place I'm still puzzling over the title, not a regular guy in the bunch. Dec 27, Rachel rated it it was ok.

I hesitated a long time between two stars and three. It's the first time I give such a low rating to a really well-written book. That's what frustrates me most, actually. The wasted potential that went into it.

Halfway through the book I started wondering why I wasn't connecting with it more and I read that was likely to happen if you don't have a major interest in Steve Job, which I don't.

Still, Simpson creates interesting characters. It's just that the whole story goes nowhere. I don't usuall I hesitated a long time between two stars and three. I don't usually mind that because I'm a big fan of literary fiction; give me good characters over plot anytime.

So I really don't know what did it. It could be that I read this story through audiobook, and I don't think that was the appropriate medium for this story, given the frequent shifts in POVs. It also bothered me that the lives almost every female character in the story revolve around the male protagonist. Aug 18, Lainie rated it it was ok.

Weak in structure. Tons of narrative, but constantly disjointing. Like looking down into a model of a created world, getting explained to death while the participants wait endlessly to be moved from one interaction to the next. And then reversed, a little. Frustrating to follow. And seemed frustrating to all the characters, too. Jan 11, Mike Merrill rated it liked it.

After reading about Jobs strained relationship with his sister and daughter this book makes more sense now. Jobs completists will want this one. Story was a bit convoluted but parts of it were well written. Jan 18, Karen Shillings rated it it was ok. Only finished this book because I was stuck at home and the library was closed. Mar 22, Romain rated it it was amazing Shelves: steve-jobs-apple. You have to read the book knowing it's Steve Jobs's biological sister talking about her brother and niece.

Mary teaches her to drive at 10 years of age and sends her alone in an old truck to find him. Owens has become a famous and rich businessman who is anything but a regular guy.

Owens is a self made man who worked his way up the ladder via scientific achievement. In truth he is egotistical, judgmental, arrogant, and selfish - and despite this, women of all ages continue to find him attractive and mesmerizing. Like moths to a fire, they are attracted and are untimately disappointed.

This story is about active vs passive living - Owens's mantra is the chase, but he has no ability or strength for the hardest part, the follow through.

Did Jane's appearance change the course of her father's life as many of the blurbs suggest? The women in the novel grew and changed and matured, not Owens. His inevitable fall felt anticlimatic; Simpson's excellent characterization didn't hold it all together.

Jul 18, Caitlin rated it it was amazing. Another great book by Mona Simpson! I'm so disappointed that this was the last one I had to read by her - now I'll have to wait more than a year for her to release another one. In the first few chapters I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get into it, but became fascinated by all of the characters. She is just such a great character writer. Though frustrating, Owens, the "regular guy", was as irregular as they come and kept me interested and captivated.

Simpson's writing seems almost raw at times, l Another great book by Mona Simpson! Simpson's writing seems almost raw at times, like she just puts on the paper the exact thoughts she thinks a character would have, no literary filters applied, if that makes any sense, and that makes her writing seem so much more genuine and so great!

Feb 28, Chris rated it liked it. Mona Simpson wrote an intimate, rambling, pseudo-biographical account of her half-brother, Steve Jobs, his immediate family and his colleagues.

The novel gives the impression of hewing closely to Jobs's life, and suffers for that, given the formlessness of any real human existence. It's also embarrassingly indiscrete, betraying what the reader can only assume are family secrets, and scoring points against Jobs's ex-girlfriends and others. These revelations are both its strength and its weakness. While the indiscretions make it contemptible, on one level, they also lend the book great interest, especially for anyone seeking information about Jobs.

Nov 28, Carol added it. Would I have stayed with this novel if I hadn't known that it was about Mona Simpson's biological brother, Steve Jobs? Probably not. Family History. Paul Harding. The Learning Curve. Woman No. Edan Lepucki. Welcome to the Great Mysterious. Lorna Landvik. Keep Me Posted. Lisa Beazley. The Underside of Joy. Sere Prince Halverson. Family Linen.

For Kings and Planets. Short Girls. Bich Minh Nguyen. Forgotten Country. Catherine Chung. This Is My Life. Meg Wolitzer. Neruda on the Park. Cleyvis Natera. Best Friends. Martha Moody. Marian Keyes. Five Days Left. Julie Lawson Timmer.

The Orchard. Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry. Family Album. Penelope Lively. I See You Everywhere. Kathryn Harrison. Margaret Hawkins. The Book of Bright Ideas. Sandra Kring. Related Articles. Looking for More Great Reads? Download Hi Res. Get the latest updates from Mona Simpson. And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week. We are experiencing technical difficulties.

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