November 6th, 2008
Book Review: The Extra Man by Jonathan Ames
“Women outlive men, so there’s more of them, that’s why sometimes you simply need an extra man at the table. It maintains a good seating arrangement. Boy-girl, boy girl. I am an extra man,” says Henry Harrison one of the two main characters in Jonathan Ames’ novel, The Extra Man.
The Extra Man is the story of two men living together: Louis Ives who is 26 and Henry Harrison who is 73. Henry works as a professor in New York and rents his only room out to Louis to help pay the rent. Henry’s whole existence is basically geared toward getting a free meal out of women who are nearly 20 years older than he is. For all intensive purposes, Henry is an aging escort.
Louis who is running away from his life in New Jersey comes to live with Henry in New York. In my opinion, the opening of this story is the best part. I picked up this book and was completely sucked in. But that was it for me. The whole book is a collection of descriptions about the daily life of Louis Ives and Henry Harrison, from Louis’ point of view.
In Ames’ defense, the writing is fantastic. The imagery is extraordinary. The subject matter could be viewed as controversial, which is a plus for me. Throughout the course of the story, Louis is struggling with his sexual identity. He is drawn to both females and transsexuals. That does make for some interesting reading. There are some well written descriptions of Louis’ sexual escapades. Ames did a good job with this aspect.
Here’s the problem for me. The story seemed to have no real plot. We followed the daily lives of these two men, but there was no sense of building towards something, or a feeling of movement for that matter. I literally had to force myself to finish this story.
The ending of this book is lackluster. The story just drops off. I turned the page expecting to start another chapter, and there was nothing. Finis, it was over. Perhaps I’m not familiar enough with the genre of literary fiction. Maybe I need to stick with commercial fiction? I’m sorry to say that I would not recommend this story to anyone. Sadly, The Extra Man left me wanting.
